Northwest Living | Bellingham Real Estate Market

Bellingham, WA -  With a strong local economy and favorable home buying conditions this  will prove to be a good time to buy or sell a home. There’s just too many economic conditions in place for home buyers, that are positioned to purchase a home, to ignore any longer.

Now is a good time to buy and sell real estate in Whatcom County, no matter what people may be hearing about the national market. The national media has focused too much on negative things that they only contribute to housing and economic problems instead of help. Thats the news cycle in general though, they tend to focus on negatives and rarely talk about the positive things in life. It’s unfortunate but very much true.

The Puget Sound economy is strong, unemployment rates are low, interest rates are low, local housing inventory is good and the return to good safe mortgage loans are back. It’s not a bad time to sell, especially if sellers will be turning around and buying, but sellers need to be flexible at the negotiating table in this type of market. With rental prices climbing over the last two years with less buyers in the market, It makes more sense to buy then rent currently. Coupled with the fact that home prices have plateaued or declined bodes well for home buyers.

I would have to agree with so many that a lot of the housing problems could be pointed firmly at the media, who are confusing the public by publishing headlines designed to appeal to emotions and reports that use local and national information to distort the truth at times. For them to report about the high number of subprime loans in the south and some how use that for the Northwest is confusing. The Northwest never got into the subprime loans on the scale of a lot of southern states, so no wonder we are doing so much better. But unfortunately that news is not getting out as much as the bad news from other parts of the country.

Limits on Federal Housing Administration loans were recently raised, which should give buyers more homes to choose from at favorable mortgage rates. Hopefully a bill that would lower the down payment requirement for FHA loans from 3 percent to 1.5 percent, making the loans more accessible to first-time buyers gets passed.

This past week both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were allowed to lower the amount of funds they kept in security from 30% down to 20%, freeing up two hundred billion for mortgages as well.

The subprime mortgage mess has made lenders return to “old school” restrictions and requirements. Buyers may have to get help from family rather than use a riskier loan. I think in the end it will be much better for buyers who use discipline in budgeting and learn to save for a down payment instead of securing no down payment loans of the past which teaches buyers nothing.

This “normalizing” of the market gives people a chance to take a few months and get their finances in order before purchasing a home.  I think if buyers put more of their own hard earned money in to a home, they will become less likely to fall behind in payments and go into foreclosure.

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

Whatcom County, WA - The Whatcom Conservation District’s 15th annual Native Plant Sale will be held Saturday, March 22, in Bellingham. The event will be from 9 am to 4 pm in Cordata at the Community Food C0-0p’s second store location, Westerly Road and Cordata Parkway.

Those who visit will find 40 different species of native trees, shrub seedlings, and native wildflower seeds during the Whatcom Conservation District’s Native Plant Sale. This year’s event also will include the first Native Plant Expo, which will feature demonstrations, environmental exhibits and Earth-friendly activities.

Visit Whatcom Conservation District website for more details, including descriptions of the plants that will be sold. Their website is also packed with lots of information about plants, conservation efforts and area related links. WCD is dedicated to serving present and future generations of Whatcom County through a natural resource conservation program assistance to help foster a healthy, sustainable relationship between people and the environment.

For home owners this is a great opportunity to purchase plants that are native to the Northwest for planting in their yards and supporting the local conservation group. Visitors can also enjoy the Native Plant Expo while looking for plants to purchase.

In following years from now, and you come across this article, just remember that the annual plant sale is held during the month of March. The Whatcom Conservation District’s web site posts the event well in advance, so just save their site and ours to your favorite’s for future reference.

Jerry Campbell - Muljat Group - Bellingham WA - Whatcom County Real Estate

Bellingham, WA - March is traditionally when homeowners thinking of selling their homes prepare their property for listing in the local Whatcom County real estate market. The winter holidays are usually the slowest time of the year because of the cold weather and holiday events. As soon as buds start to appear on trees it seems to be the real beginning of the listing season and for sale signs pop up in yards.

The last two years there have been a few more for sale signs than usual and they have stayed longer than the boom years from a few years ago. To stay competitive in this ever changing market most homeowners thinking of selling need an edge to get noticed. The best thing a homeowner can do is make sure their home is in show condition. I’ve posted about the importance of staging a home for sale before, so I won’t go into to much today. Our viewers might want to visit an article we posted called selling your home in a buyer’s market to get an edge in selling their home. There are also some good articles under our Seller Tips category that should help as well.

Bellingham and Whatcom County home owners have it a lot better than many real estate markets in southern states across the nation. According to the statistics, Whatcom County only had 19% of all loans in the sub-prime market, with 81% in prime lending. That number most definitely has dropped even more, now that the mortgage industry has returned to more normal loans. Just because Whatcom County has 19% of mortgages in the sub-prime market does not mean all of these will fail. It’s estimated that only about 5% of these will go into some form of foreclosure. By checking out the following national subprime mortgage map, county by county, home owners can get a better feel for where the real problems are across the nation.

If one were to look at the subprime map, you can see that the Northwest really doesn’t have the same problem that the many areas of the country are experiencing. I mention this because It’s really the negative chatter and consumer sentiment that is making our real estate markets tough in the Northwest. Because we are a national economy it does effect us locally, but certainly not like those in parts of California, Arizona, Texas, Mississippi, Florida, and many more states.

The thing most home owners should take to heart is that if your selling in a buyers market and planning to buy right away, then on the buying side you will gain that advantage. Actually no matter what market your in, as long as your selling and turning around and buying again…you’ll do fine. Happy Saint Patrick’s day everyone and may you find good luck in all your housing needs this year.

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

Last week with the bad news out of Seattle about the fires in the Street of Dreams development, one of my real estate web sites called StreetofDream.com experienced very high traffic for that news day. You’ll notice that my web site domain there is missing the s, unlike the original StreetofDreams site.

It was amazing how much traffic my real estate website got from all the national news. I assume they either clicked on my site because It came up in the results a few pages back or they might have typed in the domain name and forgot the s. I can only imagine what the popular StreetofDreams.com web site had received over the last week. Anyways…it never ceases to amaze me how far the Internet has come in the last ten years and just seems to be growing more and more every day. 

My little Northwest WA Real Estate site is just a five page site that shows property listings up in my Northwest corner of Washington State with homes listed from $500k and up. It usually averages about 100 visitors a day, but that one day was quite a spike in traffic. Not exactly the way I would want to receive traffic, but never the less…it was interesting to see such a huge spike up.

Jerry Campbell - Muljat Group - Bellingham WA

Whatcom County, WA - The Olympic organizers in Vancouver, British Columbia are probably looking at the weather we just had over the last two weeks and would love to have more of the same sunshine for February 2010.  Over the last couple weeks it’s been sunny and mostly dry, which would certainly bode well for tourism if the Olympics would have the same experience.

Weather in the Northwest is really unpredictable, although during our winters here, we usually get most of our rain. On average we will also get about ten days with snow accumulations on the ground. When we do get snow, it usually only stays overnight or not much longer than a few days, because we are so close to sea level. If you go up into the Cascade mountains and near-by Mount Baker, that’s a totally different story.  Because we do get a lot of rain in the winter, our near-by mountains get a lot of snow and have set world records for accumulations over the winter.

February in 2008 has so far been pretty good to us. the best scenario for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games would be to have a lot of snow on the ground up near Whistler, BC  and temperatures from 32F to 40F, and Dry.  Well we can only hope and see what happens.

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

Ferndale WA - The brand new Ferndale branch for Whatcom Educational Credit Union had it’s grand opening today to celebrate the completion of It’s new building. The new Ferndale branch of WECU is located at 5659 Barrett Rd. where the Johnson’s Restaurant use to be years ago.

The ribbon cutting ceremony was held at 9:00 a.m. with over a hundred people in attendance for the grand opening.  Additionally Hundreds attended the Whatcom Educational Credit Union’s business after hours event this past Monday, which celebrated the establishment of this new branch

WECU will be seeking LEED silver certification on the new building for its environmentally friendly design standards. The construction of the building was by general contractor Pearson Construction.

The building is about 10,000 square feet and will be a full-service branch, including a real estate loan department and a four-lane drive-up area. The interior of the Ferndale, Wa branch is very inviting and has a huge lobby for it’s customers.

The building will have a community center for use by nonprofit organizations. The building has six teller windows and will have about 15 employees on staff. Customers have access to two computer terminals to do online banking, there is also a coin machine to count loose change making deposits of change easier.

The branch manager is Kimberly Cook, who also will be the on staff real estate loan officer. Stop by and see this wonderful new building today.

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

Ever since the Canadian Dollar started to reach parity with the American Dollar, our Canadian neighbors have been buying more and more across the border. Just in the last year retail sales have seen an up tick in the local Whatcom County market. Most retail items in Canada, on par, are more expensive than in the states, so Canadians are shopping in Whatcom County and the Puget Sound region more often.

In the real estate market I’ve also experienced at least a third of all my business calls coming from across the border. Most of the Canadians that I’ve spoke to, have said that they can get much better deals on real estate by buying in Whatcom County and else where.  As long as the two currencies are relatively close in price, I think we’ll see more and more of our Canadian friends purchasing homes in Bellingham over the next few years.

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

Bellingham, WA - Even though the economy seems to have tanked It’s been reported that local Whatcom County household incomes keep rising. Whatcom County median income is currently at $53,573 as job growth continues locally. When it comes to household income growth, Whatcom County has been doing great compared to the rest of the state in the last two years, according to a new state report.

The median household income in Whatcom County is up 4.7 percent from the preliminary 2006 numbers and up 12.2 percent from 2005, according to the Washington state Office of Financial Management.

Household income is determined by a variety of revenue streams, including salaries, dividends, rental income, retirement and disability income. The median measures the point at which half the households have more income and half have less. Statewide, median household income is up 4.2 percent year over year, and up 8.9 percent from 2005.

Hart Hodges, director for Western Washington University’s Center for Economics and Business Research, believes there are a variety of factors at work for the increase in wages. One is that the same increase in income will look like a bigger percentage change because Whatcom County has a smaller base. In addition, the impact of higher-wage jobs being added to large employers such as BP, Alcoa Intalco Works and WWU is being felt.

“We seem to be seeing a slight improvement in the job mix as the local economy gets larger,” Hodges said. “For example, larger economies tend to have relatively larger finance and information sectors, and we’ve seen some growth there. The job mix is slowly changing.”

Whatcom County has seen a steady rise without any year-over-year decreases in household income since 1989, when the median number was $28,367, according to the report.

Hodges expects wages to continue to rise in 2008 because of a continued tight labor market and a relatively low existing wage base. The local unemployment rate has been under 5 percent since January. Many economists consider anything under 5 percent to be full employment.

Skagit County has also done better than the state average. Year-over-year household income there rose 5.8 percent to $56,163. “Both (Whatcom and Skagit) counties have seen a few good years of job growth in manufacturing and work at the refineries,” Hodges said. Partially via bham herald.

 the National newspaper USA Today posted this little stat the other day in their paper showing that Bellingham, Washington showed that area homes were holding there value. In fact it was the second best area in the country during 2007 with that distinction.

I Believe that since the Whatcom County housing market is so close to the Canadian market and the fact that our Canadian neighbors are buying purchasing property down here helps contribute to our real estate. Ever since the Canadian Looney and the American Dollar achieved parity with each other, more and more home buyers from British Columbia have been buying property in Bellingham and Whatcom County.

When you compare the geographical areas where most residents of lower mainland British Columbia and the areas of Whatcom County the population is nearing three million in BC and just 180,000 in Whatcom County. A home in Whatcom County would be 2-3 times it’s value if it was located in the more demand driven British Columbia markets.

But nevertheless its always nice to see yet another national magazine touting Whatcom County, this time on home prices.

Jerry Campbell - Muljat Group Realtors - Bellingham Real Estate

During the whole month of December we have been developing a brand new Whatcom County real estate web site in order to better serve our buyers and sellers for the Whatcom County area.  The site will also provide services to the Skagit County, Island County, and San Juan County real estate market as well.

Our new web site will provide extensive information about the Whatcom County area to better inform buyers relocating to our area. 

The search real estate capabilities will be built out over time and we have joined the REW web site capabilities on our WhatcomRealEstate.com site with our WhatcomHomeSearch.com to create a Dynamic web site of the future. The combination of these two sites together will serve our current clients and future clients needs in so many ways, that we feel we will be providing them with many advantages over the competition.