Point Ruston sales center at Bell Harbor Marina - Pier 66!

Open daily 11am to 5pm until June 3rd!
www.pointruston.com

View a historic ferry, buy a new condo

By AUBREY COHEN
SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF

Point Ruston developer Mike Cohen came to visit Seattle this week, riding his sales center up from Pierce County.

"We knew we didn't want to put it in a mobile home or a trailer," Cohen said. "If you build a really nice sales center, it tends to always be in the way."

The solution was the former Motor Vessel Steilacoom ferry, which R. T. Wallace of Hado Inc., of Las Vegas, bought on eBay from Pierce County for $49,500 in 2007 and sold to the developer, who reopened it as a sales center in March 2008.

Capt. Tom Palmer, who was Pierce County's original captain for the ferry and served in the role for 20 years, drove the boat up to Seattle's Bell Harbor Marina, where it is scheduled to stay until June 4.

The ferry ended its public life as the backup boat on the run between Steilacoom and Anderson and Ketron islands but started out, in 1936, in Bath, Maine, as the Aquidneck.

It served the Navy during World War II, ferrying vehicles to and from Ford Island at Pearl Harbor and also hauling other items, such as torpedoes.

Pierce County acquired the boat in 1976 and booted it to its backup role in 1994, when a larger ferry, the Christine Anderson, went into service. Pierce County put the Steilacoom II, a sister ship of the Christine Anderson, into service in 2007.

Cohen covered over the carports with surplus Boeing aluminum and installed the sorts of things buyers see in any sales center: a kitchen with granite counters and stainless-steel appliances, hemlock floors and moldings, tile bathrooms and a room filled with all the available fixture, cabinet and tile variations.

But the old ferry benches remain upstairs, along with signs spelling out the rules for passengers. The original captain's wheel was already replaced with a joystick-controlled hydraulic steering system, but Cohen has bought an old wheel to put in for show.

There still is an old-fashioned metal funnel sticking up -- the kind used to draw air into a ship -- but that turns out to be an accoutrement Cohen added for effect. He tried turning on the old floodlights once, but blew a breaker.

Cohen saw the ferry as the perfect way to promote his development because the project is all about the water. It sits on 97 acres along one mile of Tacoma's shoreline, between North Ruston Way and Point Defiance Park.

The site is the former home to an ASARCO smelter and has undergone more than $100 million worth of cleanup so far.

The development plan ultimately calls for around 1,000 residences -- including condos, apartments, townhouses and detached houses -- along with offices, retail space, a movie theater, parks and a 10-acre waterwalk along the shore.

The first phase -- 143 homes in two buildings -- is now under construction. The development has 35 homes reserved or with purchase and sales agreements.

"We think we're outperforming the market," Cohen said.

For link to article, please visit http://www.seattlepi.com/business/406620_ferry28.html

Seattle on the Today Show's list of five markets most poised for a housing market recovery

Barbara Cocoran, the Today Show's real estate commentator ranks Seattle at fourth on the list of five markets most poised for a housing market recovery.

See the video at the following link http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/vp/30825142#30825142

Point Ruston arrives in Seattle tomorrow! Come visit!

Click image for full size.

www.pointruston.com
253.759.8400

Quote of the Day

The optimist sees the roses and not its thorns; the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious of the rose. - Kahlil Gibran

Point Ruston Broker Open: Thursday, May 28th!

Join us aboard our historic ferryboat sales center, moored on downtown Seattle's waterfront for ONE WEEK ONLY!

Thursday May 28th • 11am to 2pm

Refreshments will be served.

Bell Harbor Marina - Pier 66 - Next to Anthony's Restaurant in downtown Seattle

www.pointruston.com

253.759.8400

Seabrook offers special: Buy 1 night - Get 1 FREE!

On Washington’s Pacific Coast, the only rubber you’ll burn is on your beach bicycle or your flip-flops. Seabrook, a simple, scenic 2.5-hour drive from Seattle, is a new beach town near Olympic National Park, with pristine beaches, charming cottages and a friendly, village appeal.

If you’ve yet to hear of Seabrook, here is your chance to soak in Seabrook’s idyllic settings including beach cruisers, easy beach access, parks, playgrounds, shuffleboard, horseshoes, fire pits and on-site Northwest dining at Front Street Café.

For stays through the end of June*, Seabrook is extending a special Solution Partners NW Buy 1 night, Get 1 night FREE offer for a relaxing stay in one of their cozy beach bungalows.

To take advantage of the offer, simply browse the available cottages at http://www.seabrookcottagerentals.com/ then call us at 1-877-779-9990 and use the promo code ‘SPNW’.

For more information on Seabrook, including the New Urbanist town plan and traditional Northwest architecture, visit http://www.seabrookwa.com/.

*offer excludes holidays.

Man caves let guys hide out with friends and toys

Trend: Husbands fine refuge in room for them

C.R. Roberts
The News Tribune
May 13, 2009

In the man cave you will find no open fire pit strewn with the gnawed bones of mastodons – although there might be a Jenn-Air grill over by the mini-fridge.

On the walls you won’t see fuzzy stick-figure depictions of woolly bison, but there’s undoubtedly a big-screen TV.

In the man cave.

Outside Port Orchard, Michael Von Ditter stores the majority of his collection of rare automobiles in his newly built version, once merely a two-car garage.

“My cars were in storage,” Von Ditter said last week. He had considered securing a hangar at Tacoma Narrows Airport as a place to store his collection, but he decided instead “to get this place built to where it was usable.”

The place of which he speaks – his own man cave – comprises a $200,000 project built by Tacoma designer Charley Boss.

“I specialize in whatever people want,” Boss said. “I like to do the unique.”

Here, that means granite countertops, porcelain tile floor, a 300-bottle wine cabinet, commissioned artworks, large-screen TV and for the cars a compressed air system and an electric lift that stacks cars one above the other – the Mercedes S60, Porsche Carerra GT, McLaren SLR, Ferrari F430 and Scaglietti GT, and more.

“I spend a quarter of my time here,” Von Ditter said.

He often invites his friends into the cave. “We drink beer, watch Formula One.”

“It can be as simple as 25-grand up to however much you want to spend, if you have a certain lifestyle,” said Boss.

He has designed other such places in the South Sound.

“I think it’s a trend,” he said.

“I get a lot of traffic,” said Michael Yost, founder of mancavesite.org, an online meeting place for people interested in the phenomenon. “It’s basically the West Coast, Southwest and Northeast. My largest traffic states are California, Texas, Washington and Pennsylvania.”

When he created the site just over a year ago, Yost said he received no more than a dozen hits a day. “Now,” he said, “we’re over 300. That’s consistent. I’m getting a new ‘cave display’ more than once a week. I see this growing as the word gets out. There’s guys that have these, and they don’t know where to go.”

Yost said the term “man cave” was coined in 1992 by a reporter writing a story on a man’s remodeled basement. It has since come to mean a space or a place – a basement, attic, garage, tree house, shed – where a man can go to be a man and be with friends, or be alone, to be himself in a manly way, whatever that might mean.

“I think there’s a few factors here,” Yost said. “It’s become so dangerous to go out and enjoy yourself, drinking on the road. Guys find you can have a lot more fun staying home, invite the neighbors.”

Perhaps it’s simply a matter of marking some territory.

“The kids move out and guys finally have a place to showcase all their prized possessions,” Yost said. “It’s to give guys a place to go. A lot of the guys are married, and usually the wife has the whole house. It’s a way for a man to carve out his little piece of the pie. It’s a place where a guy can hang up his stuff. The wife and the kids can come in – and I think wives are in favor of it. It isolates the mess to one part of the house. It isolates a guy’s stuff. When she has friends over, she doesn’t have to be embarrassed. Some real estate agents are marketing extra rooms for man caves.”

One South Sound firm – Garage Plus Storage – is doing more than that.

“Own a Man Cave,” says the firm’s billboard alongside I-5 in East Tacoma.

“A lot of guys want a place where they can work on their cars, hot rods, boats,” said Karen Kostner, Garage Plus sales manager.

The concept she sells is a hybrid of storage unit, man cave and condo, a 650-unit city of heated-floor, fully secure, 100-amped, 220-volt, cable-ready units ranging in size from 320 to 990 square feet and ranging in price from just over $50,000 to just under $175,000.

It’s out on the Mountain Highway near the Roy Y and the four owners plan to break ground on June 1.

“We have about 1,700 reservations on our e-mail list,” said Michelle Simon, a partner in the $15 million venture. “We’ve been selling for a month now.”

There are plans for a billiards table and big-screen TV in the clubhouse, she said, plus showers and bathrooms, and there’s a three-acre park.

All within a community of caves.

“Men want some degree of seclusion, where they can do what they want to do, to have the freedom to do what they want to do,” said Dave Schmidt, a University Place therapist with 35 years experience counseling both women and men.

“Whether it’s a house, or a room, or the side of a mountain, they want to feel free of society’s constraints,” he said. “It’s not a home away from home, but a home within a home, where you can be who you want to be.

“It’s like a favorite hiding place.”

For link to article, please visit http://www.thenewstribune.com/business/story/739937.html

For more information, visit www.garageplusstorage.com or call 1-877-875-PLUS.

King County homes most affordable they've been in five years, study says

Another report has the area surging up the list of most expensive U.S. markets

By Aubrey Cohen
Seattlepi.com Staff
May 9, 2009

King County homes are the most affordable they've been in nearly five years, according to a new report.

The typical family made 102.5 percent of the income needed to buy the median-price resale home in the first quarter of this year, according to the new report by the Washington Center for Real Estate Research at Washington State University. First-time buyers still only made 57 percent of the needed income, the report said.

"Its reasonably affordable for a repeat home buyer," Center Director Glenn Crellin said. "It's still a real stretch for the first-time buyer, but better than it was."

Both numbers are the highest since the second quarter of 2004, when the typical family made 105.1 percent of the needed income and first-time buyers made 58.4 percent. The rates bottomed out in the third quarter of 2007, at 64.7 percent and 36.1 percent, respectively.

The center reported that the median price of a resale home in King County was $375,000, down 13.8 percent from a year earlier and 5.5 percent from the fourth quarter of 2008.

Sales fell by a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 15 percent from the prior quarter and 37.7 percent from a year earlier. The number of homes permitted for construction dropped by 68.9 percent from a year earlier (the report did not provide a seasonally adjusted quarterly change).

On Thursday, the Center for Housing Policy released a study saying the typical home in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties was not affordable to people making typical incomes in 59 of 60 jobs it examined.

Despite falling home prices last year, the area surged from being the 24th most expensive place to buy a home among more than 200 U.S. markets in 2007 to 13th last year, thanks to the fact that local home prices had not fallen nearly as much as those in many other expensive markets, the report said.

The Center for Housing Policy study compares wages for a single-income earner to the typical house price, Crellin noted. "Let's face it, the vast majority of home purchases are made by two-income households."

While construction manager was the only one of the 60 occupations that paid enough to afford the median area home price, many were over the halfway mark, meaning couples in those jobs could afford to buy.

The study was not asserting that people in these jobs should be able to afford the median-price home on their own, said Maya Brennan, research associate for the Center for Housing Policy.

Listing affordability by job can help show if, say, a teacher and police officer couple could afford the typical home, she said. "You get a sense of who exactly might be priced out of the market."

Policy makers then can consider whether these are jobs communities expect to need, Brennan said. She also noted that many families do only have one wage earner, and that's increasing with recent layoffs.

The Center for Housing Policy study defined affordable as monthly payments -- including principal, interest, taxes and insurance -- taking up no more than 28 percent income on a mortgage with a 10-percent down payment.

The Washington Center for Real Estate Research all-buyer index compared median family income to the median price and assumed a 20-percent down payment on a 30-year mortgage, with affordability as a principal and interest payment of up to 25 percent of income. The first-time buyer index used homes at 85 percent of the median price, household incomes at 70 percent of the median and a 10-percent down payment.

The Center for Housing Policy study said Seattle was the 52nd most expensive market for renters, up from 60th in 2007. It showed the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the Seattle area at $987 a month, up from $854 in 2007. The study defined rental affordability as gross rent of up to 30 percent of hourly wage.

The study also noted that many of the jobs the federal stimulus package is creating do not pay enough to afford a home.

Many of the stimulus jobs are in construction, but home prices nationwide remain out of reach for carpenters, equipment operators, long-haul truck drivers and construction laborers, the study said. It said construction laborers also struggled to pay rents in three quarters of the U.S. markets studied, while equipment operators and long-haul truck drivers were unable to afford rents in approximately one-quarter of markets.

"Contrary to popular belief, the recent decline in home prices has not resolved the nation's housing affordability problems," Jeffrey Lubell, executive director of the Center for Housing Policy, said in a news release. "Working families -- including most of the workers who will be hired as a result of federal spending in the stimulus package -- still cannot afford to buy a home in most markets, and many also struggle to afford their rents."

The study shows the need for long-term solutions, said John McIlwain, chairman of the Center for Housing Policy, senior resident fellow at the Urban Land Institute and the institute's housing chairman.

"By acquiring well-located properties made vacant through foreclosure and by instituting policies that can ensure that a modest share of future development is affordable, communities can bring housing within reach of working families," he said.

In Seattle, carpenters averaged 44 percent of the $108,843 in annual income needed to buy a median-price home, and equipment operators, long haul truck drivers and construction laborers made even less, the study said. It found all of these workers except laborers made enough to afford a two-bedroom apartment, while laborer income was below even the one-bedroom level.

San Francisco remained the most expensive place to buy or rent at the end of last year, despite the median home price falling from $770,000 in 2007 to $575,000 last year. That area's rent was $1,658 a month last year, up from $1,551 in 2007. A

reas that went from being more expensive than Seattle for buyers in 2007 to less expensive in 2008 were: Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Oakland, Santa Rosa, Salinas and Vallejo, Calif., Bethesda, Md., Naples, Fla., and Cambridge, Mass. Seattle moved into a tie with Oxnard, Calif.

Saginaw, Mich., and Youngstown, Ohio, tied for the least expensive purchase markets at the end of last year, with a median home price of $73,000. Wheeling, W.V., was the least expensive rental market, at $577 a month.

Crellin's Center for Real Estate Research study showed all-buyer affordability below 100 percent only in pricey San Juan County and Wahkiakum County, which had so few sales that a disproportionate number of high-end sales skewed the index.

First-time buyer affordability was over 100 percent in six counties and between 90 and 99.9 percent in nine others.

The increased affordability does not mean prices are set to rebound this year, Crellin said. "The prices are going to continue to exhibit some weakness."

That's especially true in middle and upper price ranges, where inventory remains high, he said. "I think that the stimulus and tax credit is going to help stabilize the bottom of the market, where we've seen the biggest problem so far."

Crellin reported that King County now has 18 months worth of supply -- the number of homes for sale divided by the current sales pace -- priced at $500,000 and up.

There's a 7.2-month supply of lower-priced homes, he said. "That's pretty much a balanced market."

For link to article, please visit http://www.seattlepi.com/local/405978_affordability07.html

Come visit the WestView Ridge Sales Center!

We have a full sales center open for you to enjoy! Everything you need to know about WestView Ridge - it's all here for you to check out!

We're open weekends from 11am to 6pm and Monday to Wednesday from 12pm to 6pm.

Directions: From I-5, take Hwy 2 over the trestle and head up the hill on 20th Street SE. Take a left into the community at 75th Avenue SE.

We hope to see you soon!

425.263.9602 • www.westviewridge.com

Pending sales of single-family homes in King County surged in April

Pending sales of single-family homes in King County surged in April, the Northwest Multiple Listing Service says.

By Eric Pyrne
Seattle Times business reporter
May 6, 2009

If the Seattle residential real-estate market is coming back to life — and that's still a big if, despite a relatively upbeat monthly report Tuesday — it's because of people like Lori Gifford.

She and her fiancé, Scott Brush Goodwin, bought their first house last month. It's a two-bedroom, one-bath former rental in the Arbor Heights neighborhood that the previous owner lost last year through foreclosure.

Goodwin and Gifford paid Washington Federal Savings $249,000 for it.

"I've been living in Seattle for 14 years, and I never really thought I could afford to buy a house," Gifford says. But when they started looking this spring, "it all kind of came together," she says.

The key elements: Lower prices. Lower mortgage-interest rates. And new incentives for first-time buyers.

The Northwest Multiple Listing Service reported Tuesday that pending single-family home sales in King County topped 2,000 in April, the first month that level has been reached since August 2007.

Pending sales — offers that have been accepted, but haven't yet closed — were up 25 percent from March, and up nearly 15 percent from April 2008.

Sales numbers were even stronger in Snohomish County, up 28 percent year over year.

Brokers said homes at the lower end of the price spectrum accounted for a disproportionate share of the surge, as did sales to first-time buyers. "Right now it's a lot busier than it was last spring," said Desiree Loughlin, associate broker at Windermere Real Estate's West Seattle office, who represented Gifford and Goodwin.

Mike Skahen, broker with Lake & Co. in Seattle, agreed. "This is the most positive market we've had in almost two years," he said. "It's been so bad."

The median price of a house sold in King County in April was $380,000, down 15 percent from April 2008. Still, that number was higher than the median price in February or March, and some brokers said it could be a sign that prices are stabilizing as demand picks up.

But sales of higher-priced homes remained sluggish, they agreed.

The median price of a condo that sold in King County in April was $250,000, down 11 percent year over year. Pending condo sales were up 42 percent from March, but down 8 percent from last April.

Pending sales usually close a month or so after offers are accepted. But the number of closed single-family home sales in King County in April — 1,004 — represented just 60 percent of the pending sales reported in March, an unusually low share.

Skahen and Matt Deasy, general manager of Windermere's Eastside operations, said that's probably because of the large number of "short sales" — sales for less than the amount the owner owes to lenders — now in the works. They can take three to four months to close, the brokers said.

Loughlin estimates short sales and bank-owned homes account for 20 percent of all sales in West Seattle.

She met Gifford and Goodwin at a seminar she hosted in January for prospective first-time buyers. The couple had looked at houses in the fall, but couldn't find anything they liked in their price range.

When they started looking again this spring, the difference in prices was "jaw-dropping," says Goodwin, who works for a travel company.

Their new house is small — 820 square feet atop an 820-square-foot unfinished basement. But it sits on a huge lot, nearly half an acre, with a peekaboo view of Puget Sound.

The land was a big part of the property's appeal, Gifford says. There's room for a workshop, maybe a greenhouse, maybe a deck someday.

The house itself has a new roof and recently remodeled kitchen, but "it looked as if people had trashed the place," Gifford says.

To qualify for the Federal Housing Administration financing they wanted, Gifford and Goodwin had to patch some walls, install gutters and make electrical repairs. But they recouped much of that expense from the bank at closing.

And, according to county records, the price they paid is just $14,000 more than what the owner who lost the house to foreclosure paid for it — in 2002.

Gifford and Goodwin closed and moved in several weeks ago — just in time to welcome their first child. Haven Goodwin was born last Tuesday.

For link to article, please visit http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2009180657_homesales06.html

The Continental Condos introduces a BLOG!

Visit http://www.thecontinentalcondos.com/blog/ to view The Continental Condos blog!!

• Learn about the history of the building.

• Discover how the homes have been lovingly-restored.

• Be the first to hear of upcoming events.

• and much more!

SPNW is very excited to follow The Continental Condos blog and we hope you enjoy it as much as we do! The Continental - Boutique Living at Bellevue Square!

Pending home sales jump 3.2%

Buyers defy expectations with an increase in sales contracts signed during March.

By Les Christie, CNNMoney.com staff writer
May 4, 2009:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Is the housing meltdown ending?

Pending home sales rose in March for the second consecutive month and are up year over year. The Pending Home Sales Index from the National Association of Realtors showed a 3.2% gain to 84.6 from February, when it was 82. The index stands 1.6% higher than a year ago.

The consensus forecast of industry experts polled by Briefing.com had predicted no increase in the index.

It may still take a while before the market gains enough momentum to firmly state that the downturn has been reversed, according to Lawrence Yun, NAR's chief economist. And, the upturn may have been boosted by the first-time homebuyers tax credit, a temporary measure that will lapse in December.

"We need several months of sustained growth to demonstrate a recovery in housing, which is necessary for the overall economy to turn around," said Yun. "This increase could be the leading edge of first-time buyers responding to very favorable affordability conditions and an $8,000 tax credit, which increases buying power even more in areas where special programs allow buyers to use it as a down payment."

The index is understood to be a forward indicator of home sales trends since it measures contracts signed, not completed sales. The up-tick may indicate that home prices have fallen low enough for buyers to get off the fence.

Feeling for the bottom

Yun is not calling a bottom yet, however, because the index is still at a relatively low level. Instead, he's looking toward the summer selling season to determine what direction the market will take. Plus, he would like the number of homes on the market to drop to a more normal level of six to seven months of supply.

"If inventory goes down - it's at just under 10 months now - to below eight months, that would mean we're on the way to a sustainable recovery," Yun said.

Anecdotal evidence indicates that trend may be happening. Realtors and other industry insiders are seeing rising open house attendance and multiple bids on some particularly desirable properties. Plus, pricing has become sharper, according to Sherry Chris, the CEO of Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate.

"Overpricing seems to be ending," she said. "Properties are coming onto the market and selling quickly."

And buyers are feeling a little more urgency, she added. In many markets, buyers have not felt any pressure to make an offer. "They said to themselves, 'I don't have to act immediately. It will still be on the market two weeks from now,'" she said. Today, buyers are more likely to bid because they perceive the market as at or near its bottom. An April Gallup Poll reported that 71% of Americans thought it was a good time to buy a house.

They don't, however, believe there will be price increases soon; three of four buyers think prices will stabilize or even decline in their areas over the next 12 months, according to Gallup.

Pat Newport, a real estate analyst for IHS Global Insight, is putting less emphasis on pending home sales than he once did for his housing market analyses. There has been a disconnect lately, he said, between the number of properties going into contract (pending home sales) and the number that actually close (existing home sales).

He speculates that this is because buyers are making offers and signing contracts but, because of financing problems, many deals are falling through.

Regional differences

The South saw the largest gain of any region, with pending home sales jumping 8.5%. Pending sales are 7.7% higher there compared with a year ago.

The Midwest gained 3.9% from February and 1.7% year-over-year. Northeast sales fell 5.7% and are off 24.1% compared with March 2008. The West dropped 1% for the month but are up 8.2% year-over-year.

Low home prices continued to help to drive sales, although NAR's affordability index actually fell 2.3% from February, when it hit a historic high. This index is based on family income, home prices and mortgage rates.

"Compared to a year ago, the typical family can pay much less in mortgage costs for the same home, or buy a better home without necessarily increasing their monthly payment," said NAR President Charles McMillan, in a prepared statement. "For buyers who've been on the sidelines and have good jobs, the market has never looked more favorable."

For link to article, please visit

http://money.cnn.com/2009/05/04/real_estate/March_pending_home_sales/index.htm

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