Luxury Real Estate in King County Kept Buyers Smiling in 2011

Got $3 million and a dream? The luxury housing market in King County was a good place to be in 2011! The average price per square foot, average sale price and number of homes on the market all point to the continuation of a huge buyer’s market in these higher price brackets. While there’s no set definition of what the “luxury” market is ($1 million buys a lot more home in Phoenix than it does in Seattle), for this we’re looking at homes that sold for $3 million or more.

The by-the-numbers list below shows a steady decrease in price per square foot, and on top of that, at the current pace of sales, it would take four years for all those homes to sell. In a balanced market, there would only be 4-6 months of supply.

Redfin area manager Febe Cude works mostly in Mercer Island, Laurelhurst, Ravenna and Queen Anne. She says all the high end inventory we’ve seen lately has given buyers the luxury to pick and choose, but even that segment of the market is unpredictable. “Late last summer, there were more luxury properties on the market than I’d seen in a long time, most of which had been there for months, and some for years, “ she said. “My clients were just narrowing their list down when many of the homes they were considering went pending in the matter of 4-5 weeks. They still found their dream home, but the lesson was learned: It’s definitely still a buyer’s market, but when you see the right home, you need to move quickly.”

Here’s a by-the-numbers breakdown of interesting facts about the 2011 luxury housing market in King County:

It’s Bright to Tour In Dark and Stormy Weather

Guest post by Benjamin Sarao, Redfin Field Agent, Bellevue-Renton Team

Home buyers often let a little rain and cold weather wash away their plans for a productive weekend of house hunting. This past weekend was a good example.  All week, the Seattle weather forecast told us to start building arks and rounding up animals by the pair.  By Friday afternoon, I only had three tours on my weekend schedule. However, once the sun started shining, the home buyers lined up to see homes (and maybe even catch some rays in the process). That made me think: Even if it’s raining and cold outside, why not see a potential home that you would live in summer, autumn, winter, and spring?  Sure you might get a little wet, but there are several reasons to tour homes on a rainy day:

Lighting – It’s good to see a home when it’s cloudy in order to determine how bright the home really is inside.  A home that is bright, even on a cloudy day, is a good find.

Leaks and Flooding – Home inspectors say that inspecting a home on a rainy day enables them to see if there is water in the crawl spaces and other places you might not expect or want to see it. I wonder how many people buy in the summer and don’t find out about leaking or flooding issues until the first heavy, consistent rains of fall or early winter.

Heating – There’s nothing more inviting than a warm home on a cold winter day.  On a warm day, it’s pretty much impossible to tell whether a home will get drafty in the winter.

Missed Opportunities – If a house is new to the market in the autumn or winter, home buyers who brave the weather to see the property may have a competitive advantage over those who wait for a sunny day. I’ve seen good homes get snapped up by smart buyers who use the winter months to their advantage.

The Polite Factor – This one is a head-scratcher for me. Some people think agents don’t tour in the rain. A client recently apologized to me for scheduling  a tour on a rainy day.  My response: Redfin tours homes in all kinds of weather! We understand that our home buyers will reside in their properties year-round. Why not see a home on a rainy or crisp winter day?

Certainly, everyone wants to see their future dream home in the best possible light. But here in Seattle, there are days when we’re going to see a property though a filter of clouds and often mixed with a little drizzle. Once you embrace that as a potential home buyer, you’ll be in a better position to find the right home for you.

Seven Redfin Agents in the Top Ten in King County

Letter from West Seattle

Every month, we publish a nationwide newsletter to hundreds of thousands of people. Many write back, asking me for pricing advice on their Boca Raton condo or their Berkeley ashram, and I always try to hook up my new pen-pal with a true local expert. Usually, that’s the last I hear of it. But this past week, a Redfin customer asked about West Seattle, and Redfin’s Kevin Broveleit — who lives and works in West Seattle — copied me on his response. It was chock full of nitty-gritty, and so totally fascinating to read that I asked Kevin if we could publish it here, too. The long and short of it is that what little inventory is out there is getting snapped up now during the high season, but demand afterwards is expected to be light, in large part because so many buyers are now restricting themselves to mainland Seattle… (if you’d like our thoughts on any other Seattle or Eastside neighborhood, let us know in the comments to this post and we’ll dig into it.)

For now, take it away Kevin!

Hi [John Doe],

I think the West Seattle market is at an interesting crossroads.  There are three major things going on right now.  The first is the recent change (since the beginning of the 2010-11 school year) in how elementary school districts are defined and governed.  This has actually been a very good thing for zip code 98116, because we have the three highest scoring public elementary schools (Lafayette, Schmitz Park, and Alki) in West Seattle.

There is a somewhat large divide between the others, although I’ve also heard good things about Gatewood and there are rumors of Fairmont reopening.  Right now a 3+ beds, 2+ baths home with a conventional configuration in 98116 is super desirable and typically flies off the market.

You’ll notice for the first time in the last several years the number of sold homes in 98116 exceeds the number of homes on the market (http://www.redfin.com/zipcode/98116–see the market trends section).  But the buying season for people with school-age children grinds to a halt starting the middle of August (the zero barrier for being settled prior to the start of school).

The second factor holding us back are the transit/commute issues reaching critical mass right now.  I’m actually of the opinion that the West Seattle Bridge/Spokane Street viaduct expansion is ultimately going to have a bigger impact on us than the 99/Alaska Way viaduct will.  The Spokane Street project is going to pose a lot of challenges for the next six months, but after that we’re going to have more avenues to and from downtown.   I expect that this project’s completion will establish the new normal for our commute.  This will then allay the anxieties of being stuck on our peninsula without a bridge (sorry for the amateurish play on “up the creek”.)

Finally, West Seattle is a bit of a lagging indicator of Seattle as a whole.  Much of our demand and gentrification for the past decade has come from a new infusion of people from other areas.  West Seattle is not somewhere you stumble into, and most Seattleites try to avoid it.  My wife and I are classic examples.  She went to grad school at UW and was renting in Fremont.  After a season of getting beat up in the Green Lake-Wallingford-Phinney-Ballard market we were looking for options.

I don’t mean to say that I think West Seattle is a consolation prize, quite to the contrary we feel VERY lucky to have landed here, but at the moment those other neighborhoods have come down in price and fewer people are broadening their search to West Seattle.  Unfortunately I’m not sure how to substantiate much of this with stats at the moment, so please excuse my gut instinct.

In short, we are lacking “good” inventory.  New listings that work for households with school-age children, that are well cared-for on the north end of West Seattle and below $600k are flying off the shelf (so long as the seller is realistic in price).  In fact I think the smartest strategy is to slightly under-price if your home fits these criteria.  That said I have no idea if you’re looking to buy or sell or both, or you’re just a real estate numbers’ junkie like us.  If you would like to go a little deeper or talk about what’s going in a specific neighborhood or price range, let me know and I’d love to connect on the phone or grab coffee.

Details, Details

Hey all,

So, my original plan was to write a big long post going over every last nook ‘n cranny of our reader poll results in painstaking detail. But then I remembered that I basically have the attention span of a fruit fly.

So instead, I’m just going to post Pretty Bar Graphs of the results, and also give you a link so you can download the full excel version of the responses.

Without Further Ado… Pretty Bar Graph #1

As you can see, Updates on the Local Market was our big big winner, with around 425 votes. Trailing the pack was Profiles of Agents, with four votes.

And Now… Pretty Bar Graph #2

(…in which our hero discovers which feature types are most popular among readers.)

This one was a bit of a shockeroni for me, because I really thought video was going to dominate here. I mean, you kids love the YouTube and the Hulu and whatnot, right?

But I was wrong, as is often the case. Graphics and Illustrations came in first, and Nope, Just Articles was second, because you people love your precious words. So my next blog post will be a six-thousand-word essay on the impact of the Battle of Hastings on the 2000-2007 Real Estate Bubble. It should be riveting.

Point/Counterpoint was also pretty popular (with one truly awesome person actually suggesting that I team up with Jane Curtin), as was Instant Polls/Surveys.

Not Video, though. Or Contests. Which means I got my legs waxed for nothing.

Holy Cow! Guess What? It’s Pretty Bar Graph #3!

(…in which our hero runs out of clever subtitles and considers going to the supply closet for a Twix bar.*)

Okay, so this is where I asked about the name of Sweet Digs, because I’ll be honest with you, around the office it’s kind of a running joke. And not the funny kind of running joke, like when Steve Carrell would say “That’s what she said!” on The Office. No, more like the painfully tragic kind of running joke, where you’re laughing from a nauseating mix of nervousness and contempt, like anytime anyone said anything on the entire eight-season run of Full House.

But another surprise, people still like the name Sweet Digs, and the chart above proves it.

So there are all the pretty bar graphs, like I promised. If you’d like to read the full excel details, which includes all the free-form responses (minus identifying, info, of course), just click here to download it.

Whew! Thanks everyone.

*It was delicious.

Got Styrofoam?

If you’re moving, have moved, will be moving, will have been moving, or will have had been moving, you’ll probably end up with a lot of styrofoam: packing peanuts, styrofoam sheets, big bulky blocks… you know the stuff. I bought a house a year ago and I’ve got a garage full of the stuff. I didn’t want to throw it away (because I’m the tree-hugging hippie type), and most recycling programs don’t accept the stuff.

Stuff. Stuff stuff stuff.

Aside from genetically engineering myself a bacterial strain to subsist on the stuff, I didn’t really know what I was going to do with the stuff.

So I poked around the internets a little and I found this place down in Renton: Styro Recycle. I’ll give you exactly three guesses as to what they do. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Anyway, thought I’d pass it along to y’all. It’s a free drop-off service; just make sure your styrofoam is clean and free of stuff like tape and cardboard and staples and non-styrofoamy things like that. And stuff.

One Seriously Jacked-Up Roof

Imagine you’d bought a home, and one day you went into the attic while chasing after a raccoon and–

What? No. I don’t know why you’re chasing a raccoon. Maybe it stole your sandwich.*

Anyway, you climb into the attic, wrestle the raccoon into submission, reclaim your sandwich, and then look over and see a tire jack holding your roof up. Wouldn’t you be a little upset? Even more so than you were about the sandwich?

This is why we have home inspectors. To inspect homes. For things like tire jacks and raccoon colonies.

You might think that you don’t need an inspector. You might say to yourself: “Self, I know how to tell if there’s something wrong with a house.”

But you’re probably wrong, because:

A: A good home inspector has the training and experience needed to identify hundreds of problems with a home’s structure, foundation, wiring, plumbing, ventilation, roofing, and other key components. Many of these problems are not obvious to the casual (or even business-casual) eye.

-and-

B: Home inspectors go into places like crawlspaces and attics, and spiders live in those places. Spiders.

We talked to over a dozen home inspectors, collected more than 200 images of common home inspection issues, and put that info into a neat little interactive home. It won’t make you a home inspection expert, but it will give you an idea of what to look for when touring a home. And hopefully it’ll help you realize how important a good inspection can be before you buy that home.

Don’t wait for a sandwich-stealing raccoon to show you the value of a home inspector. Check out our Interactive Home Inspection right now.

*It’s a roast beef sandwich. Unless you’re a vegan. Then it’s kelp or hay or something.

(Photo courtesy Gary Cornia & Cornia Consulting, LLC.)

Learn About Mortgage Paperwork

If you’re just starting to look for a home, you may be a little confused by the paperwork involved with getting a mortgage. Wouldn’t it be great if someone could give you a line-by-line explanation of the forms you’ll be dealing with during the home-buying process?

We thought so too. That’s why we’ve created annotated versions of some common mortgage documents. Specifically, we’ve marked up the Good Faith Estimate and HUD-1, as well as a standard loan application.

We’ve collected these documents here. Just pick the document you want to review and click the yellow info-points to bring up more information about every item.

These interactive loan documents are just a small part of our online Home Buying Guide. We’re adding several new sections to the guide in the next couple of weeks; we’ll let you know when it all goes live.

Gallery Condo Auction Set For March 5th

UPDATE: The Gallery just announced this morning (Friday, March 4) that they’re cancelling the auction and changing the format to a “Buy Now One Day Sales Event.”  

Click here for the full details including the email Gallery sent to our agents this morning.  

If you’re still interested in purchasing one of these units and haven’t gotten in touch, just give our Downtown team a call at 206-659-1708.

Gallery, located at Second and Broad in Belltown, is the latest of Seattle’s condo developments to hold an auction. Twenty five residences will be auctioned off on Saturday, March 5 at 5 p.m., at the Grand Hyatt at 721 Pine Street, Seattle, 98101. Doors will open at 4 p.m.

Here are the details on Gallery:

• Located at 2911 2nd Ave
• 25 residences up for auction (24- Open 1b/1b, one- 1b/1b + Den)
• Minimum bids starting at $175,000 for a 571 square foot Open 1bed, 1 bath up to $295,000 for a 883 square foot 1 bed, 1 bath with den

Buy at Auction with Redfin’s Help

Interested in buying but unsure about the auction process? Need someone to help you from start to finish?

Redfin Seattle agents Bryon Ziegler and Earnest Watts both have extensive experience with helping clients buy at auction and would happy to answer any questions you have.

Bryon or Earnest Can:

• Set up a tour of Gallery
• Give advice prior to the bidding process and be there for the signing of the purchase and sale agreement (if you win)
• Guide you through the closing process

Bryon and Earnest will be at the auction, but please contact them ahead of time if you’re interested.

How to Get Started

Just give Redfin’s downtown team a call at 206-659-1708 or send us an email and tell us you’d like to tour Gallery. We’ll help you get it all set up. A Redfin agent must accompany you on the first tour to Gallery if you want us to represent you as the buyer’s agent at the auction.

You’ll also still be eligible for Redfin’s refund since Redfin will receive a 2% broker referral fee, of which we will refund up to 50% to you. Keep in mind that we do have a $6,000 minimum fee so if the final purchase price is below $300,000 you won’t receive a refund but will still receive great representation.

To be eligible for the Redfin refund, you do need to indicate you are represented by Redfin on your Auction Registration Form. If you want Redfin to represent you, the deadline for this registration is March 2nd.

To Participate in the Auction, Each Buyer Must:

• Prequalify with either MetLife Home Loans or Cobalt Mortgage
• Register in advance of auction, and make sure to have Redfin agent accompany you to your first tour of Gallery
• On auction day bring a cashiers check payable to yourself for $2,500. Also bring a blank personal check in case of a winning bid to pay the 3% minimum down payment (less a $2,500 earnest money check)

Other Auction Information

• Gallery auction site: auctionthegallery.com
• Results from previous Seattle area condo auctions:
  o Olive 8 auction results
  o Lumen auction results
  o Queen Anne High auction results
  o Brix and Gallery auction results

Redfin Releases Search Clusters in Seattle!

We just made a big upgrade to the Redfin search experience by clustering your map search results based on the number of homes for sale.

Get all the details on our main blog and let us know what you think!