The South Sound housing market showed some improvement in June as more homes sold than in the month before, but year-over-year sales dropped. And median sale prices dipped yet again.
Combined sales of single-family homes and condos in Pierce County fell 5.73 percent from June 2010, according to Northwest Multiple Listing Service data released Wednesday.
June sales likely were spurred higher because a Pierce County home has increasingly become a bargain. Median prices fell 11.22 percent to $195,277 from $219,950, one of the largest year-over-year price declines in Western Washington. It’s also the second consecutive month that the county has experienced a double-digit decline in median prices. Year-over-year median prices in May fell 12 percent, the data show.
Windermere real estate agent Mark Kitabayashi, who works in Pierce and Thurston counties, said prices are lower in Pierce County because it “still has a tremendous amount of short sales.”
A short sale is when the seller has to sell his or her home for less than the value of the mortgage. Kitabayashi estimated that of the 1,266 pending sales in the county last month, about half were short sales or bank-owned properties, he said.
Part of this is due to the county’s slower economy and a jobless rate that has hovered around 10 percent. There also was more subprime borrowing during the housing boom, he said. Still, softer prices have resulted in some competitive pricing for new construction, such as homes in south Pierce County that sell between $150,000 and $220,000, Kitabayashi said.
Thurston County home sales, meanwhile, fell 2.03 percent from last year. Median prices also fell more than 2 percent to $228,475 from $235,000 in June 2010.
Washington Realtors Association President Phil Harlan, who also is a real estate agent for Keller Williams, thinks the bottom of the housing market is “starting to firm up.”
The Thurston County housing market has shown improvement from May, although it still is a bit delicate and susceptible to outside influences, Harlan said. One concern he has is that lending, once so lax that all you had to do was “fog a mirror” to get a loan, has swung too far in the opposite direction, he said. Not everyone has a 700 or higher credit score, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t qualified borrowers. There still are prospective homeowners who can show a stable income and that they can manage money, he said.
“We’re leaving some people out of the equation,” Harlan said.
Rolf Boone: 360-754-5403
rboone@theolympian.com
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