If you’re thinking of selling your Seattle home or rental property, the Low Inventory Effect means that the market is more in your favor than it’s been for several years:
- More buyers looking for a place
- Only about half or two-thirds as many homes on the market as there were a year ago
This Ballard house got 8 offers!
And that means that your odds of receiving multiple offers are high. Multiple offers mean…
- Buyers may do their inspections in advance, so they don’t have to have any strings attached when they present you an offer
- Buyers will most assuredly get a strong pre-approval letter from their lender, and be ready to close whenever YOU want, whether it’s sooner or later
But it doesn’t mean that you have a license to over-price: overpriced homes will still linger on the market, just like ones in poor condition or in a painfully noisy location.
Click here to see some statistics on Seattle as a whole, and northeast Seattle, in particular.
On the other hand, if you’ve been thinking about buying a home or rental property, it means you have work to do, and quick:
- Gather your income and asset information (pay stubs, income tax records, bank statements for ALL your accounts)
- Contact a couple of different banks or mortgage brokers to find out what purchase price you can be pre-approved for. (Call me if you want referrals to bankers I highly recommend.)
- Get more than one quote, and get familiar with the terms they’re offering.
Remember, if you’re thinking about buying a rental property, you can use your self-directed IRA or 401K funds to do this, but it takes time to set up.
Keep track of the neighborhoods you’re interested in, so you know what to offer when a place comes on the market. If there are 3 “pending” sales in the area, and a new property comes on the market, you need to know if those 3 were bid higher (and if so, how much), before you can accurately assess the value of the new one (contact me, I can help with this).
As of January 2013, we are at the approximate equivalent of June 2005 prices. We are still quite a bit lower than our 2007 peak prices.
