Seattle has basically reached the saturation point of unaffordability. How do I know this? Because people that want to buy a home are mostly interested in the South Sound.
Thurston County’s three largest cities were among the most popular destinations for home buyers in the first quarter of the year, according to data released by an online real estate company.
Olympia, Lacey and Tumwater ranked among the top 5 cities around Puget Sound based on users requesting information on homes in the area, according to HouseValues Inc., a Kirkland company that offers online real estate services, such as matching prospective buyers with real estate agents.
Home buyers interested in Olympia, which ranked No. 1 among Puget Sound-area cities in the first quarter, grew by nearly 40 percent, followed by Lacey in second at 35.2 percent and Tumwater in fourth with almost 24 percent, the data showed. West Seattle ranked third.
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"What Thurston county offers is affordability, quality of life, excellent schools and recreation," said Steve Garrett, the designated broker and co-owner of Windermere Olympia. "That really kind of drives those numbers."The difference between median home prices in Thurston and King Counties is substantial, according to multiple listing service data. Last month, the median price of a home was around $245,000 in Thurston County, while in King County it was nearly $400,000.
As a result, Seattle ranked 15th in the number of people requesting information about homes in Puget Sound, [HouseValues spokesman Matt] Heinz said.
Come on Steve, let’s not kid ourselves. Olympia may have "quality of life, excellent schools and recreation," but so does Kirkland. Thurston County is nice, but the primary driving factor here is price. People have been priced out of Seattle, and are slowly being priced out of the Seattle suburbs as well. As a result demand is dropping here. Thurston is still at least marginally affordable, so people are still buying houses there.
(Rolf Boone, Olympian, 05.04.2006)