A few advice questions for Seattle residents:
Background: My D so wants to purchase in Seattle. May wait a year hoping for a dent from Boeing as Magnetron mentioned. But rents are also skyrocketing, and she has already been displaced once by a landlord who sold to take advantage of the soaring market. She wants to stay, but the market is quickly outpacing her savings (as mentioned previously). Her only current option would be a small 500 SF studio. What she finds are old apartment buildings being divided into condos, and ‘flipped’. A small 800-900 home is also an option, as she could potentially share with a roommate. She would love to add her own sweat equity and design, but all she finds are flipped units, asking outrageous prices (and getting it).
Questions:
How does one find condos or homes that have not yet been ‘flipped’ in the Seattle Market?
Where can you research ‘pre-sale’ units (as discussed on the retirement forum).
Because nearly everything she has spotted requires a bidding war, can you offer suggestions for smaller banks or credit unions for mortgages, and to start the pre-approval process?
Also suggestions for inspections? (nearly all bids require pre-inspections or total waving of inspections!!!)
We are not from the area, and this RE process is totally foreign to us, so can offer her little direction.
Is she willing to live further South or North of the city? Prices drop significantly (Eastside is one exception). Pre-sale usually means new construction and can be found either through a realtor or by driving around and looking for signs. The developer’s realtors are more than willing to serve as dual agents for obvious reasons. Don’t expect that there will be any discounts from the developers… maybe a few small upgrades, but that’s it. Preinspections are easy to do - her realtor will have a few inspectors to contact who can come out and do an inspection on a short notice. Expect to pay anywhere from $100 to $400 for that service.
Re: condos that have not been flipped. Look at prior sales records in Redfin and the official county data. It can give you a good idea what was going on… Beware of remodels where structural elements might have been removed! It can end up in a costly litigation.
@kjofkw - one more tip. Use John L Scott’s search engine to look for fresh listings. It is the most up to date database, and the map search is awesome. They update listing status in real time, so if something goes pending, it is noted in their database. Zillow sucks… because realtors have to manually update the listings. Redfin is sort of OK. Windermere is not updated fast enough for this market.
As far as any Boeing impact is concerned, it would be in the north end of King County up through Snohomish County; Seattle-proper impacts would be much, much smaller.
If she knows where she wants to live, the best thing is to find a really good RE agent in that area. The one who lists and sells the most in my area would probably be next to worthless 5 miles south.
A house popped up in my FB feed this morning. $250K - all a setup for a bidding war, IMO. Drives me crazy.
They’re ALL set up for a bidding war zeebamom. That seems to be the current standard. Listings posted Wed. or Thurs. Open houses on the weekend. “Offers accepted” the following Tues. or Wed. on the date specified on the listing. Not really much need for a Realtor 6% fee by sellers imho!!! She’s been using Redfin (will check JLScott. - thanks).
One realtor explained that they are not allowed to inform of upcoming sales before they are technically listed, but when looking at 'nearby sold houses", so many appear that were never seen previously. She’s been watching W.Seattle but those prices are just as bad. Not comfortable w/ Renton/Kent. Feels Tacoma is too far. Has followed Shoreline without much luck.
Any recommended lenders to start the pre-approval process?
We’ve always been advised to shy away from inspectors recommended by realtors. Seems there could easily be a conflict of interest. Plus how can they possibly be thorough in this market which requires such fast turn-arounds?
“We’ve always been advised to shy away from inspectors recommended by realtors”
It depends! The inspector our realtor uses is amazing. She asked if we really wanted to buy that piece of crap… about one of the houses we prejnspected. We decided not to put an offer in. The last two homes we bid on she raved about but still gave the detailed list of what needed to be addressed, down to minor things. Our last inspection report was more than 50 pages long.
It is crazy… I went to an open house in my neighborhood on Saturday in Seattle with a 2 bedroom condo listed for $769,000. I mean, it was fine – building was nice it is a neighborhood near a good park (but the view out the window is of a bar, not the park). There wasn’t room in it for a table to eat at – if you don’t want to eat at the counter/bar, not sure what you would do. It was a new listing, so we will see what it sells for, but given this market and the number of people at the open house, they may get their price. I had a 3200 foot custom built house on 2.5 acres with cherry woodwork and cabinetry throughout, red birch floors, library, screened porch, etc. in another state. And it sold for about 70% of the value of this condo just last year. It is just nuts.
The thing about Seattle is that the population is booming, companies like Amazon & Facebook are hiring like crazy, and the water hems in property and highways so expansion is hard. Public transit is okay, not great (working on it, but not keeping up with the growth). I don’t see property values going down any time soon because of the population boom and geographic constraints.
“The thing about Seattle is that the population is booming, companies like Amazon & Facebook are hiring like crazy, and the water hems in property and highways so expansion is hard. Public transit is okay, not great (working on it, but not keeping up with the growth). I don’t see property values going down any time soon because of the population boom and geographic constraints.”
just like in the Bay Area…
Only here condos on the peninsula start at $1.5 mil…
dont know how DS would be able to afford to move back here from LA, even if we pitch in…
Our mortgages are with BECU. Good service and the rates were good at the time, plus we could go to the neighborhood center or the main facility.
The thing with Shoreline now is the rezoning due to light rail. Everything in approx 1 mile radius of future light rail stations is being upzoned to multifamily over the next 10 years. It pretty much leaves west of Aurora/highway 99 and a few pockets on the east side as remaining single-family.
A friend of mine is thinking of selling her small, in need of fixing, home in south west Seattle. She’s been talking about it for a few years now, so I’ll be surprised if it happens before her retirement. She’s sure she won’t get much, but we tell her that it doesn’t seem to matter anymore.
Every day driving to and from work I see new townhouses going up pretty much at the north end of the Boeing Field runway. All day planes taking off and landing, from Cessnas to 737 predelivery flights to UPS cargo. Cute little houses from the 30s and 40s, when the area was home to steel, industry, building bombers. Gradually being bought up and torn down with new places coming in. This was the last set on the market https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/6507-Ellis-Ave-S-Seattle-WA-98108/48822260_zpid/
I dare say my daughters will never own in the city.
This is a huge issue in Honolulu and the neighbor islands as well. Real estate is so high that unless folks get huge financial help from relatives or elsewhere, it’s tough to afford to buy real estate in our state. I don’t know the answer, and lots of young folks are moving to lower cost of living areas where there are more highly paid jobs.
I don’t think I would recommend my kid look for a house in Seattle, unless they find a steal or are going to go pretty far out. But you can still get condos for halfway reasonable prices. There are some that are crazy expensive, but there are many within commuting distance of downtown and Bellevue for about 300K.
I think Seattle could help themselves by allowing more duplexes in existing houses. When I moved here from the Twin Cities, it was one type of housing I thought I would like living in. And… there isn’t any. Anywhere that I looked. Turns out that zoning for the most part does not allow it. I lived in a neighborhood for a long time that had quite a few houses that were duplexed (a few on every block). Maybe 10 blocks from Macalester college (so no students, but if you have visited Mac you might know what type of neighborhood I mean). And I’ve often thought it was the nicest neighborhood (friendly families, close to some restaurants, etc) that I’ve ever lived in. People in Seattle seem to think that it would ruin their neighborhoods. They should go spend some time in St. Paul. It wouldn’t, and would open up some more housing options.
I thought ADUs were a huuuuge deal in Seattle! Like one in each house. There are probably many more of them than can be seen - separate entrances on the back of the home or in the detached garage. I know several folks who rent out their ADUs.
Asian buyers are an issue in the Canadian housing market, too. Vancouver instituted a foreign buyer tax last year and Ontario announced one this week. A 15% foreign buyers levy in addition to rent controls are part of the attempt to control the out of control market. The average purchase price in Toronto for March was $916.000 with the average for a detached home being $1,214,000.
Sigh, intparent. I am nervously looking at my new neighbors - none seem to be in a hurry to move any time soon so probably no ghost houses nearby. We discovered that it was really hard to compete with developers and the Chinese. The first house we bid on will be bulldozed down to make room for a mansion, the second one was probably bough by a foreign investor, because every time we drive by, there are no lights - inside or outside of the home.
