Inland Northwest's Real Estate Adventure

Shared from Keeping Current Matters Is The Recent Dip In Interest Rates Here To Stay? Interest rates for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage climbed consistently throughout 2018 until the middle of November. After that point, rates returned to levels that we saw in August to close out the year at 4.55%, according to  Freddie Mac’s  Primary Mortgage Market Survey . After the first week of 2019, rates have continued their downward trend. As  Freddie Mac’s Chief Economist  Sam Khater notes, this is great news for homebuyers. He states, “Mortgage rates declined to start the new year with the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage dipping to 4.51 percent. Low mortgage rates combined with decelerating home price growth should get prospective homebuyers excited to buy.” In some areas of the country, the combination of rising interest rates and rising home prices had made some first-time buyers push pause on their home searches. But with more inventory coming to mark...

The Best Time To List Your House? TODAY! You may have heard that the housing market is softening. There is no doubt that buyer traffic has decreased. There are fewer purchasers in the market than there were last month and at this time last year. What you may not have heard, however, is that there is still a severe shortage of listing inventory in many regions of the country. In a  recent interview  discussing the housing market,  First American’s Chief Economist  Mark Fleming put it simply: “The biggest challenge is really the availability of supply.” When we look at available inventory numbers released by the  National Association of Realtors  (NAR), we see that the actual number of homes for sale has decreased in each of the last five months. What does this mean to you as a seller? The best time to sell is when there is less competition. That guarantees you a better price and fewer hassles in the transaction. Bottom Line ...

Buying A Vacation Property? Now Is A Good Time! Every year around this time, many homeowners begin the process of preparing their homes in case of extreme winter weather. Some others skip winter all together by escaping to their vacation homes in a warmer climate. For those homeowners staying at their first residence,  AccuWeather  warns: “The late-week cold shot should fade next week, but this is a warning shot for winter’s return late in the month and early February.” Given this, it’s time to go and stock up on winter weather supplies! However, if you’re tired of shoveling snow and dealing with the cold weather, maybe it’s time to consider obtaining a vacation home! According to the  Investment & Vacation Home Buyers 2018 Report  by  NAR : “ 72% of vacation property owners and 71% of investment property owners believe now is a good time to buy .” It’s time to take advantage of the equity in your home. As the latest  Equity Report...

Why you shouldn’t “wait until spring” to buy a home! It will save you $$ and headache! Based on prices, mortgage rates and rising rents, there may have never been a better time to purchase a home than right now. Here are some reasons why you should consider buying now instead of when the Spring market hits. Price Increases  – The costs of building are continually going up. Especially if you are going to buy new construction this year, NOW is a way better time to do so before the builders raise their prices for the spring Market. If you are a first time buyer, you will probably pay more both in price and interest rate if you wait until the spring Mortgage Rates  – It is likely that you have heard about interest rates in the past year. The talk has been that they are going to keep rising little by little and most economists believe that when the spring market rolls around and our economy is still prosperous the interest rates are going to make significant increase ov...

Selling Your Home? Make Sure The Price Is Right! If you’ve ever watched  “The Price is Right,”  you know that the only way to win is to be the one to correctly guess the price of the item you want without going over! That means your guess must be just slightly under the retail price. In today’s shifting real estate market, where more inventory is coming to market and home values are projected to appreciate at lower rates, homeowners will not be able to price their homes as aggressively as they were able to just last year. They will have to employ the same strategy:  be the closest without going over! As we have explained  before , pricing your home at or slightly below market value actually increases the number of buyers who will see your home in their search! Over the last six months, more inventory has come to market while the months’ supply of inventory available has dropped. This means that the demand for homes to buy is still very strong througho...

Home Sales Expected To Continue Increasing In 2019 Freddie Mac ,  Fannie Mae,  and the  Mortgage Bankers Association  are all projecting that home sales will increase nicely in 2019. Below is a chart depicting the projections of each entity for the remainder of 2018, as well as for 2019. As we can see,  Freddie Mac ,  Fannie Mae,  and the  Mortgage Bankers Association  all believe that homes sales will increase steadily over the next year. If you are a homeowner who has considered selling your house recently, now may be the best time to put it on the market. If you are looking to purchase a home in 2019, or even in 2018, Please reach out to me and let's see what I can do to help you.  Jeremy Lemm 509-217-9904 jjlemmrealtor@gmail.com

Housing Market: Another Gigantic Difference Between 2008 And 2018 Some are attempting to compare the current housing market to the market leading up to the “boom and bust” that we experienced a decade ago. They look at price appreciation and conclude that we are on a similar trajectory, speeding toward another housing crisis. However, there is a major difference between the two markets. Last decade, while demand was being artificially created by extremely loose lending standards, a tremendous amount of inventory was coming to the market to satisfy that demand. Below is a graph of the inventory of homes available for sale leading up to the 2008 crash. A normal market should have approximately 6 months supply of housing inventory. As we can see, that number jumped to over 11 months supply leading up to the housing crisis. When questionable mortgage practices ceased, and demand dried up, there was a glut of inventory on the market which caused prices to drop as ther...