Enjoy this puff piece from today’s Seattle P-I about the latest report from Zillow on Seattle’s “impressive” real estate market.
A steady stream of potential buyers flowed through a big Craftsman house a couple of blocks from Green Lake on Sunday, apparently undeterred by its $695,000 asking price.
The house went on the market Aug. 8, but listing agent Mark DeSpain of Windermere Real Estate was not taking offers until today. He was expecting to get several.
“There was a time in the last couple years when you could get away with (waiting a week to accept offers) in almost any neighborhood,” DeSpain said. Now, he said, it’s possible only in certain high-demand areas.
DeSpain is backed up by new estimates released Monday by the Seattle online real-estate company Zillow. com for the first quarter of 2006.
Zillow pegged the median home value in Green Lake at $521,916 in June — up by an annualized rate of 32.2 percent from three months earlier, compared with 16.5 percent for the city as a whole. Broadview, Wedgwood, Westlake and Windermere were up by an annualized rate of more than 40 percent.
Wait, wait, wait a minute… Is there really a neighborhood in Seattle called Windermere? I’ve never heard of it… Can someone enlighten me here? [Update: Thanks to commenter Richard, I have discovered the elusive Windermere neighborhood.]
And now back to your regularly scheduled real estate cheerleading:
Zillow showed much lower appreciation in some other city neighborhoods, and even declines in Broadway and downtown. But the city’s overall number was still impressive compared with the national increase of 6 percent.
“The market’s still strong, particularly in desirable neighborhoods like Green Lake,” DeSpain said.
“Green Lake is hot, hot, hot right now,” said Susan Ryan, a real estate agent with Coldwell Banker Bain. “The amount of money that people are willing to pay to live in Green Lake boggles the mind.”
Write that down, all you potential home-buyers out there. Real estate in Seattle is “impressive,” “strong,” and “hot, hot, hot…” Have I ever mentioned how much I love, love, love the balanced real estate reporting that comes out of Seattle’s dailies?
(Aubrey Cohen, Seattle P-I, 08.15.2006)