NCW Real Estate Blog

County Assessor Russ Griffith commented on tax reform in the Opinion section of the Wenatchee World today.  He reaffirms that new revenue is not generated by property revaluations.  If you’re interested in property taxes, it is a good read.

He doesn’t sound like a fan of options like circuit breakers, homestead exemptions or a proposition 13 like approach.  Here’s an excerpt and a link:

Property tax shifts are great if you are getting the break in taxes, but tax shifts are not appreciated if you are paying the other person’s taxes!

This is the 18th year that I have been your assessor and I have worked toward changing the system for all taxpayers’ benefit every year in one way or another. Frankly, the easiest way to get property tax relief is by reducing the state school tax. In 2008 it represents 24 percent of all the property taxes paid in Chelan County. The state had a large surplus in 2007, which in my opinion could have been used to reduce or eliminate the state share of the property tax. - Wenatchee World

Tags: General Interest, Local by Al Lorenz
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The Spanish Castle resort between Rock Island and Trinidad is still progressing according to its developer.  Wade Entezar, president of Entazar Development Group of Bellevue, plans to have an Open House on the property September 20th with Windermere of Wenatchee for prospective buyers.  He also hopes to build a model home on the property by the end of the year.

Spanish Castle is to be built over seven years and is estimated to be a 300 to 400 million dollar project that eventually could site 1340 residential units.

The Wenatchee World has a story on the resort here.  A link to a video from Entezar development is here: Entezar Development

Tags: General Interest, Land Use, Local by Al Lorenz
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According to a post in Crosscut today, Seattle is one of the most extreme cities in the USA.  How extreme?  Seattle has few families, is highly educated and very gentrified.  The big number is that Seattle averages only 2.08 occupants per household.  The closest rivals of major cities are San Francisco and Portland at 2.24 and the national average is 2.61.  A local Community Housing Steering Committee I am serving on shows a trend towards similar demographics in certain parts of North Central Washington.

Here’s an excerpt from the article and a link:

A related statistic is the share of households that are families with children; the Seattle share is 19 percent, San Francisco 18 (lowest in the country), and Portland 24. (The U.S. average is 31 percent share of families with children.) Conversely, the share of non-family households (singles, unmarried partners) is 55 percent (33 for the U.S.). Seattle is only slightly behind the winner, San Francisco, in the share of adults never [Read more →]

Tags: General Interest, Land Use, Northwest by Al Lorenz
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 The Chelan County PUD announced that they now serve over 25,000 homes, businesses, schools and hospitals in Chelan County with fiber optic services.  This is an amenity we often forget to mention to folks, that the latest in broadband services including video (television), internet and phone services are available to many areas in Chelan county reliably and at reasonable pricing.  For many, such access is the key to being able to live and work in our area.

Here’s the announcement:

Chelan County Public Utility District announced today that fiber-optic access is now available to more than 25,000 homes, businesses, schools and hospitals throughout Chelan County, a rural county in north central Washington state.

The District began construction of the fiber network in 1999 and the work continues. The plan is to bring fiber access to 95 percent of the public utility district’s (PUD’s) home and business customers, about 40,000 premises by 2012. [Read more →]

Tags: General Interest, Local by Al Lorenz
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Back in early July, I posted about the a court reversal of the King County Critical Areas Ordinance being overturned on appeal.  The issue is that King County’s ordinance required huge areas, up to 65%, of rural properties, be left undisturbed.  That was successfully argued as being an illegal taking by property rights activists who had challenged the ordinance.

There is a detailed posting in Crosscut today, Paying for our Growing Pains, that goes into much more detail of the history of the King County critical areas ordinance and the issues surrounding it.  Apparently, part of what the ordinance is trying to accomplish [Read more →]

Tags: General Interest, Land Use, Northwest by Al Lorenz
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Once again Pacific Appraisals has sent out their Snapshot report for July.  You can get it right here.  72 homes were sold in the Wenatchee market in July, down by 25 from 97 last year for a decrease of 26%.

Mostly Wenatchee has been immune from decreases in the median sale price, but for July, the number in the market area declined 4% and in Wenatchee, the decline is only 3%.  Average Sale Price year to date is still up by 2% in both market areas.  While the area is feeling the impact of the overall market and credit meltdown, homes are still being bought and sold successfully.

Mortgage rates are still relatively low historically and it will be interesting to see if rising rates end up eating up any further price reductions that may occur in the next year or so.  Only history will tell us exactly when the best time to buy was in any given era!

Real Estate Excise tax collections are down by 38% in Chelan county so far this year.  I’m sure we’ll all be hearing about tax issues this election year.  Thanks again to our friends at Pacific Appraisals for putting out this report!

Tags: General Interest, Local, Marketing by Al Lorenz
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The August Newsletter for the Chiwawa River Pines Community Association (between Plain and Lake Wenatchee) is in the mail to members.  It includes the news from the spring meeting on April 26 where a vote was held on an amendment to the covenants.  That proposed amendment concerned commercial use in the community.  The final vote was 127 in favor and 60 against.  Since a change in covenants requires a majority of members to vote in favor of the amendment, which would be 152 votes, the amendment died to lack of enough votes.

That amendment would have done two things, allowed low-impact service businesses and clarified that short-term, vacation rentals [Read more →]

Tags: General Interest, Local by Al Lorenz
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I attended the first part of the joint Chelan County and City of Chelan planning study last night.  Four different possible visions of how development might happen in the Chelan Valley were presented on maps.  It was sort of a 20,000 foot estimate of what might happen.  It is early in the process and the differing visions are as much to generate feedback as anything else.  You can link to the County’s information page on the process with additional information here.

Michelle McNeil at the Wenatchee World has an article in today’s paper about the issues that the local governments and citizens are wrestling with.

The Vision Options Were:

1. UGA Extension    

   This vision protects farmland and additional residents are mainly accomodated in [Read more →]

   

   Tags: Land Use, Local by Al Lorenz
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There are areas in this country where housing is affordable that offer an astonishingly high standard of living to ordinary Americans.  Four of the fastest growing cities in the nation, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston and Phoenix all provide an ample supply of homes which keeps costs low.  I’ve talked about Dallas in earlier posts.

A posting in Crosscut on the low housing prices in Chicago goes on:

The answer, according to this interview with Glaeser, director of Harvard’s Taubman Center for State and Local Government, is that Chicago is extremely pro-growth. Instead of layering on more and more land-use and design controls, Chicago has a pro-growth environment, and all those new housing units help keep the prices down. - Crosscut

Or, we can continue to make housing even less affordable with layers of regulations, impact fees and restricting the supply of land.  Then, as we lament the cost of housing, we can simply tax ourselves to create a very small amount of subsidized affordable housing at the highest possible cost to society.  At least we have choices…

Tags: General Interest, Land Use by Al Lorenz
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A posting by David Brewster in Crosscut claims that it is a reverse flow from the big coastal cities to the inland boomtowns bringing newcomers with a different culture and politics to inland cities.  The phenomenon is not only creating growth but friction between the independent, mostly conservative natives and the more liberal transplants.  Apparently the frustration is high enough in towns like Walla Walla that stickers lamenting “Don’t Bend Walla Walla” are common.

Of course, Bend is issuing twice as many building permits as Portland recently.  Many folks from Walla Walla are concerned about the culture and politics of the newcomers who are more “Arugala Cafe” than “Cowboy Bar.”  The posting is worth reading and here’s an excerpt:

As celebrities and other rich folks build big spreads and exclusive enclaves, most Montanans pay them little heed. Missoulans told me that the ultra rich mostly keep to themselves, importing friends for the weekend rather than mingling with the locals. But everyone complains about how (now-troubled) posh resorts are driving up property taxes (and providing lots of construction jobs). Real estate development is now the big industry in Montana, far surpassing the old mainstays of ranching and mining.

 You don’t have to go all the way to Montana to find these tensions and trends. Washington state House Speaker Frank Chopp [Read more →]

Tags: General Interest, Northwest by Al Lorenz
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