The monthly Ballard real estate recap

Long time Ballard resident and local Real Estate Broker Sharon Giampietro is back with her monthly post to keep readers informed about the local real estate market. Giampietro comes from a long line of realtors and has lived in Ballard for 30 years. She is currently a Broker at Windermere Real Estate in Greenwood.

Check out Giampietro’s recap of how Greater Ballard fared this month below:

Housing availability has not changed sharply in the last month, with only a slight rise in active condo listings and a slight drop in active home listings. We are still in the summer months when real estate activity is traditionally slower, as it is a popular vacation time for buyers and sellers. The number of new construction homes for sale was down, but with more new condos coming on the market, there is a welcome increase in inventory. To compare, in all categories the amount of available housing was up from last year, a good trend.

Highlighting the increased demand for housing, a recent report by Dupree + Scott, a market research company, states that so far this year migration into our greater Puget Sound area is up 18% over last year. With a little more than 61,000 people having moved into the Puget Sound area this year (beating out last year’s number of 52,000 at this time) housing demand has grown, helping to explain the continued rise in prices.

The greater Ballard area continues to be a popular place to buy, making regional trends more pronounced here. The average price for a home last month was $587,000, an almost 3% rise from June’s average price of $571,000. We are at about an 18% rise in housing costs this year compared to a 10% rise in all of 2013. Some brokers anticipate seeing a small drop in prices in the coming months, and in fact condo and new construction prices were down a bit this month. Next month’s report will tell more.

A recent article in the Seattle Times stated that in the second quarter the greater Seattle metro area was 6^th nationally in the share of homes that sold above asking price. The first five areas were all in the SF-Bay area. Many home buyers have stories to tell of bidding wars, pre-inspections, and striking of contingencies. Could our Seattle market be any hotter?

In residential housing the average length of time on the market was 13 days as opposed to 18 days in June. Only two sales this month were bank-owned or short sale, consistent with a continued slide in this type of housing.

Greater Ballard is Greenwood, Green Lake, Wallingford and other close by neighborhoods identified as “705” in the NWMLS.  All residential and condo numbers are rounded to the nearest thousand and unless noted does not include new construction. Statistics not compiled or published by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.