What crash? Seattle RE market going strong

[Jason Woods]

I just accepted a full price offer on a property we listed 5 days ago in the Bellevue/Eastside of Seattle area. This is a property we acquired a year ago, it's a fix-upper in a conveniently located neighborhood, the project took much longer than we anticipated, and with a quite a bit of budget overrun as well. I have been watching local RE market very closely in the past 2 months as we are finally getting ready to sell. With all the lockdown, stock market crash, and many folks got impacted and lost their jobs, I was getting nervous.

So last weekend we decided to take the property to the market, before the government lockdown is lifted. RE is considered essential business and it's allowed to have people tour the house with PPE and social distancing. It's a really weird time to sell a house, it'll be one experience for history books :-). We listed property and received a full-price offer 4 days later, and we reach mutual the next day. I was quite nervous going in and wanted to get the property sold asap, so I was pleasantly surprised to see the RE market is still going so strong in Seattle area. Even during the midst of lockdown, we had many groups touring our property over the course of 5 days. I didn't see price drop at all, it probably went up 5-10% YOY in the area our property is located. There are definitely less buyers given the covid-19 situation, but there is very few houses available for sale as well, so whatever are in the market all got sold pretty quickly. I will make ~10% net profit from the sale.

I think the housing market will retreat in Seattle area in the next 1-2 years, the full economic impact of the virus and lockdown is not yet showing up in RE market yet. That's why I was nervous and want to sell quickly, I want to get some funds back as cash and have the dry powder to load up if another crash comes.