As a resident and home owner of both a rental property and primary residence in Juanita, I may be a little bias to this community. However, there is good reason for that….with still semi affordable home prices relative to the rest of Kirkland, proximity to Lake Washington and a growing community… this area is on fire!
In the 1920’s, Juanita was home to the Juanita Beach Resort complete with a 2-story bath house and an amusement park! The Juanita neighborhood is defined as NE 145th to the North, I-405 to the East, NE 132nd to the South and 100th Ave NE to the West. In analyzing this specific market’s housing data, the biggest growth in property values are happening South of 124th and East of 98th with close proximity to Lake Washington and new construction developments on the horizon.
We are in a market where there is extremely low inventory! As of October 19th, 2015 there are 12 active residential listings (excluding town homes and condos) in the Juanita neighborhood. The price range is $359,950-$2.375M with a median list price of $715k. An interesting observation is that $359,950 on the lowest end is located North of 124th, whereas the second most affordable listing is $499,950 located South of 124th (if you’re really interested in location specifics).
In the last 180 days, 17 homes are pending ranging from $350k-1.2M, with a median pending price of 625k. To elaborate on pending, there have been 41 homes sold in the last 180 days ranging from 290k-1.15M, the median sale price was 500k and the average days on market is 8 days!!! Another interesting note that I touched on in a previous blog post regarding pricing…homes that were priced strategically day 1 were the ones that sold in 8 days or less, AND sold for an average of 25k more than asking price! The graphs below show months supply of inventory as well as list/sale price ratio graphics. (Note: the graphs only show data through September)
As you can see, the sale price/list price ratio is at or above asking price, this takes into consideration all of the data, including the homes that have sold for significantly over (all 8 days or less) as well as the homes that started out higher and dropped the price.
As of October 19th, 2015 Juanita has 1.5 months supply of inventory. You can see that in August and September the months supply increased. In my opinion, there were not many quality listings that came on during that time frame, and the ones that did come on the market were probably priced too high. Those have since been absorbed but I will do another post updating the sale prices of these homes as we will see this impact in the market in October/November.
According to NWMLS September press release:
“Scarce inventory, new rules for mortgage closings and affordability concerns will likely slow home sales around Western Washington during the remaining months of 2015 and into early 2016, according to spokespersons from Northwest Multiple Listing Service.”
The “slow” months are a great time to both buy and sell a home. Buyers will have less competition in a less frenzied sellers market and sellers will have little competition and attract serious buyers. If you want “unbiased” real estate data, check out Seattle Bubble…it’s a great, data driven blog that illustrates some of the realities of the market. It’s a nice balance to the sometimes “ra-rah” information coming from real estate professionals or skewed information from the media, but I always advocate clients to gather information from credible sources and think in a world where LOADS of information is available, it’s hard to sift through what is fact and what is BS.
I always welcome feedback, comments and questions so shoot me an email or text if you have any of the aforementioned!
STL|simple tranquil living 