About Cowlitz County, WA

Generally December and January are the slowest months for the Cowlitz County real estate market and this year is not the exception. The following is a market review of single family homes in all Cowlitz County. There are 712 active listings, 38 listings are pending and only 30 homes were sold on January. There is currently about 9 months of estimated inventory of homes for sale. The lowest price is $49,900 and the highest is $1,600,000.

The most competitive and slower moving price range is $250,000 - $299,999, in this price range there are 119 active listings, 4 pending, 3 contingent and 0 listings sold in January in this price range. The most active price rage for January is $200,000 - $249,999, seven listings went pending and seven were sold.

For most people change is hard to accept especially if is not on ones favorite. A negative change is a fact that current real estate sellers are facing in most part of the nation. For the most part (talking real estate here) Cowlitz County seems to be on its on little world hardly falling into the national trends but this time local sellers are starting to face the harsh reality of today's challenging market. But even though the local market has slowed tremendously, there is a huge inventory and homes are taking longer to sell but prices are holding at the same level of last year.

The meltdown of the sub-prime lending market is in big part to blame for the current slow real estate market activity that we are experiencing these days. The end results of the so call sub-prime lending market and its meltdown has left many home owners struggling to hold on to their homes and many cases had lost them (that is why we are seeing many more foreclosures than previous years), the lending guidelines have tightening up and had left hardly any buyer able to qualify for a loan to buy a home.

The conclusion is that having hardly any qualified buyers to buy and many home owners affected by the meltdown, getting into financial hardships and are now having to sale their homes the real estate inventory has increase tremendously, homes are taking way longer to sell and serious price reductions have been the order of the day recently.

If you are currently a home owner facing this situation, know of someone who is or just like to know what options are out there for people facing this problem feel free contact me to see what options are out there.

The following is an over view of the current Cowlitz County real estate market. Well, as much as I don't want it to be true, with more price reductions almost everyday, than new and sold listings, longer time on the market, without a doubt the last six months the local market has shown that we are going from stable market to a declining market.

As of today, first week of January of 2008, there is over eleven months of inventory of available homes for sale, compared to five moths of inventory at the beginning of 2007. There are currently 42 homes pending compared to over 100 at the same time last year and only 183 have been sold in the last three months compared to 241 last year at about the same time.

For more information on the Cowlitz real estate market or real estate in general feel free to e-mail me or give me a call.