Whatcom County Real Estate Sales
Over the last eight years I’ve accumulated the total homes sales on a monthly basis and have been using them in my own bellingham real estate business in order to watch monitor the local Whatcom County housing market trends. The chart below shows the total number of sales for the first ten months of each year since 2000. At the end of the year I’ll post the final sales for 2007 compared to 2006 and subsequent years back to 2000.
The graph below shows sales numbers in four different Whatcom County sales groups. The top line shows the number of sales of resale homes in the Bellingham, Washington market for the first ten months of each year back to 2000. The next line shows the number of sales for resale in the Ferndale, Lynden, Blaine, WA real estate markets.
The bottom two graph lines show the total number of new homes that sold in Bellingham with the blue line and in yellow for the Ferndale, Lynden, and Blaine markets.
It’s very clear that the resale market was displaying some big numbers around Whatcom County from 2001 through the end of 2004. It’s my belief that as the prices within the Bellingham WA area started to get to high for most buyers, they started to look more at markets like Ferndale, Lynden, and Blaine because home prices were more affordable at the time. That’s why if you look at the graph above, the up market extended into 2005 for most of the county markets outside of Bellingham.
The market peaked over all for Whatcom County around August - September of 2005. That’s about when we started this big change and a downward trend in sales numbers. We have shifted to more of a buyers market during the last two plus years, but it appears that the Bellingham market might have finally hit a low. If you look at the two Bellingham graphs, we have slightly out performed 2006 sales numbers through the same time period of 2007. We will need to look at the November and December 2007 numbers to really get a much better idea of where were at in this market.
I think the biggest thing thats affecting us currently is all the negative chatter over sub-prime loans from that boom period. Even though most of those type of loans are no longer being marketed by the banks and mortgage companies, the fallout from foreclosures can still have an effect on the market place. The Northwest really came out pretty well from the sub-prime mortgages. I say this because if you look at the US map in the post on Northwest Counties With Highest Subprime Loans we have one of the lowest amount of loans in sub-prime loans compared to many areas of the country.
So, we should be able to come out of this period better than areas in California, Arizona, Nevada, Texas, and the Southern states. The Northwest economic conditions are pretty good with low unemployment rates, Interest rates are historically low, retail sales numbers are strong, and we live in a very desirable area of the country. For us up in Whatcom County we also are enjoying good retail, tourism, and travel spending from our Canadian neighbors due to the parity between the US Dollar and the Canadian Looney.
I will post several more in depth articles on the housing market in January 2008, once I receive the final Whatcom County sales numbers for November and December 2007. I tend to not look at average sales price of homes because those numbers can be manipulated way too much. I like to look at total sales numbers in the market, because it’s much better way to get a feel for where our local markets are heading. In most cases you really don’t know your in a down market or up market until your well into it. That’s why having complete sales numbers over a long period of time, allows one to clearly study the over all Whatcom County real estate market and have better capabilities to forecast trends more accurately.
Jerry Campbell - Muljat Group Realtors - Bellingham, WA 98225 - Whatcom County Real Estate