NCW Real Estate Blog

It looks like the Wenatchee City Council is set to talk about Affordable Housing at 5:15 pm during their July 17th Work Session at City Hall.  The Affordable Housing Action Plan is attached and it is 9.9 Meg to open.  Rick Smith, Community Development Director, discusses the history of rising home prices in Wenatchee and hiring David Rosen Consultants to write an assessment on affordable housing in Chelan.  The report is attached to the above plan.

Currently, rather than having one of the fastest rising housing markets, Wenatchee may have one of the most slowly declining.  I have to admit, with the consultant selection process I was expecting that the conclusions of the city staff would be something along the lines of we must tax the citizens to build more affordable housing. 

Director Smith’s recommendations fall into three general categories I’ll paraphrase: [Read more →]

Tags: General Interest, Local by Al Lorenz
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The Future of Real Estate Marketing (FOREM) had this post on Friday about a Yahoo! study on the impact of the internet on real estate marketing.  The Yahoo! study found that the internet has a “pivotal role in the selection process and was central when it comes to selecting a real estate agent.”

Yahoo! found:

Home buyers and sellers consider approximately two agents on average before making a final decision.

The Internet impacts consumer trust. Forty percent of respondents credited a site in increasing their trust in the agent.

74 percent of people who accessed an agent Web site got there with the help of a search engine. [Read more →]

Tags: General Interest, Marketing by Al Lorenz
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On Wednesday evening, the Chelan Taxpayers group held a public meeting.  It was a first meeting and was something of an organizational event.  Courtney Cox (http://chelantaxpayers.blogspot.com/) presided over the meeting that was held at Karyl Oules residence in south Chelan.

About 50 people attended the meeting.  The meeting started with a report from the Assessor’s office that even if the appeal was sent in with the wrong form, as long something was filed by the deadline, that it would be considered for appeal.  So far, the Assessor’s office has received notice of at 144 appeals, which is a near record number. [Read more →]

Tags: General Interest, Local by Al Lorenz
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GoLakeChelan’s own Steve Byquist interviewed Buell Hawkins on taxes today.  He says he has gotten the message, but there is no quick fix.  Listen here!

Tags: General Interest, Local by Al Lorenz
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Revised 9:40 p.m. 7/07:  This just in, King County’s strict Critical Areas Ordinance has been overturned by an appeals court.  The law was passed by King County in 2004 to protect environmentally sensitive areas including salmon spawning streams.  It was considered one of the strictest such laws in the nation.

Critics of the law said it required them to set aside [Read more →]

Tags: General Interest, Land Use, Northwest by Al Lorenz
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From the Northwest Multiple Listing Service (NWMLS) and the Seattle Times comes this article.   The median price declined 6% in June amidst sales that surged to the highest level since last August.

An 18 percent increase in houses and condos for sale last month, compared with a year earlier, meant a 6.7 month supply of available homes throughout King, Snohomish, Pierce and Kitsap counties.

A year earlier, that supply was just shy of four months. A six-month supply is considered “balanced, equally favoring buyers and sellers.

In King County last month, the house and condominium markets were markedly different. Sales of detached houses were down 27 percent compared with a year earlier and the median sales price was down 4.3 percent to $449,700. There were 25.4 percent more houses on the market than a year earlier.

King County condos, on the other hand, saw their median sales price rise 5.3 percent year-over-year to $295,000. However sales declined 45 percent while listings increased 40.5 percent compared with the previous June.

Getting move-up buyers to actually commit is a challenge, says [Read more →]

Tags: General Interest, Marketing by Al Lorenz
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