NCW Real Estate Blog

Property Taxes

While it may seem to the people in the Lake Chelan area that taxes never go down, the property tax statements in much of Chelan County actually show some decreases.  My own properties that are out of the Chelan area showed a few percent decrease this year.  But, folks in the Chelan Valley did not!

Last year the Leavenworth area carried a big share of the tax increase for everybody.  One thing that has become clear is that the method of revaluing one fourth of the county each year, and each area every four years, creates some real burdens as the tax burden swings across the county.

I posted about the property tax amounts by taxing district with links to table showing the tax amounts for each taxing district across the entire county!  Have a look, it could happen to you and there is some good information to consider before marking that ballot!

Tags: General Interest, Local, Uncategorized by Al Lorenz
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I’m sure that all depends on your perspective.  An auction like that in a hot market would have drawn hundreds of potential bidders.  On Saturday, there were just under 20 registered bidders.  In a hot market, there would have been lots of active bidding on all of the units.  At this auction, six of the 14 sold for near minimum bids.  There are negotiations continuing on additional homes as well.

I don’t know what the expectations of the developers, banks and auction company were for Saturday’s auction.  I am sure they hoped to have a hundred or more bidders, but realistically I bet they did not expect that to occur.  But, in a market that is virtually stalled, they now have contracts on 9 or more homes of the 14 they have for sale.  They generated trememdous exposure to the project and are likely to get contracts on even more of the homes.

If their expectation was to get some sales happening, they have likely achieved success.  In this market, that is a great accomplishment.  They have identified the pricing that the current market will pay for that property.  If they had realistic goals, they had a successful event.  You can get the Wenatchee World’s perspective on the auction here! 

Tags: Marketing, Uncategorized by Al Lorenz
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Tracy Warner wrote an editorial I really enjoyed yesterday.  He talked about a study done out of the University of Pennsylvania that compared what was happening in the post-war 1950s in housing compared to today.  It is an excellent editorial and is available here.

The gist of the study is that it isn’t developers or even construction costs that have driven up the cost of housing, but it is the cost of “serviced” land.  That would be land with infrastructure to support development.

The rage in politics these days is “development must pay for development.”  From a local government standpoint, with the funding options available, that mantra may be more of a practical approach than something that is philosophically derived.  I doubt local governments have much choice today.

While I’m too young, barely, to remember back to the post-war 1950s, [Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized by Al Lorenz
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The county is running a new tourism ad in Seattle, Spokane, Portland, San Francisco, Sacramento, Vancouver, B.C., and Kelowna, B.C. The networks it is running on include Discovery Channel, CNN, ESPN, Food Network, Life, MSNBC, Travel Channel, USA, TNT and AMC.

What do you think?  Click here to see it and please comment!

Tags: Uncategorized by Al Lorenz
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If it is, Wenatchee has done great compared to most everywhere else.  The Snapshot from Pacific Appraisals is out again, and it has 2008 through June.  The bottom line: median price in Wenatchee has held between $240k and $245k for the last 5 months, which is slightly above June last year.  Yes, inventory is up and yes sales this year are 31% below last year.

However, I’m starting to hear from investors who are actually looking [Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized by Al Lorenz
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While the numbers during the first part of the year were a bit slow, it would be hard to call May anything but a pretty good month for the Chelan real estate market.  How good?  Compared to May of 2007, total residential sales dollars for the month are 123% of last years, from about $7.56 million in 2007 to $9.3 million in 2008.  The average sale price is up to $620,626 from $397,829 in 2007 for May.

My summary report is here.  The number of sales in May of 2008 were still a bit lower than last year, 15 sales compared to [Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized by Al Lorenz
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I attended the Affordable Housing Symposium hosted by the City of Wenatchee yesterday afternoon.  As I suspected, the “Independent” recommendations were anything but.

I was actually pretty favorably impressed with the consultant, David Rosen, of DPR Associates.  They took census data from 2000 and Office of Financial Management data from as recently as 2006 and 2007 and did a thorough statistical analysis of the housing situation in Wenatchee.  They are also very knowledgeable of housing trusts, housing authorities and the taxes and regulation that can be used to support such ventures.  They are experts and have facilitated $7 billion of affordable housing.

However, the consultant was chosen by a group made of representatives from the Planning Department, Housing Authority and the NW Justice group.  These groups stand to gain from [Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized by Al Lorenz
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Attention: The Chelan County PUD has set April 7th (1PM in the Boardroom) as the date and location for of an important meeting to continue a discussion of whether PRIVATE DOCKS should be permitted on land the PUD owns along the shorelines of the Rocky Reach Reservoir on the Columbia River – affecting about 7 percent of land behind Rocky Reach Dam. There are also a few parcels affected on Lake Chelan.

Property owners who own their entire waterfront would not be affected.
 

Tags: General Interest, Local, Uncategorized by Jerry_Isenhart
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