June saw a bit of an upswing as far as sales went but we’re still not where I’d like to be. If you’d like to see what sold in June, you can click here for the June Sales Report.
While Pacific County isn’t exactly the market the Northwest Multiple Listing Service gets the bulk of its figures from, it does show the general trend in Washington state:
KIRKLAND, Wash. (July 6, 2010) – Not even the lowest interest rates in decades could entice wary house-hunters last month. Home sales around Western and Central Washington remained sluggish with pending sales lagging year-ago levels, but not all the numbers were down.
June’s pending sales (mutually accepted offers) outgained the total for May by 5.8 percent. Closed sales were up from both a year ago and the previous month. Brokers also applauded congressional approval of legislation to extend the tax credit deadline on contracts signed by the April 30 deadline. That measure, which President Obama signed on July 2, pushes the deadline to Sept. 30.
“In general consumers seem to be stuck in uncertainty surrounding the world’s economic concerns, our lack of jobs and the rollercoaster of the stock market. They seem to be hunkering down despite the lowest interest rates in years,” said NWMLS director Frank Wilson, managing broker at John L. Scott, Inc. Poulsbo.
The MLS summary statistics for June show:
Pending sales of single family homes and condominiums (combined) fell 28 percent from a year ago, but rose 5.8 percent from May.
Year-to-date (through June), pending sales are up 12.4 percent compared to midyear 2009.
Closed sales for June outgained the same month a year ago by 617 transactions (up 12 percent), and rose 8.9 percent from May’s total.
The median price for last month’s completed transactions is down about 7 percent from twelve months ago.
Four counties (Cowlitz, Grays Harbor, Lewis and Pacific) reported price increases from a year ago, while eight other counties had declines of less than 5 percent.
House-hunters have plenty of choices. Brokers added 10,354 new listings to inventory last month, bringing the selection to 42,940 residences being offered for sale system-wide. That’s up about 4 percent from a year ago. Included in the current listings are 36,027 single family homes priced from $8,500 to $25 million, and 6,913 condominiums priced from $20,000 to $15.6 million.
As far as what happened in South Pacific County, there were 18 single family home sales ranging in price from $95,000 to $805,000. Average days on the market were 332 with four of the homes being on the market in excess of 2 years. One of the homes was in Sunset Sands, 4 in Surfside. The $805,000 sale was in Butterfly Shores.
Vacant land fared a little better than last month with 7 sales ranging from just $6,000 (1-1/2 acres probably not buildable) to 3.65 acres of view property in Ilwaco at $278,000. The sales prices averaged 82.65% of the list prices.
(note that these figures are only based on MLS listed sales – there may be additional sales between private parties that are not part of the computations)
On the market right now there are:
Condos: 25 ranging in price from $28,500 to $210,000
Single Family Homes (including manufactured): 384 with prices from $12,900 (singlewide in a park) to $1,485,000 for a 5000 sf home on Willapa Bay.
Vacant Land: 341 starting at $12,900 (Surfside, no utilities installed) to $2,100,000 for 24 acres with part of it bordering Loomis Lake on the east and the other to the western upland boundary on the west.
So, is it a good time to be a buyer? You bet! Contact any one of our brokers for more information. Charlie Diehl, Kaapi Corsi, Butch Calvert, Warren Ani, Cheri Grocott.
