NFR How's the housing market where you live?

[swimmy]

Here in Bozeman it is silly. We own a couple of properties and very grateful. However we are looking to sell our primary residence and buy a new place.

As of Jan 5, median cost of home was $782,500.

We found a house we liked last Friday, made an offer $80k over asking, they had 15 offers in 48 hrs, and we weren't even top 5. Hopefully someone that was in more need than us got it. We will continue to look.

How are things in your hood?

 

[Long_Rod_Silvers]

It's bananas in Seattle area.

A good friend of mine moved to Idaho in December. They listed on a Friday and had a cash offer for $250K over listing that same day. That wasn't even their best offer....

‘Brutal,’ ‘crazy’ housing market has Seattle-area homes selling half-million over asking price

A wild housing market is forcing many Seattle-area home buyers to pay $300,000 to nearly $1 million over asking price.

www.kiro7.com

 

[patrick1]

I’m a few miles outside Boston and we were able to “just” do 3% over list to get our first and only offer accepted on a condo. Median here is similar to Bozeman.

 

[brownheron]

Seattle is similar but maybe not quite as bad as last summer.

We wanted to move further out so we listed our place in the Seward Park area of So. Seattle last spring. We reviewed offers after 5 days and contracted for 35% over asking price, with $100K eanest money, inspection and appraisal waived and an all-cash deal. Was an 80% price increase over about 5 years of ownership.

 

[troutpocket]

I know a couple people who have cashed out of WA and moved to the deep south and Great Lakes areas. Housing is cheap and cost of living quite reasonable. Pick a city with a hub airport and use your extra cash to travel when the weather sucks.

 

[Zak]

I moved to coastal Washington, North of Seattle, from Vermont in 2019. We owned our home in Montpelier (Vermont's quaint capital). It was a 3bdrm 2bath on half an acre. Nice house, nice landscaping with established blueberry patch, apple trees and perennials. Nice view. We sold it for $275K and were happy with that price. We'll use that to buy a house in Washington, we said. Little did we know that our total selling price would barely be a down payment here. We'll be renting forever, I think.

 

[NRC]

My wife and I bought our first home in Tacoma last June. While Tacoma is still significantly cheaper than pretty much anyplace north, it was still a shitshow. We had toured probably 30 places and put down 9 or 10 offers before we finally got it done. Inventory was really low. Places were going for as much as 30% over asking. People were regularly throwing down 50% or more in cash. It was super demoralizing. Eventually got ‘er done, but only because we were very fortunate to have enough for a sizeable down payment, plus we found a stale listing that was actually pretty awesome but had slipped off the radar.

 

[swimmy]

I wish I had a better understanding of what drives housing at a macro level.

I mean, where are all of these people coming from to create such high demand?

 

[Evan B]

I'll just say that buying my first house 10yrs ago is a decision I'm so glad I made. Had I not done that, I likely would have been permanently priced out of the market.

 

[Long_Rod_Silvers]

City Slickers

America's largest cities saw the sharpest population losses during the pandemic, new census data shows | Brookings

This analysis demonstrates that big cities with populations exceeding 250,000 showed lower population growth in the year the pandemic began than in the previous year, and nearly one-third of them registered their lowest annual growth in the decade.

www.brookings.edu

 

[Canuck from Kansas]

I wish I had a better understanding of what drives housing at a macro level.

I mean, where are all of these people coming from to create such high demand?

Cashing in from the Bay area, at least that's what is happening here.

We're actually thinking of cashing in from here (Bend, OR) - we bought at the bottom of the crash in 2012, and moving to a "less" desirable area.

Cheers

 

[mcswny]

Still a shit show here in Portland.

 

[Dloy]

Liz and I have been interested in the San Juans for a long time, but only started looking at RE about 18 months ago. Well, that’s out! Houses that are worth say 700k are going for 1.5 to 2m, and they’re getting full cash offers (with no inspection) within 2 days of listing. Fixer uppers are a million. Saw one place get bid up a million, don’t recall if that was in the SJs, or Seattle. Our house has risen steadily in the last 22 years and is appraised at 5 times our purchase. We have no intention to ever leave though, other than in a box.

 

[Evan B]

Still a shit show here in Portland.

I'm out in Gresham. My house has appreciated about 40% since I bought it in 2017. Completely bonkers.

 

[jasmillo]

I bought my house on Bainbridge Island in 2013. Since then, if you believe Zillow or Redfin, the value is now 2.5 times more than we paid for it….in 7 years. Completely nuts. With new covid driven work flexibility, we’ve thought of moving and have looked at Bozeman as well as a number of other places. I just cannot bring myself to pay the prices being asked nowadays in some areas. I also think places like MT might be particularly risky from an investment perspective. I wonder how many transplants will want to stick it out over a few tough winters and I wonder how much was speculative during the boom that happened. Here’s to hoping the Montana bubble bursts well before the Seattle area one does so I can have my cake and eat it too …

 

[longputt]

Rumors about raising capital gains taxes and elimination of the 1031 like kind exchange also moved some markets quickly.

 

[GAT]

The price of a place in Corvallis is so high that 80% of those who work in the city live somewhere else. Benton County is on a par with the Portland area for housing expense. We could sell our dinky little house for 200K more than we paid for it but then where would we live?

Due to the elevated price of housing here, they consider the entire town a gated community.

 

[swimmy]

If things stay like this, man our kids are screwed.

 

[Driftless Dan]

What I have read, and I hasten to add that this may not be the full cause, is that real estate mutual funds are buying up houses then renting them back out, tightening up the real estate market.

Home building prices have skyrocketed as well. I don't know if lumber prices have slipped from their crazy heights of a year ago, but in a few locations I'm looking at, there have been no homes built for a year. And this is in the countryside, not in the burbs, where every available lot may have been gone for some time.

Even here in Chicagoland, where home prices have been more or less flat for a decade, prices are heating up again.

 

[Tom Butler]

It's bananas in Seattle area.

Mom got her house in the north end 3mo. before I was born in the early 60's for $16,500. Now it's over 3/4 mil.