What Does A Million Buy?
The King County Journal takes a look in a pair of stories today at the arbitrary big round number $1,000,000 and how much house it buys in the Seattle area these days.
County records show a little over 4,600 homes in King County with an assessed value of at least $1 million. That's better than one out of every 100 homes in the county.I could be wrong, but I don't think that one out of every 100 people in King county are millionaires. But thanks to creative financing, you can "afford" a million-dollar-home on a barely over average salary!
And as anyone who has shopped for a home recently can tell you, the assessed value of a home is often much lower than the price you'd pay to actually buy it.
There are currently 926 homes and condominiums on the market with asking prices of $1 million or more in King County, said Cheri Brennan, a spokeswoman for the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.
But when it comes to shopping for a home, a million bucks won't buy anything close to what it used to, particularly on the Eastside and in Seattle.No wonder this market has so many people drooling on themselves when they think about buying and selling real estate. But remember, Seattle is not in a bubble. Nope.
Case in point: A Mercer Island home on the 4000 block of 85th Avenue Southeast sold in May for $1.15 million by a seller who purchased it 12 months earlier for only $435,000, county assessor's office records show.
That same home, which was renovated last year before being put back on the market, sold in 1997 for $215,000, according to county records.
Even with the recent improvements, that home, which has four bedrooms, 2½ baths and sits on a quarter-acre lot, would fall short of most people's definition of a mansion.
(Clayton Park, King County Journal, #2, 10.03.2005)
2 comments:
Boy, that's a lot of action you have going on your blog, big fella!
Here my $.025. There are huge price increases in Bellevue, Mercer Island and Kirkland in the last 5 years.
The rest of Seattle are may have doubled since 1995, but that's hardly a bubble.
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Prices doubling in 10 years is not a bubble? Have incomes doubled in those same ten years? If that's not a bubble, pray tell, what is?
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