Homes for sale February 9, 2016

South Sound Waterfront Home Values

 

What is the price per square foot for a Mason County waterfront home right now?

This chart is created for you every month from sales in the MLS.  You can always refer to this chart to see how things are going right now in the southwest Puget Sound.

This chart illustrates what I have said for years – there is no one answer to the value of Mason County waterfront.  Sometimes, it depend upon the time of year.  Sometimes, if a home is sold in February verses July, there can be as much as $70 per foot difference.  That’s a $140,000 difference in the sales price of a 2000 square foot home.

It’s given that every beach is different – some properties have higher banks and colder water temperature. What are the boating options, the views and proximity to services?  To compare South Puget Sound beaches, you should at very least break the numbers up into real estate areas – each area with its own price range.

HISTORIC VALUES – LET’S LOOK AT ANNUAL CHARTS

Are you new to waterfront property?  Some beaches are more expensive than others for a variety of reason.  They are all on the same Puget Sound but historically command their own values.  Every year, I produce these charts to help define where you can find the best bargains.

For each beach, I create four (4) charts from actual sales data taken directly from the MLS.  No homes are exactly alike – one home may have a dock or a granite counter-top but without question, there is a comp here for every home.

Chart #1 – “Scattergram Pricing Chart”

Each dot is an actual sale. The vertical axis is price and the horizontal is its square footage. Given all these points of sale, the blue line is a mathematical average of the “price per square foot” at any given size. This will give you some idea of the cost of an area home by footage.

Chart #2 – “Time to Sell”

This chart is “Days on Market” – the time required to sell a beach house as a function of its price. You can combine the information from this chart with the “Buying Patterns” chart to get an idea when best to list a home.

Chart #3 – “Buying Pattern”

This chart documents “Buying Patterns” from the perspective of price to the date it sold. This is an attempt to determine what time of the year beach homes are sold. Remember, the “date sold” is when a sale closed and recorded, not when the sellers agreed to an offer. Subtract about 40 days to get when the seller agreed to their offer.

Chart #4 – “What are the Odds of Selling Your Home?”

What percentage of homes for sale in a particular area actually sold? For example, on Harron Island, there were seven waterfront homes available for sale in 2015. One sold which means the odds of selling a waterfront home on Harron Island in 2015 was 14%. The blue bars represent what sold, red is those homes that either the listing expired or was cancelled, green is homes still for sale and yellow is sales that are pending.  This chart is not just about demand. It also speaks to supply, what homeowner and buyer expect and suggests how this may affect pricing.

WHAT BEACH INTERESTS YOU –