Key Center, WA

Key Peninsula Best Buy Home for Sale

This week’s Best Buy Home for Sale is located in Key Center on the Key Peninsula in Washington. Let me say up front, this is one of my listed properties. I hesitated selecting this property as a Best Buy Home pick because I did not want to give the perception that I was using the Best Buy pick to market my own listings The purpose of the Best Buy selection is identify good values to home buyers who are searching for homes for sale in Gig Harbor, on the Key Peninsula, in Port Orchard, Silverdale, Bremerton or anywhere else the Kitsap Peninsula. Having mulled this back and forth, I finally came to terms with the fact that this home by its own merits should be considered a Best Buy Home for Sale. The home is located at 15109 92nd Street KPN in Key Center on the Key Peninsula just off of State Hwy 302. This is a very unique property. The house itself is an eight sided structure (octagon), 1202 square feet with 1 bedroom and 1 bath. The kitchen-dinning-great room is one open flowing space with a center columns cut from timbers on the property forming a circular cathedral skylight ceiling. Wood panel and stone make up a good part of the interior walls. The best way to describe it is a lodge type retreat. The house sits on 9.94 acres of fairly level land, with a large detached garage/shop, a smaller detached garage/shop and a small guest bungalow (more like a oversized kid’s playhouse). It is an estate sale, so the sellers do want to put any money into it. The deceased owner built the home himself in 1986. The structure of the home is very solid, but it will need some work such as some new skylights, appliances, carpet, etc. It is on a 2 bedroom septic, so there is the option of adding on another bedroom, and it has its own well. The yard immediately surrounding the house is a bit overgrown, so it would take a summer’s worth of weekends to spruce the place up. The assessed value is $360,100 ($100,800 for the house/$259,300 for the land). It is priced at $229,000. The Northwest Multiple Listing Service listing number is 24291.

This home is definitely nor for your average run-of-the-mill homebuyer who wants something turn-key ready. It is a unique home for a do it yourselfer home owner or a home owner who may want to put in another $100,000 to customize it into their own personal retreat on private acreage, yet within 20 minutes of all the shopping and amenities in Gig Harbor.

This Key Peninsula home, as well as previous Best Buy Homes in Gig Harbor, Port Orchard, Bremerton, Silverdale and Key Peninsula, can be seen on our Healthcarehomebuyer.com website at the following link Gig Harbor Best Buy Home and on my personal real estate website gigharbor-realestate.com at the following link Best Buy Home Gig Harbor.

Key Peninsula home prices are on a roller coaster

Key Peninsula home prices are higher one month and lower the next, compared to 2008. While sales prices were lower in December they followed three months of higher prices.

Key Peninsula home prices are down 10% from 2008 and 14% from 2007. That compares to Gig Harbor that bumped up 1% over 2008 and the 4-county Puget Sound area that dropped 7% decrease in prices.

On the other hand, sales of Key Peninsula homes have been showing a tidy increase, with 33% over 2008 and 29% from 2007 year-over-year. The change from 2008 is on a par with Gig Harbor but sales in Gig Harbor are a whopping 160% better than 2007.

At the same time the 4-county Puget Sound area reported 54.7% more sales than last year so both Gig Harbor and Key Peninsula are some distance behind regional figures for this measure.

Realtors have been pleased with the relatively strong market for December and the momentum appears to be continuing with sales activity in January. Much of those sales are being driven by the first-time home buyer tax credits and low interest rates. Interest rates are starting to tick upward and are expected to peak around 6.5% during 2010.

Inventory continues to drop-down 33% from last year at this time. This is helping stabilize prices as the home supply dwindles. Key Peninsula is currently experiencing just an 8.8 month supply of homes on the market. For the homebuyer, that means if no new homes were listed, it would take about nine months to sell the current inventory. I would expect the supply to drop even more as January sales activity continues to hum.

Carole Holmaas is an Associate Broker at Windermere Real Estate/Gig Harbor, licensed since 1967. She may be reached at 253.549.66 or Carole@ISellGigHarbor.com. Her blog may be followed at http://blog.ISellGigHarbor.com

Key Peninsula home prices are on a roller coaster

Key Peninsula home prices are higher one month and lower the next, compared to 2008. While sales prices were lower in December they followed three months of higher prices.

Key Peninsula home prices are down 10% from 2008 and 14% from 2007. That compares to Gig Harbor that bumped up 1% over 2008 and the 4-county Puget Sound area that dropped 7% decrease in prices.

On the other hand, sales of Key Peninsula homes have been showing a tidy increase, with 33% over 2008 and 29% from 2007 year-over-year. The change from 2008 is on a par with Gig Harbor but sales in Gig Harbor are a whopping 160% better than 2007.

At the same time the 4-county Puget Sound area reported 54.7% more sales than last year so both Gig Harbor and Key Peninsula are some distance behind regional figures for this measure.

Realtors have been pleased with the relatively strong market for December and the momentum appears to be continuing with sales activity in January. Much of those sales are being driven by the first-time home buyer tax credits and low interest rates. Interest rates are starting to tick upward and are expected to peak around 6.5% during 2010.

Inventory continues to drop-down 33% from last year at this time. This is helping stabilize prices as the home supply dwindles. Key Peninsula is currently experiencing just an 8.8 month supply of homes on the market. For the homebuyer, that means if no new homes were listed, it would take about nine months to sell the current inventory. I would expect the supply to drop even more as January sales activity continues to hum.

Carole Holmaas is an Associate Broker at Windermere Real Estate/Gig Harbor, licensed since 1967. She may be reached at 253.549.66 or Carole@ISellGigHarbor.com. Her blog may be followed at http://blog.ISellGigHarbor.com