As a Realtor I am tired of listening to the gloom and doom of the national media on housing issues. What is going on in Florida, California and other parts of the country does not represent the market in Washington and most of all Gig Harbor. I am pleased to give you the facts about our market. The market here is stable and is a responsible marketplace for home buyers. The foreclosure rates today are the same today as they were 10 years ago. Fewer than 1% of mortgages end in default in Washington state. As of mid-June, sub-prime, adjustable-rate loans represented 20% of loans nationally, but just 6% of home loans in Washington. Home appreciation in Washington continues to out-perform the rest of the nation with year-to-year price increases every quarter since spring of 1995. Home prices in Washington have increased an average of 8.1% since the same time last year, according to WSU Center for Real Estate Research (CRER). Why is Washington different? The home market isn’t keeping pace with the growth of the state’s population, which is continuing to increase at 1.8% per year. According to the office of Washington State’s Financial Management, Washington state’s population will increase by nearly one million over the present decade. According to the Northwest Multiple Listing Statistics the median price for active listings in the Gig Harbor area is up 4.1% over last year, the median price for pending listings are the same from last year, and the median price for closed sales is up .3%.
What does that mean to you as a homeowner? It means the real estate market is stillthriving. Sellers who are employing knowledgeable real estate agents to properly price their homes and provide state of the art marketing are selling their homes in the shortest amount of time for the most amount of money. If you want to know what your real estate would bring in today’s market, how long it will take to sell , and the type of marketingit will take to produce buyers that will pay the market price call me at (253) 861-6805 or e-mail me at Realestate@darlenecherry.com you may be surprised at what you canlearn.
