Beautiful bus mural in Licton Springs
Homes sold in Licton Springs in May and June
Licton Springs (or sometimes called North College Park) is a small neighborhood contained in the Northgate district of North Seattle. With a natural spring (hence the name) at the north end of Licton Springs Park it is a very warm and welcoming neighborhood. It is primarily a residential neighborhood that its wedged between interstate 5 and Aurora avenue.
The following is a list of homes that sold in our Licton Springs Neighborhood recently. Do you wonder what your home is worth? The décor, the features and condition all have a bearing on the price a home will command. I have seen the interiors of most of the homes in this list.
| 9808 Linden Ave N |
$223,000
| 2 |
1 |
700 |
5/10/2012 |
| 8842 Midvale Ave N #A |
$305,000 |
3 |
2 |
1,270 |
05/01/2012 |
| 933 C N 97th St |
$320,000 |
3 |
2.5 |
1,560 |
05/24/2012 |
| 9532 Wallingford Ave N |
$340,000 |
4 |
1 |
1,810 |
05/10/2012 |
| 8521 Interlake Ave N #B |
$358,000 |
3 |
2.25 |
1,550 |
04/27/2012 |
| 9752 Densmore Ave N |
$389,000 |
3 |
1.75 |
2,040 |
05/18/2012 |
If you are selling your home, please let me help you. I would be happy to view your home, prepare a market analysis and discuss the details with you. I can provide you with useful information, such as a sales price that might be realistically expected in today’s market.Sign up now for a free monthly service. You can have Licton Springs home sales e-mailed to you every month. The e-mail will contain all of the homes that sold in Licton Springs for that month.
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Photo courtesy of Dan Cautrell on Flickr.
We’re moving up!
More good news for the Seattle Real Estate was released this week, with King County and Seattle home prices showing significant increases year-over-year. Home sales were on the rise as well, with increasing numbers even as inventory numbers continue to be tight.
Seattle home prices increased 10.4% in April as compared to the same month in 2011, while King County median home prices were up 3% in the same time period. King County home sales were 15% higher than in April of 2011, and total sales in the city of Seattle were up 8%. The vast majority of the market is seeing significant improvements and increasing seller strength, while the greatest gains have been in Seattle and the close-in Eastside.
Far more buyers are participating in multiple-offer transactions this year, as total inventory of Greater Seattle homes for sale is down 38% in the past year, one of the biggest drops we’ve seen in at least a decade. Spring selling season feels a lot like it did five or six years ago, with many aggressive buyers, with the big difference being the lack of quality homes available for sale.
More homebuyers chased slim pickings in King County last month, sending house prices to their highest level since December 2010. The median price of single-family homes sold last month was $360,000, up 9 percent from March and nearly 3 percent from April 2011, according to statistics released Thursday by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service. It was the second monthover-month gain in median price. There were 1,769 houses sold in King County last month, 15
percent more than a year earlier.
“We’re at the beginning of the prime selling season, so to see this sort of strength coming out … this is very good news for the industry,” said Glenn Crellin, associate director of research at the University of Washington’s Runstad Center for Real Estate Studies. Rock-bottom mortgage rates and improving employment have set the stage for a stronger spring homebuying season than a year ago, but what’s on every broker’s lips is inventory. Inventory — the number of houses listed for sale — slid for the ninth month in a row, down 38 percent from a year ago. In April
2010, there were almost twice as many listings.
“The very tight inventory of homes available for sale coupled with the stabilizing prices are probably going to convince some sellers that it’s now safe to come back into the marketplace,” Crellin said.
Baby Boomers handing over the future to their children.
Leaning on the Echo Boomers
The next two decades in housing market trends will depend largely on the Echo Boomers. That’s according to panelists at the “Shifting Demographics and Housing Choice: A Whole New World?” session today during the Realtors 2012 Midyear Legislative Meetings & TradeExpo.
There are approximately 62 million echo boomers in the U.S. Also called “millennials,” echo boomers are currently ages 17-31. According to the 2011 National Association of Realtors Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers. Younger home buyers – those ages 18-34 – represent 31 percent of all recent home purchases. “We know that although many young people may be delaying home purchases in today’s economic climate, most of them still aspire to homeownership,” said NAR President Moe Veissi, broker owner of Veissi & Associates Inc., in Miami. “Realtors are committed to ensuring that the dream of homeownership can become a reality for generations of Americans to come.”
“Demography is destiny,” said NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun. “In that vein, demographics can provide very useful insights into the future of housing and home-ownership, and the results of these reports indicate that certain generational shifts will have a significant impact on the real estate industry over the next two decades.”
NAR Economist Selma Hepp identified several key demographic trends on both ends of the housing age spectrum. The demand for affordable, accessible housing will increase as the 65-and-over population grows; at the same time, as seniors leave their homes and move into assisted living and other arrangements, they will add to the current supply of housing. Because of their sheer size, however, echo boomers will significantly impact the next two decades in housing.
Looking to the future
“Echo boomers represent a long-term opportunity for a housing market recovery, but they are struggling in the current economic crisis,” said NAR’s Selma Hepp. “Consequently, demand for rental housing is likely to climb in the near term.” As a group, the echo boomers are more racially and ethnically diverse than their baby boomer parents. While 65 percent of baby boomers are Caucasian, only 55 percent of echo boomers are Caucasian. Echo boomers are also more likely to be college educated than previous generations, and are remaining single longer.
Glenn E. Crenlin from the Runstad Center for Real Estate Studies at the University of Washington shared his insights into recent declines in homeownership and whether those declines indicate possible generational trends. “It is worrying that the homeownership rate for those under 35 has fallen more sharply than the rate for older Americans,” said Crenlin. “But I think we need to examine homeownership rates by generation in a more balanced way. Although the Millennial generation does not own homes at the same percentages of those in other generations, many of them are still in the early stages of household formation – in fact, some of them are still in high school.”
What will this mean for Seattle Real Estate? Only time will tell. But, with a flourishing tech industry supported by one of the most educated cities in America we are looking strong for the future of being supported by the echo boomers.
Old Seattle Real Estate…is gone.
Experts have been calling a bottom for the housing market ever since the bubble began to collapse in 2006. They’ve been uniformly wrong. Are we finally there? David Stiff, chief economist of Fiserv, the financial-services technology company that produces the widely followed Case-Shiller indexes, says yes. The old Seattle Real Estate market is gone.
The evidences of a new emerging Seattle real estate market are everywhere. House prices nationally are expected to stabilize by the end of summer and start to rise by an annualized rate of 3.9 percent over the next five years. For the Seattle-Bellevue-Everett metro area, prices are seen rising at a 5 percent annualized rate. But that won’t come before an additional 3.3 percent price decline through the rest of this year. The Seattle area was late to the party, with prices reaching their peak in the second-quarter of 2007 compared with a national peak in the first quarter of 2006.
“There’s always a danger of being premature,” Stiff told me last week. “But a number of favorable factors are going to put a floor under prices.” Among them: better employment numbers, fewer markets dominated by foreclosure sales and bank-owned properties, and affordability at record levels. The changes are already taking place. Slowly but surely, the truth is emerging.
When the bottom hits, there’s only one way to go.
“Seattle is a very unique market,” Stiff said. Thanks to aerospace, software, life sciences and other economic assets, it has a deep, specialized labor pool making good money. He expects Seattle to stabilize sooner. Other data back this up. According to the Runstad Center for Real Estate Studies at the University of Washington, sales of existing houses in King County rose more than 12 percent in the first quarter compared with the same period in 2011, even as median prices fell 6.6 percent. Indeed, anecdotal evidence points to bidding wars for houses in the best locations, especially in Seattle proper.
We started here once. Photo courtesy IMLS DCC on Flickr.
The evidence that a new real estate market in Seattle continues to stack. House resales rose 10.9 percent in Pierce County and 18.5 percent in Snohomish County. Building permits for single-family houses are very slowly recovering, and apartment construction is booming in central Seattle.
Samuel Anderson, executive officer of the Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties, said recently at Town Hall Seattle that he’s “feeling optimistic for the future of housing and the housing industry, even if the glass may still seem half empty to many of our members in the wake of the recession.”
One vote of confidence he cited is the quiet entry into the region of major builders, such as Toll Brothers, Henley Homes, Newland Communities, Lennar, Richmond American and Pulte. At the same time, he warned that tighter lending, loss of subcontractors and workers, limitations on developable land and lack of government officials to process permits risk holding back a recovery.
“What local elected officials found out in this recession and housing collapse is that the residential housing industry has been their ATM machine. My new best friends are mayors and city council” members, he said. Anderson also made the point that the region needs to embrace greater density inside existing urban-growth footprints and resist the NIMBYs. “The problem in many urban areas is that the community hates sprawl but doesn’t want increased density in their neighborhoods.”
New Seattle Real Estate is here to stay.
So, a bottom — at last? I’m prepared to buy in.
Welcome to the new Seattle. Nothing is the same. We have a ferris wheel. Photo courtesy Michael @ NW Lens
The New Normal won’t feel normal, even if for now, and for many, Seattle is an island of prosperity. If you’re considering home buying, don’t wait for the bubble to pop and miss out on this once in a lifetime opportunity to get in on the market while is at the bottom. When the new Seattle Real Estate market emerges it will never be the same.
