Weekly Wrapup
The big news is the earthquake; time to really get that preparedness kit ready! And if you’re in an older home, seriously consider earthquake retrofitting. Since we live in a floating home, we didn’t notice it, but always wonder what will happen to us on the water in the event of a big one…
In terms of what the market has been doing, the week of the 4th of July was a quiet one with about 140 new listings but not surprisingly this week was a busy one with over 300 new listings. We were one of those, bringing on a new listing, a loft at the Talisman and are still looking for the right buyer for our two-bedroom at Belltown Court (it’d make a great Airbnb!), a historic home at Hawthorne Square and an end-of-dock houseboat that’d be so much fun right now (just reduced to $299k!) In other real estate news, 900 condo units are being built to the east of Insignia, the Slater is reverting back to apartments and a boutique building with $4m+ units will debut in Kirkland.
The numbers for June are out and surprisingly for single-family homes the median price declined, as did the number of new listings hitting the market. Remarkably we saw the median price for condos increase, though the number of new listings declined like they did for single-family homes. Our theory is that given the surprise market collapse after the May long weekend in 2018 many agents advised their sellers to get on the market early this year. We’ll definitely be watching to see how many new listings hit the market in the back half of the year. Anecdotally, a lot of new buyers have reached out to us the past couple weeks when typically our buyer business would be slowing. And many of them are interested in new construction – either condos or single-family homes.
What caught our eye this week was a Paul Hayden Kirk mid-century that is already pending, a unique penthouse loft at Monique that I almost bought when I was in my 20s, a Madison Park mid-century and across the water, a NW modern on Bainbridge Island. And if you have a soft spot for huge a-frames, like I do, don’t miss this one in Kirkland.
p.s. a condo at the Four Seasons just closed for $9.2m which is what it sold for brand new in 2008.
