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Home / Seattle Condos / Capitol Hill / Capitol Hill Condo Market

Capitol Hill Condo Market

By October 10, 2010

Capitol Hill

Wondering what the Capitol Hill condo market is like? CHS digs into the stats recently released by Redfin but what I found even more interesting was these two first hand accounts from people looking to buy.

Kerry’s comments:

My husband and I spent the summer looking for a place to buy. We were very flexible on price and property type, we looked at everything with at least 2 bedrooms and at least 750 sq ft of space. We had a really hard time finding a property we liked that was reasonably-priced. In theory, most properties should be selling at or around their 2005 value. We found, however, that what few properties are on the market are asking for more than they paid in 05, even more than they paid in early 08 and late 07. The few good-quality properties with lower prices were generally snatched up within a few days of listing, we weren’t even able to see a few places before they went off the market.

It seems like a lot of properties are languishing on the market for months without any major price adjustments and very little interest. There also aren’t a ton of properties being added to the pool, so the market is a little stagnant right now. There are definitely people looking, as evidenced by how quickly inexpensive properties are snatched up. We just finished negotiating on a property we like very much which has seen significant price reductions over the course of the summer. The seller was loathe to lower the sale price much below what they were asking, so we managed to get a ton of freebies and credits from them to sweeten the deal. I doubt we’ll be able to sell it for what we paid in 10 years, but at least we’ll have a nice place to live.

Follow-up to my question about whether they were looking at condos or not:

We looked at condos, townhomes, single family homes and co-ops. We wound up buying a townhome, even though a condo was really what we had in mind. We had a very difficult time finding condos we liked at reasonable prices. When it came down to deciding between two properties, one was a townhouse and the other was a condo, and they were asking approximately the same price. We found that the townhouse was a significantly better value, as it would have been difficult to get the condo seller to lower their price to what we thought it was worth.

And JDavin’s take:

I’m looking at condos currently, mainly in Pike & 12th area. It’s still very much a buyer’s market and listing agents are pretty desperate to sell places that have been on the market a long time (some at 180+ days, some at almost a year).

I heard that tour traffic has dropped off a lot compared to a couple months ago (July). Most of the units that have been on market a long time have had either multiple small price reductions (eg, 3-4 10k drops) or a couple large reductions (1-2 10% drops).

Selection/availability seems better IMO in Cap Hill than in Fremont, downtown, or Pioneer Sqr.

I own and manage Urban Living, a boutique Seattle and Bellevue real estate brokerage. I love lofts, floating homes, new construction, and mid-century moderns, but I will help you buy or sell just about anything!

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