Grant County home prices buck trend

Real estate research center director advises against rapid action

GRANT COUNTY - Median home prices were up in Grant County as home sales and home prices in the state slipped the last quarter of 2007.

The Washington Center for Real Estate Research reported last week the slips in Washington reflected a national downturn.

According to the report from the center at Washington State University, fourth quarter sales in the state were 99,120, down 25.6 percent from sales of 133,220 in the same period of 2006.

Median home prices jumped the most in Grant County, rising 20.6 percent from the fourth quarter of 2006, to $169,900.

The median home sales price in Washington during the fourth quarter was $293,900, down 2.5 percent from the final quarter of 2006.

Center Director Glenn Crellin said he didn't exactly know the reason for the jump in Grant County.

"Obviously, any time we're dealing with a price change in a relatively small geographic area, such as Grant County, sometime we get statistics that are a little bit of an aberration," Crellin said. "The sale of comparatively few expensive properties, even the median can be affected by that."

Crellin was familiar with the economic growth going on in the area.

"Certainly it would play a role," he said. "(We are) well aware there are several developers that are attempting to put in high-end homes up in the Quincy marketplace, probably more than I would have ever dreamed those data farms would have been able to support."

Looking at the national data carefully, Crellin said the places which have experienced price declines fall into several categories.

They are places where there hasn't been a lot of economic activity, so there are declines in markets like Michigan or Ohio because the jobs have disappeared, he explained.

Other places had "rampant speculation" in the housing market, Crellin said, pointing to places like Las Vegas, Phoenix, Miami and Stockton, Calif., where the amount of new construction was far beyond the population growth in the market places.

"People were buying homes on the expectation it was going to be like any other kind of an investment, that they would be able to turn it around very quickly," Crellin said. "Once interest rates started to go up and they started to have the problems in the financial markets, everything just dried up at once. The investor-purchasers of that property now are trying to (figure out) what they could possibly do to keep from going bankrupt."

The median price in Grant County is a positive indication, but Crellin advises against taking rapid action based on "the fact we've seen a one-quarter blip away from long-term trends."

"My sense is this market, like most of Central Washington, is traditionally a steady as she goes kind of environment," he said. "I don't think rapid price increases are going to be prevailing in the long term."

Chelan County has been leading the nation for several quarters now in terms of price appreciation, Crellin added, so Grant County may be seeing some spillover from that region.

Six other Washington counties, including Adams County, recorded more home sales during the fourth quarter than a year ago.

"It certainly has seen an uptick in activity, but again, it's a very small market," Crellin said. "It doesn't take many sales within a quarter to lead to what appears to be a large percentage increase. It bears watching for a period of time."

Moses Lake real estate agent Rich Engelmann said the rising median price is an indicator of a solid local job and housing market.

"We're hearing all this talk about how the housing market's going down and all this gloom and doom, but in our area, the housing market is still good," he said. "We're holding steady. That to me speaks good. We've got a good base to draw from, so the jobs are there. Everything else is supported, so we're not going to lose jobs because of it."

Engelmann said the increase is not going to stop.

"Our housing market is strong, look for prices and stuff to go up this summer," he said.

Engelmann pointed to the government stepping in to help fund and increase loan limits.

"The bad lending stuff is getting taken care of," he said, also pointing to interest rates down and housing markets holding and expected to increase.

"If I was a home buyer would buy," he said. "It's a buyer's market and it's going to change by summer time. The next six months, we could see it taking off again."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.