Home sales surge 36% in Pierce County
JOHN GILLIE; Staff writer
An $8,000 tax credit and bargain home prices persuaded Desiree Snowden and her husband, Stanley, to buy their first home in Spanaway earlier this year.
“After 18 years of living in rental and military housing,” said Desiree Snowden, “we were ready to have a home of our own.”
The federal tax credit allowed the couple to pay off their debts. And the three-bedroom, two-bath home’s $209,000 price meant a $300-per-month cut in the their housing costs compared with base housing. Neighbors told Snowden the house was listed at $358,000 at one point.
“And we got 800 square feet more,” Snowden said.
The Snowdens are just one of the numerous homebuyers who are driving home sales so far this year. Western Washington home sales swept upward last month with pending deals rising nearly 51 percent in Western and Central Washington and nearly 36 percent in Pierce County.
New figures from the Northwest Multiple Listing Service show pending sales in King and Snohomish counties surged even more than those in Pierce with increases of 69.05 percent in King and 77.11 percent in Snohomish.
Home deals in Thurston and Kitsap counties jumped too, though not as much as those in Pierce, King or Snohomish counties. Kitsap showed a 31.33 percent increase in pending sales, the Northwest MLS figures showed, while Thurston saw a 30 percent increase from the same month in 2009.
Some real estate agents were jubilant.
“As predicted, there is a surge of sales activity in the ‘more affordable’ price range, which is causing a chain reaction of sales up the price points,” said J. Lennox Scott, chairman of John L. Scott Real Estate.
But some veteran real estate brokers and analysts aren’t ready to declare the home sales slump over.
“A good month does not a year make,” said Al Morken, a Tacoma Realtor with 38 years of experience.
“It’s kind of a mixed report,” said Morken, who has analyzed real estate trends for two decades.
While the pending deals numbers are encouraging, he said, median sales prices in Western and Central Washington were still down by 2.05 percent over March last year. Pierce County median prices were down 5.86 percent to $215,000 compared with March last year. Snohomish prices declined by 12.12 percent, but King County prices crept up 2.67 percent on closed sales, he said.
Median price means half the homes sold for more and half sold for less.
“Homes that are positioned well – at every price range – are selling quickly,” said Pat Grimm, a Northwest MLS director and owner of Windermere Real Estate Capitol Hill Inc. in Seattle.
Much of the increased activity is being driven by the federal tax credits, which include $6,500 for current homeowners, said Dick Beeson, owner-broker with Windermere Commencement Associates in Tacoma.
Those tax credits are set to expire at the end of this month.
Beeson thinks that homebuyer activity might decline somewhat when that credit disappears, but he expects the government might replace it with another incentive designed to keep home sales up.
While sales of less expensive homes are doing well, he said, upper end homes in Pierce County are taking months to sell.
That’s not a good thing for homeowners looking to sell their big homes and move to a condo, he said.
“We’ve got a three-year supply of upper end homes in the Tacoma market now, and that’s if not a single new one comes on the market,” he said.
The departure of Russell Investments’ headquarters next fall will mean hundreds of upper-income earners will see their jobs move to Seattle, but Beeson said he doubts that will have a big effect on the Tacoma market.
Those homeowners, if they owned expensive homes, would be faced with a languid market in Pierce County and a reviving market in Seattle for upper end homes.
“They’d be selling low and buying high,” he said. “I think many of them will commute.”
While higher-priced homes in Pierce County were slow to sell, King County saw a jump in high-end sales.
Last month, 76 homes sold for $1 million or more in King County alone compared with just 40 such homes for all of Western and Central Washington in March 2009.
John Gillie: 253-597-8663
john.gillie@thenewstribune.com
