Seattle Top Ten City For Sellers
Seattle, WA - According to Forbes magazine Seattle is rated as one of the top ten cities across the nation for sellers to market their home. Though Seattle doesn’t suffer from oversupply, inventory last year doubled to 1.8%, from 0.9%, which would be more problematic if 1.8% wasn’t the eighth lowest rate in the country. Seattle will get a small boost from conforming loan adjustments, and trouble from the uptick in inventory will likely be mitigated by strong job growth (2.8%, sixth best in the nation) and a 42% decrease in new home construction.
Seattle experienced construction rate cuts creating decent demand for their housing market. The Seattle area went through its own bust in 2002 and 2003, as the result of mass overbuilding. Since homes can take upto a year to finish, when construction rates plummet, as they did in Seattle from 2003-2005, it takes years before those adjustments are felt. By 2006, Seattle had the lowest vacancy rate in the country, and wasn’t as prone to the price adjustments felt elsewhere, making it the 10th best sellers market today.
San Jose, CA was number one on the list, where tough regulatory measures make it difficult to overbuild. New home construction dropped 63% last year, while jobs grew by 1.2%. Home vacancies, which were already low at 1.6%, fell to a national bottom at 0.8%, helping make San Jose one of the country’s tightest real estate markets.
San Francisco, CA was second on the list. What helped the bay area was the fact that conforming loan limit jumped from $417,000 to the maximum $729,750, which makes getting credit a simpler affair for many of the San Francisco home buyers. In 2006, the real estate market felt a softening that pushed vacancy rates up to 2.4%, but a 56% cut in home construction has cut vacancy rates in half.
The Northwest and areas of the West have really outperformed most areas of the country through-out this slow down in the real estate market and should be the first areas to grow when the market recovers.
Jerry Campbell - Muljat Group - Bellingham Homes For Sale