PORT TOWNSEND — While the Jefferson County real estate market looked pretty grim in January, the Jefferson County Association of Realtors president says she’s optimistic that things will improve in the coming year.
“People are looking around, people are buying,” said Susan Miller, who has 15 years of real estate experience in Jefferson County.
“It was pretty frightening at the beginning of the year.”
While the market is far from the 2004-2006 heyday of county real estate, Miller said, it is beginning to show signs of recovery.
Miller points to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which authorized a tax credit of up to $8,000 for qualified first-time homebuyers purchasing before Dec.1.
That has spurred sales that otherwise might not have happened, Miller said.
And added to that real estate market bonus, she said, the federal government extended the first-time home-buyer incentive through April.
“That brought buyers with more available credit,” said Miller, associate broker with Windermere Real Estate/Port Townsend.
She cited 11 first-time buyer classes put on by the association that drew more than 100 participants between October 2008 and September this year.
“I’m very encouraged that there will be more first-time buyers.”
President Barack Obama signed the Worker, Home ownership, and Business Assistance Act of 2009, extending it Nov. 6.
The legislation expands the First Time Homebuyer Tax Credit program by making more first-time buyers eligible, giving them up a $6,500 tax credit for homes priced at $800,000 or less.
In the past six month through Nov. 13, Miller cites 92 homes sold around Jefferson County, compared to 141 during the same period last year.
Of those homes sold in the past six months through Nov. 13, Miller said nine were bank foreclosure sales, compared to 18 foreclosure sales during the same period last year.
The real estate decline since 2006, believed to be the best year ever, has taken its toll on agents with 120 members of the Jefferson County Association of Realtors compared to 136 two years ago.
Some real estate agents have found other work, she admits.
“If you started in 2004 and 2005 you might have gotten unrealistic expectations,” Miller said of Jefferson County real estate agents who sold homes during the market boom period in the middle of this decade.
With prices the lowest in many years and home mortgage interest rates in the 4 percent range, homes are still being sold — even expensive waterfront homes, she said.
One luxury home in Cape George on the waterfront sold immediately, she said. The home on 10 acres at Discovery Bay sold for $900,000, down from the asking price of $999,000.
Miller said there were three pending sales of homes priced at $1 million or more in Port Townsend, Port Ludlow and Shine.
There are 504 active residential listings in Jefferson County, with 183 contingent or pending sales during the past six months.
Four out of the 41 pending sales are foreclosures with 13 out of 138 actual sales listed as foreclosures.
During the past six months, 117 of the active listings are priced below the $261,000 median sales price.
Of the active listings, 387 are above the median sales price.
Those price ranges and sales numbers are similar to the homes sold during the same period in 2008, she said.
“Buyers are looking at more property,” she said. “There’s much more negotiation.
“Five years ago there wasn’t enough to sell. Now there is much more.”
Calling the real estate boom an “anomaly,” Miller said the Jefferson County market today it “not great” but “not horrible either.”
Cheri Brennan, representing Northwest Multiple Listing Service, produced sales figures that show the median price of a Jefferson County home or condominium in September fell by 13.52 percent compared to September a years ago.
The median price in September 2008 home and condominium sales was $265,950 compared to $230,000 in September this year.
Compared to that, June sales closed at a median of $210,000 compared to $289,000 in June 2008, MLS statistics show.
There was a 27.34 percent decline in median price in June 2008 compared to June this year.
Jefferson County figures for October were not available from Brennan.
“The boom was a sellers’ market,” Miller said. “Now we’re here in a competitive market.”
