Affordable Housing

I try to refrain myself from talking the market as it tends not to be a very appealing subject for a reader that is not currently hoping to buy or sell a home. The market is also quite different from one place to another and even within Redmond we have several slightly differing markets, let alone looking at the entire Eastside, Seattle Metropolitan or King County. Also, it depends on your perspective, what is it that you’re hoping to accomplish, how much money do you have, or what kinda home you’re living in, so there really is no simple answer.

If I tell you that in 2019 in Seattle Eastside 10,668 homes were sold for the average price of $978K it may or may not pertain to you, your home and your needs. If we compare with 2018, at quick glance one could come into the conclusion that our market has been pretty stable for the past two years, and my crystal ball tells me that at this moment, we see no change in the near future as the big tech companies are expanding to Bellevue, world events push our mortgage interest rates down and people keep moving to the area due to our flourishing tech jobs. It will be interesting to see how the spring market pans out, as the growing inventory that we had a year ago is now gone and days on market, seem to be going down again with homes sold in hours after coming into the market. To set this into some sort of perspective in Dallas-Fort Worth area, 108,000 homes switched owners in 2019. Yes, it’s a bigger area with a population of 6.8M, where as Seattle Metropolitan is somewhere around 3.9M residents. But just for a moment, look at it and let it sink in. 108,000 homes in DFW versus 25,963 in the entire Puget Sound Area.

The biggest challenge is our lack of affordable housing for first time home buyers and those of us that aren’t Senior Directors, Principal Architects or VPs. I just recently looked for listings at a more affordable price point. I took a snip-it of the map for you, as it really is quite eye opening. Remember, the main job markets are in Seattle, Bellevue and Redmond areas.

My son is working on his passion project at school. It’s about homelessness in the Seattle area. Yes, the problem stretches far beyond affordable housing and the problem would not be solved by us being able to appoint a home for everyone of the approximately 12,500 homeless (according to Magnus), but lack of affordable housing is a growing problem that needs to be solved before this explodes in our hands. This is an issue that hits those that are single parents, families with two lower incomes and children as for most assistance programs there are wait lists that are several years long, and you only qualify once you have nothing left, once you are forced to walk in the doors of a shelter as you can no longer afford the rent of the cheapest apartment complex in the area, the one where you can you neighbors talk through the wall.

In many parts of the country or even in parts of our state, $500K is not an affordable home, it’s a great home or even a big home. Unfortunately, we live in an area where under $500K is affordable, under a million is what most people mean when they are looking for a home and luxury doesn’t start until we climb way over the $2 million mark. In most places a multiple offer situation and a 48-hour sales time for a $1.5 million home is unheard of, here it can be reality.