Real Estate
Sidewalks or Subzeros
A look at market trends: What’s driving value and sales in Seattle and the Eastside?
BY
Robyn Roehm Cannon
PHOTOGRAPHY
Brian Francis

Seattle and Eastside real estate markets have a few seasonal trends by which you can set your watch. Spring, as winter’s gray becomes green again, is historically the strongest time to sell a home. There are generally lots of fresh inventory and anxious buyers bidding against one another. In summer, sales and listings taper off as families travel more and then get ready for the upcoming school year. Once the kids are back in school, the cycle picks up, only to slow again in winter, when some sellers take their homes off the market completely for the holidays.

But how significant are these cyclical highs and lows? As our area’s economy remains robust in comparison with the rest of the country, job transfers bring a constant stream of new professionals and families to the area, and longtime residents of sought-after neighborhoods trade up—or, sometimes, scale down—to their next home.
The consensus among several top agents here is that they’ve never been busier, no matter what the season. Seattle-area real estate continues to boom, and all the agents we spoke with agree that the winter of 2007–2008 looks very strong for both buyers and sellers.

We asked local agents about trends they are seeing in inventory, where their clients are coming from, how homes are being priced and paid for and what buyers are seeking. While Realtors on both sides of Lake Washington reported strong sales, there are notable differences between buyers in the established metro neighborhoods of Seattle and across the lake in Bellevue and Mercer Island.

East of Lake Washington
Pam Boeck and Peni Schwartz’s Windermere Real Estate sales partnership specializes in multimillion-dollar Mercer Island waterfront estates and newly constructed Eastside luxury homes. The majority of their clients are longtime Mercer Islanders, and the team is seeing buyers gravitating toward waterfront property at an earlier age than their parents did. Whether they have increased incomes or inheritances, such buyers are now often able to purchase “extremely expensive” waterfront property while still in their late 30s or early 40s, Boeck and Schwartz say.

These young affluent buyers also seek homes fully equipped with every possible feature and convenience. “The expectation is set very high,” Boeck says. “A more mature buyer might be content to settle for less, but younger buyers want to see it all done—they don’t have the time or the patience. They are extremely savvy when it comes to brands, appliances, finishes and technologies.” Boeck says this is in part because the media have done a tremendous job of educating people. “For a time, we thought that home size would be scaling back, yet it seems just the opposite,” she adds. “As traffic gets more impossible, people who live outside the city want size and to make their home into a self-sufficient refuge where they can escape, focus inward and not spend time driving, schlepping or standing in line.”

Things that were formerly considered luxurious details—granite counters, crown moldings, SubZero appliances or jetted tubs—are now par for the course, Boeck and Schwartz contend. “It can’t be just granite—of course it now has to be honed!” Schwartz says. “We are seeing more and more custom cabinetry, home theaters, Jet-Ski ramps and covered ipé decks with gourmet outdoor kitchens, outdoor showers, built-in overhead heaters and gas fireplaces.” Wine cellars, craft rooms, home offices with full technology, prep kitchens for caterers and beautifully finished landscapes with water features are becoming basic expectations.

Barbara Purcell, who primarily represents Eastside listings for John L. Scott, has been selling Puget Sound real estate for the past 29 years, and she agrees with Boeck and Schwartz. “I’m so used to looking at homes with all this stuff in them,” she laughs. ”I think these days, people are running in 20 different directions, and they’re looking for ways to make their life work.” Her clients are very aware of quality and, because of the price range, look at a lot of houses. “If they look at six houses, the one they choose is generally the one with the most up-to-date things in it. It’s like being the prettiest girl at the dance,” she says. 

Seattle-side Trends
Across the I-90 bridge, Lisa Turnure has a burgeoning real estate practice on Lake Union with Coldwell Banker Bain. She represents many buyers and sellers in the affluent and highly sought-after neighborhoods of Broadmoor, Washington Park, Madison Park and Laurelhurst. While her counterparts on the Eastside say their clients want their homes to be luxurious sanctuaries, Turnure says her clientele are shopping to live in specific neighborhoods.

“I’ve always had a strong feeling about the importance of finding not just a house but also community,” she says. “The clients I work with seem to be seeking that sense of neighborhood in their moves. They tell me they want to do the kind of things their parents did—like walk their kids to a park or meet people they know in the grocery store. People want to get out of their cars and get to know their neighbors—so having old-fashioned sidewalks on the block is an enormous amenity.”

Turnure adds that while features such as up-to-date kitchens and baths make houses appealing to her buyers, they are not necessarily expected. “Older homes in Seattle are more difficult to price by comparables because they’re all unique,” she says. “The ones that have the greatest appeal have a distinctive feature—like a view—that makes it very special and harder to place value on than another bedroom.” Her clients are attracted to that wonderful old charm and often are willing to put up with fewer bathrooms, for example, in order to have a bigger yard for their kids or to be closer to interesting restaurants, cultural events and the diversity found in the city.

It’s all a big trade-off, she argues. “I’m finding that people are more and more willing to give some things up in order to get some things back.”

Although most of her clients can easily qualify for jumbo loans, the majority are more thoughtful about how much debt they actually want to assume, she says. “What people can qualify for is often very different from how they want to live their lives. They are starting to look at it like a package and waking up and asking themselves, ‘What’s really important to us? How much of a house do we really need?’ Maybe they want to travel more, or one member of a dual-income family wants to stay home. I see a fair amount of trading down—much more than you would believe. It’s becoming less about stuff and more about creating an unburdened, simpler lifestyle.”