First Time Homebuyers in the Seattle Market Beware

It’s a Home Seller’s market as you may know here in 2017. With home prices escalating at a faster rate than anywhere else in the entire US, or at least within the top three most competitive home buying markets nationally, you’ve absolutely got to have a strategy and all your documents ready to go with a stellar real estate agent-lender team aboard if you’re hoping to find and secure anything close to what you have in your head as the perfect house!

Luck might play in your favor, but luck is just where preparation and opportunity meet. So there’s that.

So it’s your first home in the Seattle market and you’re excited to find something for your family, you and your partner, or just for you, but the road is longer than you may think. And getting longer.

From 2013 to 2017 the Seattle home buying market and specifically the first time homebuyer market is continuing to be jeopardized by the job market and population growth of semi-affluent and/or solid income earners who are flooding the housing market. This flooding has a direct impact on (shortening) inventory levels, as does the amount of foreign buyers and investors looking to secure an opportunity that’s producing 9 to 12% (or sometimes more) appreciation year over year with on end in sight!

That’s right…there’s no end in sight to this madness and steady increase in prices and extreme (yes, very extreme) shortage of homes on market (or inventory). From the best analysts we hear from and best research we’re headed quickly into becoming another San Francisco, New York or Los Angeles. Basically, Seattle got what it’s been asking for for many years, to be a bigger city. With this of course comes more traffic, more competitive housing markets, job markets, etc, etc. You get the point, but just beware there’s no ‘bubble’ coming.