Buyers are cherry picking the best Sequim homes in this market, and that means the best houses in the best neighborhoods are selling now.   I know this, because I just sold two.

There is a lot of talk and much in the press about the large inventories out there. There are more Sequim homes on the market and fewer selling than last year, and foreclosures are only adding to that inventory. As a result there is a perception by the public at large that buyers have all these choices, like a smorgasbord, and that buyers can just sit back and take their time, because they have all the time in the world.

Sequim Homes are Selling

Buyers don’t have all the time in the world to find their ideal home in the inventory of Sequim homes for sale, and here is the revelation. Right now buyers are cherry picking. Of course, they are cherry picking. Why not? This is a time to find a good deal. But when I say buyers are cherry picking, I mean something much more, something with far greater implications for buyers.

The process for a buyer is fairly standard. First, buyers spend a lot of time on the Internet filtering through large numbers of homes in the MLS online. They narrow down the possibilities after days, or more often over a period of weeks, and then they start driving around or they contact a Realtor.

Then a buyer may look at a dozen houses with their Realtor, or maybe even two dozen. Out of 10 to 15 houses, the houses they have pulled out of the MLS after filtering with their parameters, they may find one that would make them say, “Yes, we could live in this home. This could be home.”

Sequim Homes Appeal to Many Retirees

Buyers are not all that different.In other words, 100 buyers tend to gravitate toward the same houses, the nicer homes in nicer neighborhoods.

Buyers are cherry picking the best houses in the best neighborhoods at the best prices. This makes 90% of the existing inventory irrelevant or not part of most Buyers’ universe of potential homes. Since the cherry picked homes are not part of the 90% of remaining homes for sale in the MLS, the available inventory that is suitable for a particular buyer is really quite small, perhaps only 10% of the actual inventory.

In Clallam County, we have about 800 single family residences in the MLS for sale, including prime Sequim homes for sale. If I am right about this cherry picking process that is going on right now, that would mean there are probably only 80 Sequim homes that might actually be suitable for you. But then we both know that you would narrow that list of 80 Sequim homes down very quickly, because that includes all homes at all prices in all neighborhoods. So by the time we filter that list of 80 homes based on your parameters, that will leave something like 20 homes on the market that might be suitable for you.

How long do you think those 20 homes will last when all other buyers like you are doing the same thing you are doing–cherry picking the best homes in the best neighborhoods at the best prices?

I would never suggest a person should get in a rush and buy one of the Sequim homes for sale out of a false sense of urgency. One should always take one’s time and try to make wise decisions, and that includes buying your next home. But if you think you have all the time in the world, may I suggest that in three to six months, more or less, the ideal home you would have bought will have already been cherry picked, and the best homes will not be for sale for a long long time. You may be left with the remaining 90% of the inventory, and settling for something less than your ideal retirement home is not a very attractive idea to most people.

Sequim Homes Unique

Here’s a question for you to consider. Do you want a home that is someone else’s idea of a a dream home with their perfect floor plan and kitchen design? Or is your dream home going to be perfectly suited for you and your preferences? You can see why many people are still choosing to build their retirement home, rather than buy an existing home that was someone else’s dream. Building your own home right now may cost somewhat more than buying an existing home that is under valued, but if you expect to live the next 10 to 30 years in your retirement home, what price do you put on comfort and convenience for the rest of your life?

By the way, interest rates have bottomed out in my opinion, and they are getting ready to start a steady climb upward, and with the billions of dollars being pumped into our economy by the Feds, you can expect at some point soon, we will begin to see recovery, which means a slow but steady inflation in prices. If you’re expecting prices or interest rates to go lower, think again.

If I were going to buy or build a home, and I was prepared to start, I would not delay.  And if I was going to buy an existing home, I would keep in mind that the best of the best Sequim homes are selling.

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If you search for real estate in Sequim or Port Angeles, this is real time breaking news you won’t read anywhere else but here! There’s a new and exciting and very powerful search engine you can use absolutely free to search for real estate, or anything for that matter, right now from the comfort of your desk on your own computer. Just go to Leapfish.com, and type in a phrase like, “Port Angeles Custom Home Builder” without the quotes, and you’ll get website results as you type as well as blog results, image results, and video results. This is even better than Google’s search!

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Port Angeles Homes For Sale and Sequim Homes For Sale:   The whole business is changing.   How people buy and sell real estate has been dramatically evolving, and recently the momentum of this evolution has been accelerating.   There are three ways this change is obvious.

1.   When you want to sell your home, it’s no longer simply a matter of listing it with a Realtor and having your Realtor post your listing in the MLS.   That’s still important, but the MLS is no longer the powerful monopoly it once was.   Realtors no longer have a monopoly on the real estate databases, and the flow of information has been blown wide open on the Internet.   And those newspaper advertisement to sell your home?   They don’t work like they used to.

2.   When you want to buy a home you are no longer forced into calling a salesman or going to their office.   Now you can search the Internet and even search the MLS entirely on your own without any annoying sales people pressuring you to work with them.   In fact, the Internet is the only good way to find your next home, because the newspapers only have a handful of listings advertised.   Your ideal home is almost certainly not advertised in the newspaper when you happen to read it that Sunday.   Remember, the goal of advertising homes for sale in the newspaper is not to sell those homes, because any experienced Realtor will tell you they don’t, but to get you to call that Realtor so they can sell you another house (which you could have simply found on the Internet).   I’m sorry if these truths seem a bit harsh, but wouldn’t you as a buyer or seller like to know how things really work?

3.   Marketing and advertising real estate has really changed of late.   Advertising listings in newspapers has become so ineffective that Realtors all around the country have either substantially reduced their advertising, or in the case of many I know, they no longer waste money advertising listings in the newspapers.   Why?   They aren’t getting calls from those ads.   It doesn’t work like it used to, and it’s expensive.   Over 80% of all home buyers start their search on the Internet now.   For areas like Sequim and Port Angeles where a majority of our buyers come from out of the area, especially California, Arizona, Nevada, and Texas, these buyers are not even reading the local newspaper or the local real estate magazines.   They use the Internet.   But using the Internet to sell homes is not for the uninitiated.   It has gotten extremely competitive, technologically very complicated, and requires a multitude of skills.   (Sure, anyone can post a listing on a FSBO service or on Craigslits, but that is not even close to effective Internet marketing and search engine optimization.   There is much much more to effective Internet marketing.   Much more.)

As a professional in real estate for 30 years (real estate lawyer and Realtor), I can say without any doubt that the evolution of the technology (with all the economic changes, too) of buying and selling real estate today has not reduced the need for a professional Realtor–it has increased the need.   But most buyers and sellers don’t know this.   The game hasn’t gotten simpler: it has changed.

What the Internet and the all changes in how real estate is bought and sold has done is provide new tools and efficient ways to buy and sell, but this has not eliminated the need for the knowledge and experience to use these tools to help buyers negotiate the best price and terms and to help sellers efficiently market and sell their homes in the least amount of time for the best price.   As I have said elsewhere, there are many traps for the unwary.   (Like the dangerous trap shown above in the photo which I took at Crystal Mountain Ski Resort.)

Read more of my articles on this blog on marketing, sales, prices, negotiating like an expert, for sale by owners, listing, legal issues, and more.   Go to:   SequimRealEstateNews.com.   You can use the search feature to find what you are looking for, and that will help you filter through the hundreds of articles.

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I represent the buyer of a nice home in Sequim, and this buyer is eminently qualified for a loan.   The first challenge this buyer has is that a credit score of 650 is the new 750.   In other words, if you needed a 650 normally to get a loan, now you need something much higher, like 750.   Numerous clients who are very qualified for a loan, have their income verified, and jump through all the hoops are finding out that the loan underwriters have gotten so paranoid, they are delaying and killing perfectly legitimate transactions with perfectly legitimate buyers.

The second challenge also has to do with loan underwriters.   They are rejecting good conservative appraisals completed by licensed and experienced appraisers who have excellent records.   I have a seller who is being forced to pay for a second appraisal right now, even though the first appraisal met all standards for home appraisals, was done by a professional, and is a conservative appraisal with many true comparables at higher prices.   In fact, the appraiser did a great job gathering many solid comps so the underwriter would have no problem with evidence.   Guess what?   Underwriters are going to have problems no matter what you submit right now.   They are truly paranoid to the 10th degree, beyond rational.

A year or two ago this transaction would have been closed already, but now loan underwriters have gone to extremes.   It’s one thing to make sure that fundamental requirements have been met in the loan application and verification process, and to make sure that all the “T’s” have been crossed and all the “I’s” dotted, but that’s not the problem now.   Now loan underwriters are the problem.   If you’re thinking about buying, the market has changed the way things are done.   Plan for it.

I also think this is no longer a time when any Tom, Dick, or Jane real estate agent or loan representative is as good as any other.   You wouldn’t take a raft down the Colorado rapids with someone who just learned to sit in a boat as your guide, would you?   Then, if I may ask the rhetorical question, “Why hire a “someone” to help you negotiate the purchase of a house in a market full of traps for the unwary.   You know I mean, a person (man or woman) who is inexperienced and who got his/her license because it sounded like an easy way to make money.     It was in 2005, but not anymore.   My recommendation is that you carefully do your due diligence when hiring a Realtor or a Loan Rep.   It’s your money and your investment, and this is a dangerous market for buyers and sellers.   After all, it doesn’t cost you another penney to hire the best, most experienced Realtor out there.   Why not do it?

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If you’re buying a Sequim or Port Angeles home, or getting ready to have one built, you can wait this market out, or you can take advantage of the lowest interest rates any of us have seen in our adult lifetimes. Under 5% for a 30 year fixed rate mortgage? Are you serious? Yes.

I’ve written elsewhere about Why Building a Home Now is Smart, and that it’s A Buyer’s Market in Sequim, and I wrote articles here about Low Interest Rates and The Perfect Storm, but who would ever have guessed that interest rates would be at levels as low as half a century ago?

I believe that when the market starts to breath again, inflation will slowly bring prices upward, but one of the first economic variables to go up is usually interest rates, so don’t be surprised if they dip as the are now to sub-five percent, and then level and start to climb in 2009.

If you are going to build or buy an existing house, now is nearly the Perfect Storm opportunity with interest rates at historical lows.   A low monthly mortgage payment.   That sounds kind of nice, doesn’t it?

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It is settled.   Our next President is Hussein Obama.   This has been one of the most intense elections America has seen, period.   We had record voter turnouts, and more passion and involvement than I’ve ever seen in a presidential election.   There was a lot at stake here, too, including the economy, taxation, health care, and the war, just to name a few.   Americans have been wound up tighter than a banjo spring.   So now what?

Be encouaged.   We still live in the greatest country on the face of the earth.   We are in very challenging times.   We have a war to bring to an end.   We have a banking system in shambles, a real estate market that has fallen flat on its face, and the automobile industry has crashed.   But America has seen bad times before, and we have come back again and again.

As I have written elsewhere, in every crisis there is opportunity.   Right now the opportunity is for buyers of real estate and buyers of stocks.   Not just any real estate and not just any stock.   As with all purchases, there must be due diligence and prudence.   We all know that there will be fortunes made in this next 12 to 24 months by those investing in the right real estate and the right stocks.

I strongly urge anyone who is in a position to buy real estate in this incredible buyer’s market to get good advice, use a professional you can trust who has knowledge, experience, and integrity.   In my opinion, if you have the funds and pass up this opportunity to buy,  years from now you will look back with regret at missing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.   Our economy, our real estate market, and our political environment will never be in this perfect storm again.   Not in our lifetimes.   You may have lost money in this past year as prices for almost everything went down, especially in the stock market, but don’t miss the opportunity to profit by the huge upsurge in the market that is coming.

My personal formula for success in these coming months is based on proven principles and values:   hard work, focus, diligence and persistence, creativity, positive attitude, and faith.

Practice these things, and I can guarantee you that in 12 to 24 months you will join me in saying, “Everything is okay.   Life is good.”   And you will count your blessings every day.   By the way, don’t wait until then to count your blessings.   Count them today and every day.   We do have much to be thankful for in this great country.

Don’t let adverse circumstances discourage you.   I learned long ago that if circumstances or people were the determinants of my happiness, I would be unhappy the majority of my life.   I choose to be content and happy every day.   How about you?

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