Leavenworth Real Estate Heating Up
Real estate in Leavenworth is heating up again after a lull this fall. Our phones and email accounts have been busy hearing from folks looking to buy property in Leavenworth, Lake Wenatchee and Cashmere. The buzz around the Leavenworth Windermere office has been really positive so I decided to see what the numbers look like.
The year over year numbers for January and early February are pretty interesting. Granted, it’s a small market and the sample sizes are pretty small, but the statistics about the Leavenworth real estate market confirm what we suspected.
Leavenworth Homes for Sale
The number of homes for sale in Leavenworth is down from the summer and fall. We peaked at 135 homes (single family residential – not condos, or manufactured homes.) In January we had 89 homes for sale and today we have 71. Some sellers have given up trying to sell in this market, some sellers are waiting for better weather and some home sellers are.. actually selling their homes! We have also seen a decline in the number of new homes placed on the market. Last year 25 homes came on the market during the 1st 1.5 months, this year it’s only been 21.
Leavenworth Homes Selling in 2008
What excites me the most is not that overpriced homes are being pulled from the market, but that homes are selling. The same number of homes have closed year to date as last year (7) but the number of homes under contract or pending is up considerably. Last year 13 homes were under contract in this period but this year it is up to 21. A 60+% increase is pretty amazing.
I think it is truly amazing when you consider that the avalanches that closed Stevens Pass and Snoqualmie pass kept many of our buyers from visiting from Western Washington for a couple of weekends.
Home Prices Up
Despite day after day of bad national housing news, prices in Leavenworth have gone up astronomically year over year. Granted we only had a sample size of 7, but prices appear to have risen 35%. I think that number will moderate after we get more closings, but we won’t be seeing price decreases in Leavenworth homes any time soon.
