James Heintz

In Bellingham & Washington State, it has long been believed that buying a new home automatically comes with a warranty. This is not the case.

According to Washington Realtor magazine, for years many real estate agents, lawyers and builders have assured buyers that all new construction homes comes with a statutory (State law) one-year warranty protecting buyer against defective construction.

What to do when you are buying a new home in Bellingham, WA or any other place in Washington State, is to get and review a written warranty from the builder prior to closing. In Bellingham, WA you can always count on getting a written warranty from quality builders like Slusher Homes. Trent and Amy Slusher will take time to go through your concerns and put it in writing to get it fixed timely.

After selling well over 100 new homes (sides) the remaining nagging items that seem to never get addressed are commonly called a ‘punch-list'. These items typically are things like: sheetrock ‘pop outs', squeaky floors, cabinet knobs and poor chalking. These little uncompleted items quickly sour the good feelings that had existed between the buyer and builder.

In Texas, there is a proposed lemon law that is quite simple: If builders can't fix a serious defect in the house (they get three times to try), they must buy back the house and pay moving expenses and closing costs. Owners get nothing more, and builders get their house back so they can take time to fix it and resell it.

I'd think REALTORS^® would love having a lemon law, since no real estate practitioner wants to be associated with a lemon home.

Contemplating buying a new home in Bellingham, WA? Give us Your2Agents.com a call and we will gladly go through the process with you.

Home sales in Bellingham, WA according to the Bellingham Herald for the week of March 16 to March 23, 2009 were an astounding 80. This was the highest total in almost a year. These sales are throughout Whatcom County and are everything from raw land, new & residential resale homes, condos and manufactured homes too. Prices ranged from $1,690,000 to $12,897. The sale for $1,690,000 was a raw land sale in the water shed in Bellingham. I believe Greenways purchased this property to help protect the drinking water supply for virtually all of Bellingham & close to 65% of all of Whatcom County. It is always fun to see homes sell that you are familiar with. Slusher Homes built a home that sold this week in Bellingham, for $899,000. We, as Your2Agents.com were fortunate to have had this home listed one time. Another client of ours closed a home at 2190 Willeys Lake Rd. In our opinion a real good deal in Custer, WA, which is about 15 miles North of Bellingham. We only hope that home sales continue on this pace in Bellingham, Whatcom County.