Northwest Living | Bellingham Real Estate Market

Seattle WA - According to Forbes Magazine Seattle ranks 15 out of the top 100 metropolitan areas for the fastest-recovering cities from the current recession. That’s not to say they have recovered yet, but are poised to do so as we come out of the recession.

The top cities on this list have diversified industry’s and relatively stable housing fundamentals that have provided local residents with comparatively secure standards of living. Seattle was ranked 5th overall on the Forbes survey for retail sales, and ranked high on gross metropolitan product (GMP) growth in the past year, and a low home foreclosure rate. Add up these three measures alone and Seattle would have easily been one of the top 10 cities on the survey.

What’s more, Seattle area home prices never ascended to the unsustainable levels the rest of the country hit at the peak of the housing bubble. Thus, it didn’t crash as hard. These factors have toughened the local economy against a recession that is inextricably tied to real estate.

To form this list, Forbes Magazine ranked the 100 largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas — geographic entities that the U.S. Office of Management and Budget defines and uses in collecting statistics — in five categories: unemployment rate, GMP (a measure of the size of a city’s economy), foreclosures, home prices and sales rates.

Forbes ranked September unemployment rates (the most recent available by metro) using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics; the percentage of a metro’s homes in foreclosure with September data provided by RealtyTrac; and the change in GMP between the first and second quarter of 2009 from the Brookings Institution’s Metro Monitor. They also included the second-quarter 2009 year-over-year change in Freddie Mac’s Conventional Mortgage Home Price Index — a measure of housing price inflation — and the average days on the market for properties currently on sale, to measure sales rates. They then averaged the scores for each measure to arrive at an overall ranking.

The magazine stated that ”areas where home prices don’t fluctuate wildly are particularly well-positioned to ride out this recession, because they were spared the domino effect of foreclosures, lost jobs and lost productivity”.

Seattle was the number one city on the entire West Coast & in the Western Region as a whole. The next West Coast cities on the list were Silicon Valley’s San Jose, California in at number 56 and then Portland, Oregon right behind at 57.

There’s a lesson to be learned from the cities at the top of the list, some of which aren’t economically thriving, but all of which are well-equipped to emerge from the recession in a similar position to where they started. Rather than chasing rising home prices or apparently plentiful jobs in one-industry towns, families looking for long-term economic stability should seek spots where industry is diverse and housing price shifts are benign…like Seattle, Washington.

However, I believe that Western Washington has a lot more going for itself with it’s natural beauty and quality of life we share in this region vs most of the cities ahead of us on the survey list.

Jerry Campbell - The Muljat Group - Bellingham WA - Bellingham Real Estate

Bellingham WA - In the busy real estate markets between 2003 to 2005 the number of homes on the market was only a two-to-three month supply. In 2008 and 2009 the supply increased by more than three times to a 10 month supply of homes for sale. That means it’s currently going to take much longer to sell your Bellingham home. However, there are some ideas to help increase your chances in this tough Whatcom County real estate market.

In tough markets like this home sellers will sometimes request their real estate agent to perform marketing tasks that have proven to be very ineffective over time, but makes the seller feel better. I’d rather show them effective marketing tools and concentrate on the ones that bring the highest results instead of throwing money in a hole with very low return.

The internet is of course the number one marketing vehicle today. The real estate yard sign along with fliers are still very effective. Using today’s social media along with communicating with local Realtors is very effective as well. Holding a couple open houses is also a great tool to market your home.

I don’t do much advertising at all in the local newspaper, real estate books or magazines because of the shelf life. The internet is 24/7, much more effective and the cost is so much more affordable than the print media. The print media has more to do with satisfying a sellers emotional need than with the real world of marketing real estate today.

I have friends of mine in the Tacoma, WA real estate market that have had an open house every weekend for the last 4 months and every weekend they’re hoping this time will be the charm for their 4-bedroom house.

They remodeled the kitchen, painted the house, built a new deck and put on a new roof. But after more than six months on the market, they still don’t have a buyer.

Not to get their price or as much interest in their house was disheartening to them.

That’s a feeling shared by many homeowners these days - who not only find themselves in a buyer’s market - but a buyer’s market short on buyers, thanks to the credit crunch.

Lenders have really tightened up their lending requirements and this is where sellers have to become more imaginative and creative. Some new homes builders are offering appliance upgrades, fences, paying for closing costs, or a free vacation with the purchase of one of their homes.

As a professional Realtor, my advice is to skip the gimmicks. To really get a house sold today the most important thing is to make sure the price is right … right away. 

In a down market like this it’s very important to price at or just below the market as soon as the house goes up for sale. As a home seller, you don’t want to price above a market that is moving down, you’ll end up getting much less in the end. 

Prices are changing quite rapidly and sellers think that their house is still worth what it was 3-4 years ago.

Beside price, the best way to sell your home in a down market is to:

Jerry Campbell - Muljat Group - Bellingham WA - Bellingham Homes For Sale

Bellingham WA - Home buyers in the Bellingham area can now search weekend open houses by visiting BellinghamHomes.com and checking out the open house pages. The Bellingham open house site displays all area open houses that local Realtors advertise on the NWMLS site.

Open house seekers can go directly to the Whatcom open house page or the Skagit open house page to find a list of open houses for the upcoming weekend. Buyers no longer have to wait until the weekend or delivery of the Sunday morning paper because open houses are added every day of the week building up to the weekend. Instead of trying to read small ads in the newspaper, open house seekers can now view the listed property with all of it’s information and photos.

Jerry Campbell - The Muljat Group - Bellingham WA - Bellingham WA Open Houses