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 –

Real Estate August 30, 2012

Washington State Housing is Up

 

Matthew Gardner shares his views exclusively for Windermere about the Washington housing market in the Gardner Report

New Q2 Gardner Report is Now Available

There’s an old saying in Western Washington that you have to wait until the 5th of July for summer to start and that, after a prolonged period of tedium, light starts to shine. In reviewing the latest data on the economy and real estate markets, I believe the same can be said about them.
 
Summer has appeared in Western Washington and this has, so far, been reflected in our economy, as well as our housing market.
 
Businesses have been adding staff at a fair clip and, to a degree, this has influenced people’s decision making when it comes to buying a home. The two are, indeed, intertwined.
 
Even with this positive data, I am still suggesting that we be a little cautious regarding the housing market. Not because I believe that we are going to see any sort of rapid decline in values, rather that the long awaited improvement that is shown here may still have some hurdles ahead.
 
The wait for summer has been worth it—as has the very long wait for recovery/stability in our regional economy real estate markets. The glass is definitely half full right now, but it remains too early to call for a certified recovery in home prices. Enjoy the weather while it is here!
 
To read this new report on Washington's housing market and see Matthew's revealing charts, go to http://thesouthsounder.com/gardner/Q2_2012.pdf

 

NewsReal Estate February 14, 2012

The Garner Report Q4 on Washington real estate

Mr Matthew Gardner of the Gradner Report

Matthew Gardner has released The Gardner Report Q4 on his performance evaluations of Washington real  estate.  This quarterly report is exclusive to Windermere Real Estate but is made available here at no cost.

 

His conclusion to our Q4 market is:

As has been the case for all of 2011, an increase in sales of Washington real estate does not mean an increase in prices. The value of transacted units in our market declined by 15.5 percent from a year ago, excluding the volatile San Juan County which saw a drop of 14.8 percent. Looking at the specific counties within our survey, there were two that exhibited price growth from December of 2010, these being Island (+7.1%) and Clallam (+4.5%). Counties that saw the greatest price declines included: Jefferson (-30.1%), Kittitas (-28%), Mason (-26.4%), Grays Harbor (-20.5%), and San Juan (-20%).

There are, I believe, two reasons why we have not yet seen the price stability in Washington real estate that we are all looking for. The first of these is that the sale of distressed homes continues to make up a very large percentage of all transactions and these homes sell for substantially lower than market price. In King County, for example, distressed transactions made up 40 percent of all sales in 2011. Additionally, with such low levels of supply, we have seen a pronounced change in the make-up of sales with a disproportionate percentage of homes selling in very affordable price ranges. Both of these factors are having negative effects on home prices.

I am keeping the housing market at a “C-“ grade this quarter and am unlikely to change this until we start to see more housing choices become available and the percentage of foreclosures start to decline.

To see all of Mr. Gardner’s reports and his charts that make more graphical his analysis, click here to go to https://mikemostyn.com/windermeres-gardner-report/or use the navigation links to the left of this page for “Market Research” and click on Windermere’s Gardner Reports

 

NewsOlympic PeninsulaReal Estate December 6, 2011

Q3 Gardner Report is out

For those of us who watch the Northwest economy and how it affects Washington real estate, Mr. Matthew Gardner and Windermere Real Estate has released “The Gardner Report” for Q3.

Mr Matthew Gardner of the Gradner Report

Mr. Gardner is a land use economist and principal with Gardner Economics and is considered by many to be one of the foremost real estate analysts in the Pacific Northwest. In addition to managing his consulting practice, Mr. Gardner is a member of the Pacific Real Estate Institute; chairs the Board of Trustees for the Washington State Center for Real Estate Research; the Urban Land Institutes Technical Assistance Panel; and represents the Master Builders Association as an in-house economist. He has appeared on CNN, NBC and NPR news services to discuss real estate issues and is regularly cited in the Wall Street Journal and all local media.

The Q3 Gardner Report concludes:

    “We continue to see modest employment growth in Washington State, but improvements are certainly not equal across the counties. Continued contraction in the government sector and construction are acting as anchors by restraining any significant improvement. In as much as I still contend that Washington State does, and will continue to, fare better than the nation as a whole, uncertainty appears to have permeated all businesses. The Federal Government now appears to be understanding the importance that real estate has in our economic growth. There are numerous proposals being proposed in Congress and the Senate relative to stabilizing our housing market. Although they are not a panacea, I am glad to see that they are starting to understand how important it is.”

    “The housing market continues to demonstrate modest signs of stability, but financing and appraisals are still acting as impediments. Inventory levels saw a modest increase this summer, but are starting to exhibit their traditional seasonal decline—and are still considerably down from historic averages. Pending sales remain well above figures seen a year ago and closed transactions are also trending higher.”

To download the entire report, go to http://www.thesouthsounder.com/newsletters/Gardner_Report_Q3.pdf