This is a question I’m often asked about the greater Seattle/Pacific Northwest region. Since I focus on helping people with mortgages to buy or refinance their homes, I defer these types of questions to local real estate professionals.
I recently posted this question with the challenge that the real estate agents keep their response to one sentence or roughly 140 characters. Here are some of the replies I received.
Jeff Prescott of ReMAX Metro Realty responds to my question via Twitter:
Jim Reppond of Coldwell Banker Danforth posted his response about the Seattle real estate market on Twitter:
Margo Christophillis from Keller Williams provides some advice regarding the Seattle real estate market via Facebook:
Ira Sacharoff from Better Properties says the market is getting better via Facebook:
Krissy Jones of Real Northwest Living chimed in via Facebook:
Kevin Lisota from Findwell Realty addresses finance contingencies in his tweet:
The consensus is that the market is pretty competitive for home buyers. I know that potential home buyers MUST be preapproved by a reputable lender before making an offer on a home in the greater Seattle area.
So what’s your take on our housing market in the Puget Sound area?
My take is you can’t analyze the market in the space allowed on Twitter. 😉
Seriously, it depends on price range and area. Lower priced properties in Seattle proper are totally nuts. On the other hand, there are parts of Tacoma that still look like Seattle two years ago–lots of short sales and bank owned. Areas in-between are in-between.
Two points I would like to make though is that move up buyers are making some incredible moves. I’ve seen an extra $100,000 or so result in much nicer home and land. Also, we had one client move to Seattle, buy in January, decide they didn’t like it after all, put the house on the market six months later and then sell in August. They covered their closing costs and much of their down payment. Quite the difference from the recent past where buyers were locked in for years.
Hi Kary,
I just found your comment “pending” — sorry about that! Part of the challenge for the real estate agents in this post was to keep it short 🙂 you can see that wasn’t very easy…
Keep an eye out for the next time I post a comment to local RE peeps on Twitter or Facebook – I’d love to have your participation.