Living, buying and selling in Clallam County is like being on the irregular edge of a lake.
Clallam County’s real estate market, industry professionals say, feels the ripples from the rest of the country — with a few twists.
Across the United States, the pace of housing sales dropped 21.6 percent since summer 2005, according to Commerce Department figures reported in August.
That trend is beginning to reach Clallam County.
But Clallam has only a mild case of the American phenomenon, said Jerry Nichols, co-owner of Coldwell Banker Uptown Realty in Port Angeles.
Port Angeles
Last year, Port Angeles area homes sat on the market for an average of 59 days, he said.
This year’s average is 70 days.
“There’s no bust here,” said Nichols.
But sellers who ask too much for their homes may be contributing to the slowdown in the pace of sales, said Quint Boe, broker with Windermere Real Estate in Port Angeles.
“If you’re priced too high, it’s not going to sell.
“We’ve seen a lot of price reductions on listings that were overpriced to begin with.”
From January to mid-September 2005, 883 homes sold in Clallam County.
During that period this year, that number fell to 711, according to the Multiple Listing Service.
Prices rising
And while media reports sound alarms about a deflating housing bubble nationally, Clallam prices are climbing.
This September the MLS indicated a Clallam County median price of $259,000, up from $227,000 in September 2005.
Washington state’s median price rose to $293,000 during the second quarter of this year, 14.9 percent above a year ago, according to the Washington Center for Real Estate Research.
But nationwide, the rate of increase has slowed, according to the latest figures released by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, the agency that oversees the big mortgage-finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Average home prices rose 1.17 percent in the April-to-June period, compared with 3.65 percent in the second quarter of 2005.
That’s the biggest decline in price growth the agency has noted since it began keeping records in 1975.
It’s easy to see why Clallam’s prices are staying up — homes here are quite affordable when compared with King County’s median of $429,000.
The costliest place to buy in Washington is San Juan County, where the median is now $640,000, while the cheapest is Yakima County, which beckons with a median of $133,500.
Pace of sales slowing
The pace of sales is slowing across the state, however, partly due to interest rates that started creeping up this summer, said Jim Wahlsten, president of the Port Angeles Realtors Association.
Yet he doesn’t expect prices to slow much.
“This is still a very desirable area,” said Wahlsten, an agent with Coldwell Banker Uptown Realty.
The flow of retirees and telecommuters to this part of the Pacific Northwest shows no signs of thinning, he added.
“The baby boomers, instead of selling their homes and buying something in Arizona, are keeping two homes . . . So they spend part of the year here, rather than sitting in the desert,” all year.
Many of those retirees are coming from King and Snohomish counties, or other locales where their homes sold for relatively high prices.
So they arrive on the Peninsula flush with money and eager to nest — which of course keeps prices up.
“We draw from so many other areas,” said Windermere Real Estate’s Boe.
“People from the hot states come for our weather, and people from the cold states like our weather, too.”
Sequim
In the sunnier eastern part of the county, prices may lower a bit due to the building boom, said Steve Marble, vice president of the Sequim Association of Realtors.
“We don’t have a dead market. But we don’t have the robust market we had,” said Marble, who’s been with Home Realty since 1989.
Unrealistically priced properties are the ones that may come down first.
Still, not all sellers in Sequim are in any hurry.
“If you’re retired, you don’t have to sell,” said Marble.
Hence the slowing in transactions.
“The next big boom may be a few years off,” he added.
Vic Quinet, owner and broker at Sequim Real Estate Inc., said his city is “probably the No. 1 retirement community outside the Sun Belt” of California, Arizona and New Mexico.
He likewise predicted another influx of eager home buyers.
“Seventy-seven million baby boomers are retiring,” Quinet said.
“If we get one-half of 1 percent of them, everything [in Sequim] will be sold.”
West End
On the West End, the trend is similar, only cheaper.
“Starter homes” in and around Forks are among the most affordable in the Pacific Northwest, ranging from $125,000 to $150,000, said Carrol Lunsford, of Lunsford & Associates Real Estate. He’s been selling West End real estate for 37 years.
Retirees and refugees from the South’s storm corridor are looking to move into his part of the county, too, Lunsford said.
He added that higher-priced West End properties — as in $250,000 — are selling well since buyers often come from lucrative home sales elsewhere in the country.
Rocky Hinkle, who sells real estate in her hometown of Clallam Bay, said her market is “great guns.”
“It’s definitely a seller’s market,” she added.
“The primary reason for that is the homes here are much cheaper than nationwide.”
The supply of houses for sale on the West End, Hinkle said, is as sparse as Sequim’s is thick.
So asking prices in her territory can be higher, especially if the buyer has money from the sale of a home in Seattle or some other urban area.
The price of West End waterfront, Hinkle added, is headed north.
“Five years ago, lots went for under $20,000. Now the going rate is $35,000.
“The standard waterfront lot is $125,000 to $150,000 — and that’s land, with nothing on it.”
When something does go on the market, it tends to sell fast, Hinkle said.
Earlier this year she watched a seller ask $295,000 for a waterfront home that needed a lot of fixing up.
“It sold the first week for $295,000,” she said.
“I’ve got buyers and nothing to sell,” so if there was more inventory on the West End, they “would buy something tomorrow.”
Hinkle, who has been in real estate on the West End for 15 years, expects her market to stay strong.
