Excerpts from this week’s news on the Seattle real estate market:

From NWMLS members:

Pending sales (offers made and accepted, but not yet closed) jumped nearly 45 percent last month compared to a year ago, marking the 11th straight month of month-over-month increases. Twelve of the 21 counties in the MLS market area reported double-digit gains in pending sales, led by San Juan County (up 85.7 percent), Snohomish County (up nearly 71 percent) and King County (up nearly 63 percent).

Seattle Floating Homes

Closed sales also outperformed year-ago totals, rising 33.5 percent. Members tallied 3,214 completed transactions last month, up from the 2,407 closed sales for February 2009. 

Prices, while showing signs of stabilizing, still lagged year-ago figures. Area-wide, the median price for last month’s closed sales of single family homes and condominiums (combined) was $260,000, down about 6.5 percent from a year ago. The median price for single family homes (excluding condos) dipped 4.6 percent, while condo prices declined nearly 9 percent.

In the four-county Puget Sound region, the median price for single family homes that sold and closed last month was $297,000, down about 2.6 percent from the year-ago figure of $305,000. Condo prices in the area fell 7.7 percent, from the year-ago selling price of $253,000 to $233,500 for last month’s sales.

MLS members added 10,663 new listings to inventory last month, bringing the total number of active listings in the system to 36,350. That total is down 7.5 percent from the same month a year ago, creating a more balanced market that favors neither buyers nor sellers.

Move-up buyers are accounting for some of the surge in activity. Brokers credit the combination of a $6,500 tax incentive for qualified repeat buyers and thawing jumbo loan market as factors in spurring activity for this segment.

From Trulia:

Fewer Sellers Are Cutting Prices
The prices on 19 percent of homes for sale as of March 1st have been reduced at least once, the lowest percentage in the last year, according to Trulia.com.

In October and November, when the market was feeling the effect of the tax credit, 26 percent of sellers cut their asking prices.

“Better pricing is leading to less time on the market, less price reduction, and in a lot of markets we’re starting to see bidding wars on lower end properties,” said Ken Shuman, spokesperson for Trulia.

Inventory Up

The inventory of homes for sale was up 4.2 percent at the end of February, compared to the prior month in 27 major metropolitan markets.

On average, over the last 27 years, the increase of houses on the market in February has been 3.4 percent.

While January was your typical slow winter sales month for waterfront homes in Seattle, February provided a surprisingly strong month. After just a few lower-priced transactions in the previous month, there were 10 significant sales of Seattle waterfront homes during February. With 7 of those 10 sales being multi-million dollar homes, we’re getting a glimpse of what could be a strong market moving into the spring and a much-needed recovery in the luxury market.

February 2010 Seattle waterfront home sales

Seattle Houseboats and Floating Homes

Lake Union
The least-expensive waterfront sale in February was a floating home sale in Portage Bay, just East of Lake Union. This Boyer Ave home sold for about $350,000, which is a lower-range sale for the houseboat community. This is a small, traditional floating home with a house frame, parking, and cedar shingle siding.

Eastlake
A floating home in the Eastlake community sold for $1.4 million at the end of February. This community has secured parking, multi-story homes, and a very private neighborhood. The home has 2 beds, 2.25 baths, and nearly 2100 square feet of living space. Eastlake floating homes have some of the best waterfront views in the city, and home buyers pay significantly higher prices to live here.

Traditional Waterfront Homes

Matthews Beach
In Northeast Seattle, a waterfront home on Riviera Pl sold for $1.3 million. This Lake Washington home has two docks, a boatlift, and plenty of parking. The 3 bed, 2.5 baths, has 2200 sq ft of living space, and is sited close to the lakefront. Matthews Beach and its surrounding areas seem to have some of the most underpriced waterfront real estate.

Magnolia
With a $2.5 million sale, Magnolia started our high-end luxury waterfront sales for February. A 5 bed, 3.5 bath home on the Puget Sound sold at the end of the month after about 8 months on the market. This mid-century home on Magnolia’s North shore has 4700 sq ft of living space, including a guest house.

The Highlands
In Seattle/Shoreline’s gated community, the Highlands, a home on Cherry Loop sold at just under $3.1 million. The 6300 square foot estate has 4 beds and 6 baths. This property was on the market nearly a year and dropped its price nearly one million dollars in that time.

Mercer Island
Two homes sold on Mercer Island during February, at $2.8 and $3.8 million. On the North end, a 4 bed, 3 bath, 3200 sq ft home with a dock and boat lift was the less-expensive sale. This home sold in less than two weeks on the market. The Southern Mercer Island home, with 4 beds, 4.5 baths, and 4100 sq ft of finished space is a Mediterranean-inspired home with street-to-waterfront land. It had been marketed for over two years before closing.

Washington Park
Washington Park is a lesser-know part of the Madison Park area, but a neighborhood rich with historic homes and waterfront estates. This 1940s home has nearly 3200 sq ft of living space, 3 bedrooms and 2.5 baths. After 6 months on the market, the home sold for $3.2 million, a $700k price reduction overall.

Windermere
At $3.3 million, a home in Seattle’s Windermere neighborhood hit the top 3 sales for the month. The 3 bedrooms and 3 baths cover 3900 sq ft, and there’s an additional 2/2 guest house with 1800 more sq ft. This home has 130 feet of Lake Washington waterfront, a huge swath of shoreline.

Bellevue
With 6100 square feet of home, this waterfront home in South Bellevue was the largest and highest-priced sale of February. The Lake Washington Blvd estate has 5 bedrooms, 5 baths, and nearly a half-acre of real estate. The 2008-built home also has a four car garage, nanny’s quarters, parking for 20 cars. Its final sale price was just over $4 million.

Sam DeBord and Brian Wiegand
SeattleHome.com – Washington State Realty – (206) 658-3225
Real Estate Brokers, Realtors, Green Certified Pros

Source: Individually compiled NWMLS statistics. The NWMLS database and statistics do not include many new construction pre-sale units, private sales or auction sales. These statistics were not compiled or published by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.

Waterfront home sales in Seattle are typically slow in the winter, and January 2010 was no exception. Only a handful of homes sold last month on the water, but there were some significant properties that moved.

Many Seattle residents may not know Three Tree Point, but it’s a small peninsula just South of Seattle in Burien. Windy roads switch back through a tall, wooded path as you head West to the point. Many homes have sweeping views of the Puget Sound, while the waterfront properties vary from soft-sloping driftwoood shores to steep banks and cliffs.

January 2010 Waterfront Home Sales

A small 3 bed/1 bath home on Maplewild Ave sold for just over $350k in January, a surprisingly low price compared to most of the multi-million dollar homes on the waterfront in Three Tree Point. Of course, this home is a walk-down access, meaning no driveway or garage. It’s not your typical home, but if you didn’t mind hoofing it down the trail to the home, you’d be buying some of the least-expensive waterfront on the Sound. This home was on the market for a few years–it really needed a unique buyer.

On Lake Washington, a new construction home in Renton’s Kennydale neighborhood sold for just over $2 million. This home, part of the Barbee Mill development, was a 3 bed/3.5 bath, 3500 sq ft home. The home was listed for around 7 months, which is still a fairly short marketing time for a waterfront home in this price range. Many times multi-million dollar waterfront homes take a year or longer to sell, as the market of potential buyers is limited.

The largest sale on the waterfront in January was in Bellevue on Lake Sammamish. The 5 bed, 7.5 bath home has almost 12,000 sq ft of living space and may be the largest home on the lake. I had a chance to visit it this fall, and it’s a truly stunning home, with entire walls that open up to the lake. The sale closed at a bit over $5.5 million, after having been on the market around 14 months.

Source: Individually compiled NWMLS statistics. The NWMLS database and statistics do not include many new construction pre-sale units, private sales or auction sales. These statistics were not compiled or published by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.

It’s July and the summer sun has finally come to Seattle. You’re taking some time off from work, ready to shop for a new home, and what better place is there to buy than on the waterfront? Everyone’s out boating, wakeboarding, fishing, or just diving off the end of the dock.

Seattle’s Lake Washington waterfront in Denny Blaine

The rush of emotion may be enough to push you into buying a waterfront home in the summer, but does the timing make sense? You’ll clearly get the most use out of the waterfront during the summer, but what if there was a lot of financial gain that could be made by purchasing that home in the “off-season”?

Real estate is known to be seasonally cyclical, with the majority of sales between late spring and early fall. There are many reasons for this–bad weather during winter, darker evenings, holidays, children in school, etc. Buyers just find more time to house hunt in the summer months. It turns out that while this effect is similar in the waterfront real estate market, it’s actually even more strongly marked.

All King County Sales vs. Waterfront Sales by Monthly Percentage, 2006-2008

I’ve used the statistics from 2006-2008, as we had an artifically strong fall in 2009 based on the home buyer income tax credit, which skewed statistics away from the usual yearly trends. In the winter months of 2006-2008, waterfront homes dove below total sales in terms of the percentage of sales for the year. When sales spiked in the summer, waterfront homes lagged the general market just slightly, but held on to the strong sales months a bit longer than the rest of the market. August through October are still fairly strong sales months on the waterfront, while the rest of the market has already started its fast slide toward winter.

Waterfront sales are clearly associated with good weather. While it seems simplistic to associate buyers’ purchases with a sunny day, there are very few industries where sales aren’t partly based on emotion. When it gets sunny in Seattle, we get excited. We want to get out on the water, and spend every possible moment in the sunshine. Waterfront home owners in the Seattle area are the envy of their neighbors every year when Seafair and the Blue Angels come calling.

What does this mean for the waterfront home buyer? If you can hold back your emotion, you might be much better off buying during the winter or early spring months. There are far fewer buyers in the market, which puts you in the driver’s seat. What’s more, sellers who remain on the market during the winter months seem to be more willing to negotiate. Open houses are sparsely attended, buyer showings are slow, and interested buyers are treated with extra attention. Besides, don’t you want a couple of months to clean up the dock and get the boat in the water?

King County, Seattle Waterfront Monthly Home Sales As A Percentage of Annual Sales

Interestingly, the end of 2009 gave a big bump to the waterfront market. While most expectations were that the first-time buyer credit would only push sales in lower-end homes and condos, the last few months of 2009 showed a strong growth trend in waterfront sales. Compared to the previous three years, there was only a bit of a leveling off this past winter. This could be attributed to a couple of factors:

A) Home sales in general were picking up and this was just a temporary market bump overall.

B) There is truly a recovery on the way for the waterfront market, as we’ve kicked the traditional winter slump and will roll right into a big summer sales season.

We’ll find out more in a few months.

Sam DeBord and Brian Wiegand
SeattleHome.com – Washington State Realty – (206) 658-3225
Real Estate Brokers, Realtors, Green Certified Pros

Source: Individually compiled NWMLS statistics. The NWMLS database and statistics do not include many new construction pre-sale units, private sales or auction sales. These statistics were not compiled or published by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.

2009 was an up-and-down year for Seattle’s real estate market in general.  Half of the year was slumping prices and slow sales, followed by surging demand of first time buyers and a flurry of sales to close out the year.  The lowest-priced sale of the year was a $48,000 houseboat on Lake Union–the ultimate in cheap waterfront living.  On the other end of the scale, we topped out just over $15 million for a Lake Washington home in Mercer Island’s East Seattle neighborhood. 

Waterfront home sellers in the greater Seattle real estate market felt the pain of a recession which has put a drag on luxury market purchases in general.  While things were looking up by the end of 2009, the overall waterfront market is still recovering from the hits it has taken since mid-2007.  This has created some very attractive opportunities for home buyers.

Median sale prices of waterfront homes in King County dropped 4% from $716,000 in 2007 to $690,000 in 2008.  2009 saw a much larger 20% drop with the median sale price being $550,000.  While those numbers certainly show an increase in affordability, take them with a grain of salt.  Waterfront homes did not lose 20% of their value in 2009, there were just very few high-end sales last year, pushing the median lower.  The total sales numbers have been skewed much further toward lower-end homes in the past two years as consumers have tightened their belts–even luxury home buyers.

In the meantime, the marketing time required to sell a waterfront home has increased markedly.  With fewer buyers in the market, marketing time went up from a median of 38 days in 2007 to 66 days in 2008 and 70 days in 2009.  Sellers had to try quite a bit harder to entice buyers to make a large purchase, and many home buyers actually downsized to save costs.

One theory that persists in the high-end real estate market is that these home owners don’t “have to sell”.  More than the average home owner, they have more discretionary funds, more ability to carry mortgages on multiple homes, or the financial confidence to sit on their current property until they get the price they want.

While there is certainly truth to that theory in some situations, we’re also seeing some cracks in the foundation.  Waterfront home owners can certainly ride out the slow market, but there is always a limit.  There were some very significant price drops this year on $15 million and $20 million properties that didn’t budge much at all during 2008.  These home owners are still investors, and they understand when it’s time to cut their losses and make a sale happen.

For home sellers in 2010, the good news is that things continue to stabilize in the overall market.  On a monthly basis, total home sales are on the rebound.  Prices seem to have found a bottom for now.  When the base of the market improves, the luxury market gets a delayed bounce.  That’s a bounce that can’t come too soon for some waterfront home owners who have waited patiently to sell these past two years.  For waterfront home buyers–the deal is there for the taking. 

Sam DeBord and Brian Wiegand
SeattleHome.com – Washington State Realty – (206) 658-3225
Real Estate Brokers, Realtors, Green Certified Pros

Statistics not compiled or published by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.

Brian and I had the pleasure of attending Heidi Bright’s broker’s open this week in the Bridle Trails neighborhood of Kirkland.  It was a beautiful home, and well-attended.  The highlight (for us, at least), was the Tom Douglas catered food.  We thought that it might be just a spread of his restaurant’s food, but as we walked into the kitchen, there was Tom himself, braising beef and cooking some creamy polenta on the stove.

Tom’s a big guy, (if you couldn’t already tell from the picture with Brian).  He’s also a surprisingly low-key, down to Earth guy for a local celeb.  It’s not every day you can shoot the breeze about how long to braise a piece of beef with a big-name chef who is at the same time slicing your food up for you and serving it.

Kudos to Heidi for the event, and thanks to Tom for the entertainment.  That’s a broker’s open I would show up for any week.

Sam DeBord and Brian Wiegand
SeattleHome.com – Washington State Realty – (206) 658-3225
Real Estate Brokers, Realtors, Green Certified Pros

Just one home is showing as sold on the MLS for Medina, WA in January 2010.  A 4 bed, 3.5 bath, 2008-built home was sold on the 3400 block of Evergreen Point Rd. 

The title to the home was conveyed to the seller via Trustee’s deed in November ‘09, meaning that it was probably some type of foreclosure that reverted back to the bank.  It looks like the home had around $2.3 million in publicly-recorded financing attached to it in early 2009.

This bank-owned home sold after just 11 days on the market, which is likely due to the bank pricing it slightly under market value to facilitate a quick sale.  Sales in Medina have been slow in general, so this is a standout marketing time. 

The home sold for $1.35 million after a quick price drop in the listing.  It’s a good-sized home at 4000 sq ft, with a 6000 square foot lot, which is on the smaller side for Medina real estate.

This information not compiled or published or by the NWMLS.

Sam DeBord and Brian Wiegand
SeattleHome.com – Washington State Realty – (206) 658-3225
Real Estate Brokers, Realtors, Green Certified Pros