MIke Mostyn

Matthew Gardner has released his Q4 2010 performance evaluations of Washington real estate. This quarterly report is exclusive to Windermere Real Estate but is made available here at no cost. His conclusion to our Q4 market is:

As has been the case for all of 2011, an increase in sales of Washington real estate does not mean an increase in prices. The value of transacted units in our market declined by 15.5 percent from a year ago, excluding the volatile San Juan County which saw a drop of 14.8 percent. Looking at the specific counties within our survey, there were two that exhibited price growth from December of 2010, these being Island (+7.1%) and Clallam (+4.5%). Counties that saw the greatest price declines included: Jefferson (-30.1%), Kittitas (-28%), Mason (-26.4%), Grays Harbor (-20.5%), and San Juan (-20%).

There are, I believe, two reasons why we have not yet seen the price stability in Washington real estate that we are all looking for. The first of these is that the sale of distressed homes continues to make up a very large percentage of all transactions and these homes sell for substantially lower than market price. In King County, for example, distressed transactions made up 40 percent of all sales in 2011. Additionally, with such low levels of supply, we have seen a pronounced change in the make-up of sales with a disproportionate percentage of homes selling in very affordable price ranges. Both of these factors are having negative effects on home prices.

I am keeping the housing market at a “C-“ grade this quarter and am unlikely to change this until we start to see more housing choices become available and the percentage of foreclosures start to decline.

To see all of Mr. Gardner's report and his charts that make more graphical his analysis, click here to go to http://thesouthsounder.com/newsletters/Gardner_Report_Q4_f.pdf

89% of all properties sold were first seen on the Internet. That means the single most critical moment in selling a home is to move a buyer from their screen to your living room.

If an Internet shopper does not see your listing, they cannot consider it. Syndicate every listing to the big real estate search engines. Don’t forget Facebook. It’s become a Swiss Army Knife and makes a fine website, well-connected and SEO coming out its ears. Also, don't forget a backlink to your website.

Buyers are looking for pictures - lots of them with detailed descriptions on a website made just for that home. They want a video tour, a 3D Google Earth overview and a PDF of your brochure. The better a buyer thinks they know your home, the more comfortable they are to take the next step.

33% of American adults own smart phones. Increase the number of screens that can see your website by 84M with a qr-code.

Buyers, sitting in front of their screens - this is the moment of decision – the moment where more opportunity is lost. Increase your odds.

In February of 2012, a draft supplemental environmental impact statement is due on a massive resort proposed on Hood Canal. The proposed $300 million Pleasant Harbor Marina and Golf Resort in Brinnon has received praise from a North Olympic Peninsula tourism industry leader, who said the economic benefits of the 257-acre resort on Hood Canal would stretch across Clallam and Jefferson counties.

The Hood Canal project has also garnered opposition from The Brinnon Group, who say it is too large for a small, rural community.

The writer of the draft supplemental environmental impact statement — or SEIS — says that The Statesman Group is turning its planned resort, which would be built three miles south of Brinnon on the Black Point peninsula, into an environmentally sound proposal.

“It looks pretty good from an environmental standpoint,” David Wayne Johnson, an associate planner with the Jefferson County Department of Community Development, said last week.

“There has been no SEIS, so all this is pie in the sky,” said Barbara Moore’lewis, who organized The Brinnon Group and has lived in Brinnon since 2003.

DCD last week posted Statesman’s preferred plan and another alternative from the company along with a description of the project at http://tinyurl.com/7yr6x3s.

According to Rich Childers of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, 2011 appears to be a record year for the amount of crabs harvested by recreational crabbers in Puget Sound. An estimated 2.1 million pounds of crabs were taken in the summer season from July 1 to Labor Day, with additional harvest coming during the fall and winter.

"Lots of people enjoyed a high rate of catch this year", Childers said. "We are seeing an abundance of crab, phenomenally high in some of the Puget Sound marine areas," he said. "We're seeing the same thing with shrimp. Something in the environment is favoring the survival of Dungeness crabs from larvae to adult."

Crab season will close in all areas on Dec. 31, and anyone with a winter catch record card must report their catch by Feb. 1 — even if no crab were caught.

Read more: http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2011/dec/28/record-year-likely-for-puget-sound-sport/#ixzz1hwlPWoYx

For those of us who watch the Northwest economy and how it affects Washington real estate, Mr. Matthew Gardner and Windermere Real Estate has released “The Gardner Report” for Q3. Mr. Gardner is a land use economist and principal with Gardner Economics and is considered by many to be one of the foremost real estate analysts in the Pacific Northwest. In addition to managing his consulting practice, Mr. Gardner is a member of the Pacific Real Estate Institute; chairs the Board of Trustees for the Washington State Center for Real Estate Research; the Urban Land Institutes Technical Assistance Panel; and represents the Master Builders Association as an in-house economist. He has appeared on CNN, NBC and NPR news services to discuss real estate issues and is regularly cited in the Wall Street Journal and all local media. The Q3 Gardner Report concludes:

“We continue to see modest employment growth in Washington State, but improvements are certainly not equal across the counties. Continued contraction in the government sector and construction are acting as anchors by restraining any significant improvement. In as much as I still contend that Washington State does, and will continue to, fare better than the nation as a whole, uncertainty appears to have permeated all businesses. The Federal Government now appears to be understanding the importance that real estate has in our economic growth. There are numerous proposals being proposed in Congress and the Senate relative to stabilizing our housing market. Although they are not a panacea, I am glad to see that they are starting to understand how important it is.”

“The housing market continues to demonstrate modest signs of stability, but financing and appraisals are still acting as impediments. Inventory levels saw a modest increase this summer, but are starting to exhibit their traditional seasonal decline—and are still considerably down from historic averages. Pending sales remain well above figures seen a year ago and closed transactions are also trending higher.”

To download the entire report, go to http://www.thesouthsounder.com/newsletters/Gardner_Report_Q3.pdf