What Now
Well all the numbers seem to be stabilizing. I doubt that we will see any significant increases in pricing until the overall economy gets better but at least from a seller’s point of view you know what price you need to sell at. The main issue for East Bellevue is to keep a handle on the amount of foreclosed and short sale inventory. If you see overall distressed inventory rising it will put downward pressure on prices. The farther outlying areas of King, Pierce and Snohomish counties are still seeing foreclosed and short sale inventory growing so it looks like there is at least one more leg down. However East Bellevue has one of the lowest ratios of distressed inventory to overall inventory of any market.
If you are a buyer you may be somewhat frustrated in East Bellevue as most of the good homes under $400,000 are pretty well picked over. So expecting to get a great deal on an under $500,000 home may not be realistic. However East Bellevue is a great location and over the long term if you have to pay up a little bit to get in it is probably worth it. The name of the game for the under $500,000 buyer is to now get the best home with the most upgrades and the least work. The reason for this is that it is hard to get a good enough deal now to justify a lot of repair so go for the home that has had a good long term owner with a low mortgage balance and the owner has done a great job of maintaining and upgrading the home should be the ones you are focusing on.
The area where there is still deals is the new construction over $750,000 and the more expensive homes, particularly waterfront. I have seen prices on some nice West Lake Sammamish Homes water front homes that I havne’t seen in almost 10 years.