'There's a lot of confidence in the Moses Lake economy'

Realtors address state of area real estate

If the 1967 film "The Graduate" were set in Moses Lake today, the one word that Dustin Hoffman's older relative would pull him aside and whisper might be "property" instead of "plastics."

Things are happening in real estate around the region.

Construction is occurring all over, commercial development is on the rise, and area realtors' overall outlook for both the present and the future seems to be positive.

Kent Jones, realtor with Advantage GMAC Real Estate, said he thought that the state of real estate in Moses Lake depends on the price range of the house people are looking for.

"I think that most of the upper-end homes are competing directly with new construction, where some of the more reasonably priced homes are selling because that's what people can afford as opposed to buying the new ones," he said. "But I've done some work on homes in the $250,000 to $300,000 price range, and I think there's pretty good balance. There's homes selling, but there's quite a few choices for the buyers."

As of the end of April, Jones said, the number of listings of homes on the market in 2003 was 232. In 2004, the number is 208. The number of homes sold year to date was 113 versus 140.

Both Jones and Tomlinson Black Ranch and Home owner-broker Chris Blessing said they found it interesting that the average sales price of the first five months of 2004 was less than it was during the first five months of 2003.

"I wouldn't have expected that the prices would be lower and the median price would be lower, which is kind of a nice situation, because there's more sales and prices are the same," Blessing said. "It's nice for everybody, because the property moves. The buyers are buying, the sellers are selling and the real estate people are making money."

Neither Jones nor Blessing were sure as to the reasons why the average sales price was lower, even though interest rates were low.

"Generally, when we've had increases in our market and more sales in our market, it's been driven by new jobs, and there hasn't been that many jobs created in Moses Lake over the last couple years," Blessing said.

But still, Blessing called the real estate market "strong" and said that it's probably more of a seller's market than a buyer's market.

Fredrick Slough, broker and owner of Les Parr Real Estate in Ephrata, said he believed that the government and banking systems have made it very convenient for people to buy houses.

"In order to preserve the economy, I think they've gone out of their way to support the housing industry," he said.

That includes the areas around Moses Lake.

"Through rural farm home loans, they've made it so that anybody that has a stable income can buy a house and doesn't have to be a renter," Slough said. "Being in the business of selling homes, they've made it easier to buy them. We've been selling lots of them."

Mark Fancher, owner and manager of Tomlinson Black Ranch and Home, said that the number one thing for the housing market recently has been the rates, which were so low that his business did more $100,000 homes than $150,000 homes.

"People were able to buy who weren't able to buy; they just started the upward spiral, and that's been the strength of the housing market," Fancher said.

Bob Fancher, general manager of Meiers Development Corporation, said that Moses Lake is pretty even with housing nationwide, which he said has seen some pretty steady growth.

"I think one thing that's going to help us here, hopefully, is Home Depot," he said. "That's a national retailer that is going to open some eyes on hopefully some other national retailers. We need some other jobs here. We're working awful hard (and) I think we've made some strides here, recently. I think the economy's up and in the manufacturing, there's some companies that are growing that people really haven't noticed."

Those companies include D&L Foundry, Genie Industries and Western Palmer, he said.

"We're working real hard at the sugar plant trying to replace jobs that were lost, and hopefully in the next year we'll see some progress there," he said. "Hopefully, that will continue to keep this housing market where it has been as rates start to go up. That's our big concern, as rates go up … that we provide additional jobs to offset that. Then we're in a good spot."

The creation of new manufacturing jobs would assist the market further, Jones agreed.

"The retail sector is still showing growth, but if the farm economy falters even a little bit more than it has and we don't get more manufacturing jobs, it's going to be very difficult to sustain that retail growth," he said. "Those are kind of like leapfrog sorts of things. You've got to have retail growth to attract major companies, you've got to have jobs to support the retail growth."

Slough said the connection between the surrounding region's housing market and Moses Lake is jobs.

"Of course Moses Lake seems to be the engine for most of the jobs in the area," he said. "Then if you go to the other end of the spectrum, we're getting a constant flow of people that are interested in resettling in our area, out of the cities. Most of those people aren't looking for employment, but what they're doing is buying the nicest homes in the area for the same cost as an average home in the city."

Jones said the market in the area seems pretty busy.

"There seems to be investors out there, there seems to be developers out there," he said. "For some reason, there's a lot of confidence in the Moses Lake economy… I'd like to paint a rosy picture of the real estate business, but I honestly think it's pretty balanced."

Larry Shannon, vice president and branch manager of RBC Mortgage, said that the market is strong because people are taking advantage of the low interest rates to buy or upgrade their homes, even in the areas surrounding Moses Lake.

"Warden's a little slow because there's some employment issues in Warden, and Soap Lake is a slow market period," Shannon said. "Othello, there's actually a shortage of affordable housing, and the same thing in Quincy, Royal City and Mattawa."

Shannon said that it is a buyer's market in Moses Lake, while it is more of a seller's market in those other areas because of the lack of housing that is available.

"The Moses Lake market is starting to lean towards a seller's market because there is becoming a shortage of houses in certain price ranges," Shannon said.

Shannon said that the surrounding areas need more construction, which would create a domino effect, as one person building a new house will make their old home available.

"With interest rates the way they are, people can buy a house and their house payment, including taxes and insurance, will be very close to what rent would be for the same house," Shannon said, adding that some programs don't require money to be put down for a down payment on a house.

Mark Fancher is one of those people with confidence in the Moses Lake economy. He said that the community has grown for a long time, and he doesn't see any reason that it won't continue.

"We have too much to offer, and there are some key things coming up that are important in our community, a la the relicensing of the dams," he said. "That's a very important part of our community, in making sure that it gets done, and done efficiently and cost effectively. Home Depot is a great deal for a community. It validates that we're ready to go to the next level if Home Depot will step up and build a 200,000 square foot building. They do their homework; they don't fail very often. And hopefully it will allow us to bring others like them, will help stabilize this community and make people want to move here."

One aspect of the area that Fancher thinks ought to be promoted more and captured is the pending retirement of the baby boomer generation.

"This is a climate that people like, and I can still see that there's a niche for this marketplace to continue to grow with that type of out-of-towner coming in here — Seattle baby boomers that want to get out of the Seattle area, buy a place here and possibly one south, because they'd be able to sell their home there and buy two places, basically," he said.

"Most of our baby boomers don't want to leave, so that helps," Bob Fancher said. "We have a lot of things, a really rural environment, to offer. No traffic problems like Seattle has. They can sell a house in Seattle and buy the same thing here for half-price. You have money to spend and become snowbirds."

He said that the Moses Lake community is still very young, and believes it will prosper more and more as the city matures.

"There's no old money here like there is in the Spokanes and Tri-Cities," he said. "There's people there that've had money for a long time. As Moses Lake has grown, some of the prosperity of its citizens has grown too, and we'll be turning the corner into a mature community where some of that old money starts kicking in. I think it's obvious that it's making a change now."

Fancher pointed at the amount raised during a recent community college fund raiser as a sign of those changes.

"I think it's important to realize that the community is growing and things are happening in the right direction," Mark Fancher said. "There's people out there that aren't behind the scenes — promoting and doing the right things — that think the community's not doing well. Before Sept. 11, with the sugar plant closing and Asmi doing what they did and all that, there was a lot of bad press that we were drying up again. We didn't, we won't and we'll survive. This community has a lot to offer. We as locals know that, but it's starting to get out there."