Third Quarter 2011 Real Estate Report

A ‘qualified-buyers' market’

Last month my neighbors put their house on the market and sold it in just three days.  They had multiple offers, and they obtained their listing price. Their quick-sale experience, however, was not that unusual for sellers during the month of September. Four of the nine houses sold in Madison Park that month went from listing to sale in fewer than 30 days, and the average number of days on market for all of the houses sold was just 91.

There was a clear-cut relationship between the quick selling properties and those that were least discounted from their initial offering prices. The quick sellers averaged a 2.4% difference between the listing price and the sale price, while the five slower-selling houses (one of which sold after 375 days on the market) were discounted 14.6% on average.

What’s the lesson, if any, from all of this?   Dave Hale, manager of Windermere Real Estate’s Madison Park office provides this insight: “For the well-priced, market-ready listings there are buyers.”  In his opinion, we are now experiencing a two-tier market, with one tier composed of properties that are “realistically” priced and the other tier priced out of line with market conditions.  A major factor that’s impacting the market, he notes, is a lack of inventory.  Indeed, there are only 76 properties currently on the market, compared to 94 at this time last year and 91 the year before.

Last month one seller accepted a 30.4% discount from the initial offer price after his house had been on the market only 77 days.  This quick acceptance of market realities was not typical of sellers, however. During the last quarter, seven houses were sold after more than 200 days on the market.  Six of those sellers took major hits relative to their initial expectations, accepting an average discount of 20.9%.   One seller, whose house was on the market for over 500 days, was ultimately rewarded with a relatively small 10% discount from the initial offering price.  Proving, apparently, that patience can be rewarded in selected circumstances.

Here is how the sales played out in the market during the third quarter:

Houses

Sales:  28
Median Sale Price:  $1,420,000
Average Sq. Ft.:  3,746
Average Price per Sq. Ft.:  $412
Average Days on Market:  136
Average Discount from List Price:  10.7%

Condos

Sales:  6
Median Sale Price:  $535,000
Average Sq. Ft.:  1,035
Average Price per Sq. Ft.:  $417
Average Days on Market:  175
Average Discount from List Price: 7.3%

The most expensive house sold during the quarter was a 3,200 sq. ft. 1940’s Cape Cod waterfront home in Washington Park, which after 251 days on the market sold for $4,400,000.  That was an 11% discount from the initial offering price of  $4,950,000.  Only seven of the 28 houses sold in Madison Park during the period had sale prices of less than $1,000,000.  Eight houses, meanwhile, sold for $2,000,000 or more.

So what’s the “take away” from all of this statistical information?  Are we on a roll—or is it something less?  Windermere’s Hale thinks the local market is now stable, telling us, “It’s my personal feeling that the worst is over.”  Indeed, the 34 homes sold in Madison Park during the third quarter represent a 35% improvement over the 22 sales during the same period last summer.   So in that respect, at least, things seem to be on a more even keel, with between 10 and 13 homes sold every month this year beginning in May.

But with interest rates and inventory now at historically low levels, will we soon see some upward pressure on market prices?  That’s the question that potential buyers, potential sellers and real estate professionals are grappling with.  Hale doesn’t pretend to know the answer.  What he does believe, however, is that for the “qualified buyer” now is probably the best market in the last ten years.

Here’s a look at the current inventory in Madison Park (Broadmoor and Washington Park included):

Houses

Listings:  55
Median List Price:  $1,875,000
Median Sq. Ft.:  3,720
Median Price per Sq. Ft.:  $504
Average Days on Market:  125
Percentage with Price Reductions:  38%
New Listings:  15
Pending Sales:  10

Condos

Listings:  21
Median List Price:  $550,000
Median Sq. Ft.:  1,106
Median Price per Sq. Ft.:  $497
Average Days on Market:  116
Percentage with Price Reductions:  52%
New Listings:  4
Pending Sales:  2

Of the 55 house listings, there are only four on the market that are really priced under $1,000,000 (unless you want to be literal and include the four houses listed at between $950,000 and $995,000).  So Madison Park’s reputation as “pricey” is certainly not endangered.  The most expensive house on the market is a $7,950,000 “1930’s French-style estate” in Broadmoor.  It has more than 10,000 sq. ft of living space on a half acre.  Four of the other five most expensive houses in the market, however, are located in Washington Park, ranging in price between $6,335,000 and $7,895,000.  The least expensive listed house is a “charming rental house” built in 1928 and located north of E. Madison St.

Condo prices, meanwhile, range from $1,75000 for a 2,100 sq. ft. unit in Washington Park Tower to $224,950 for a 595 sq. ft. unit in the condo building just south of Madison Park Beach.

The peak selling period for real estate has just ended, but there could still be a surprise before the year ends.  Last year an incredible 16 sales occurred during December, making up for a fairly lackluster couple months earlier in the quarter.  With only 12 pendings at the end of third quarter this year and only 76 listings, it will be tough to end 2011 in such a spectacular fashion.  At this time last year there were almost 100 homes on the market.


[Photo is of 1821 41st Avenue E., a 2,300 sq. ft. house priced at $759,000, listed by Cathy Millan, Windermere Real Estate. This house went pending after only two weeks on the market. Photo by Matt Edington.  Thanks to Wendy Skerritt of Windermere Real Estate for sales information used in this report and to Redfin for listing data.]

News on the culinary scene

Hot on the heels of Seattle Magazine's choosing Maggie Savarino of Madison 
Park Conservatory as one of Seattle's Next Wave of Tastemakers, City Arts has just placed MPC's head chef and owner on the cover of its November issue, with an inside article entitled, "Live to Eat: Cormac Mahoney Cooks What He Wants."  Well, no duh.  The critical reviews of the end result of that cooking, by the way, have been pretty uniformly laudatory (see here, here, and here).  City Arts' piece, incidentally, includes some direct quotes from Mahoney that are clearly intended for mature audiences. When they come our way, Madison Park Blogger always screens these profane Mahoneyisms from the eyes of our sensitive readers. City Arts follows a more candid policy. Caveat lector.

Also noteworthy this week is a report from the recently opened Cafe Parco: the restaurant has just been granted a "temporary pre-approval permit" to serve "adult-type beverages."  During Cafe Parco's first two weeks, it's been a case of bring your own vino. But that's no longer the only option.  By the way, the restaurant's on-line reservation system is now up and running.

[Madison Park Conservatory is located at 1927 43rd Avenue E., and Cafe Parco is located at 1807 42nd Avenue E.]

Madison Park Number One for trick-or-treating

Local news reports last week played up the fact that Zillow's annual list of best cities for tricking or treating showed Seattle in the Number Four spot (after San Francisco, Boston, and Honolulu).  Within Seattle, however, it's Madison Park that gets the nod from Zillow as the best neighborhood for trick-or-treaters, followed by Queen Anne, Ballard and Laurelhurst.  Zillow didn't provide any details on its methodology, but in past years it's been speculated that Madison Park ranks high because of the larger average size of the treats handed out on Halloween (full-size candy bars in some cases!).  Whatever the reason, the neighborhood certainly enjoys a good Halloween reputation, with a lot of out-of-area trick-or-treaters making the rounds here each year.

This is just a reminder that Halloween gets off to an early start on Monday afternoon, with many area businesses (some of them members of the Madison Park Business Association, and some not) handing out treats to deserving kids from 3 until 5 pm.  The event is sponsored by the MPBA and the Madison Park Cooperative Preschool.

[Graphic courtesy of Photobucket.]

Is that you, Watson?

We are happy to report that the long-time-missing black cat, Watson, the subject of many "Lost Cat" notices posted around the neighborhood, has at last been found!  We were glad to learn yesterday that after over two months roaming the 'hood, Watson is now safely back at home--just in time for Halloween.  He was discovered this week in the vicinity of the house where he was being cat-sat at the time of his disappearance.

The Saga of the Bees (Part II)

We left our readers with a bit of a cliffhanger at the end of our first installment of “The Great Summer Bee Caper.”  It’s been so long since we ran the story that readers may be forgiven for having forgotten the details of our not-quite-Hitchcockian tale.  It all began with the sudden arrival of a honeybee swarm in the neighborhood, and it ended (or at least our narrative did) with the bees swarming up 42nd Avenue. Our intrepid ‘bee wrangler’ from Fremont, Patti Loesche, was charging after them in her car.  Here, we pick up the story:

What Val Ellis may have been thinking as she watched the bees make their escape from her front yard has not been recorded (that’s her in the photo above, observing the mass exodus from the other side of the street).  But it’s a safe bet that she was relieved to discover that the lovely ceanothus bush located just ten feet from her front door was being rejected as the ultimate destination of the madding swarm.

We know exactly what beekeeper Patti Loesche was thinking, however, as she jumped into the car to begin her hot pursuit: “I was sure I would run into those bees again at some point. I knew they were looking for a new home.”

As she followed the swarm up the street, the main body was lost to sight; but as she rounded the corner of E. Lynn and headed toward Lake Washington, she encountered “something like a scene from an Armageddon movie,” she says. “I had no detective work to do.” What she saw was one woman running down the street in mad flight while two other women were frozen in place with horrified looks on their faces, pointing to a tall cedar tree at the North end of the waterfront park.  Looking up to where the women were pointing, Patti saw that the bees were safely ensconced high in the tree.

Though not perfectly equipped for the assignment, Patti set to work. The goal: entice the bees into the artificial hive.  It’s not a simple process, nor a quick operation.  Getting honeybees to settle down in a new hive takes some gentle coaxing and a lot of patience.  Not to mention more than a little stamina.

Patti set her ladder up against the base of the tree, climbed up, and got to work.   Work, in the case, meaning holding a box of wooden frames next to a giant swarm of bees and hoping that they’ll decide (in the words of Patti Loesche) “Oh, here’s a good place!”

Soon, some of the bees started inspecting the box.  “Once they do that, everyone goes in,” Patti says.  “The bees were very calm, and many were on top of the box fanning their scent to bring the other bees in.  Because of this, I believe that the queen must have gone in, though I did not see her,” she notes.

Though it became a tedious, backbreaking, box-holding endurance test for Patti, many of the bees finally coalesced into their new location after about an hour. She then vigorously shook the tree branch and a few thousand more bees landed in the box.  During all this time she had been perched about 15 feet up the cedar tree. “But by now I had bonded with the swarm, so I was willing to wait on them for awhile.” It’s not a procedure she says she would recommend to anyone, however.

After about two thirds of the bees were in the box, she took it farther down the tree and set it on a lower ladder.  It was getting late in the day, and under normal conditions she would have left the box overnight.  Given its location in a public park, however, she decided this was not such a hot idea.  So after waiting a bit longer for more of the bees to enter the box, she closed the entrance, considering the bee-capture operation a job well done.  She estimates she collected around 80% of the bee swarm.

From that point it was just a matter of clearing up the equipment, getting the hive into the car, and setting off with the swarm for its new home in Fremont.

And the bees?  They’re doing just fine, according to Patti.  “It was a huge and robust hive,” she says, though the swarm’s queen apparently diappeared sometime after entering the box.  Fortunately, Patti was able to successfully combine the new hive with an older one in her backyard apiary (she currently has a total of five hives, including two located in a neighbor’s yard).

“Just what were those bees doing swarming in Madison Park?” we asked.  “It’s an absolutely natural event,” Patti reports. “Bees swarm one or more times a season, either to reproduce or because they’re overcrowded. This swarm occurred right when it’s supposed to.”  She believes it came from someone’s hive, probably one that had become overcrowded, forcing the bees to move on.

And as for Val Ellis’s ceanothus bush (shown above), was it really a likely place for the bees to find a new home?  “Not at all,” says Patti. “They were just resting there while deciding where to relocate the colony.”  She notes that the swarm could have moved on into the Arboretum or possibly into a crevice at someone in the neighborhood’s house.  “Scouts had been sent out,” she notes, “and I could see that the bees were beginning to dance on top of the swarm faster and faster.  I knew they were going to make a move.”  It just occurred a bit sooner than she had planned.

In the end, however, the Day of the Bees in Madison Park ended well for just about all involved.  The folks on 42nd Avenue got a dose of excitement without any fallout; the beekeeper got another honeybee swarm to add to her collection; and the bees, for the most part, found themselves in a fine new home.

But not quite all of them.  On the day following the mass honeybee emigration, a few lost and forlorn bees were still to be seen flying around in aimless circles near the cedar tree. If they could’ve, they would’ve cried, “Wha happa?”

***********

Thanks to Patti Loesche for sharing her photos and telling us the Rest of the Story.  Patti has been a beekeeper for about four years.  She says she got into beekeeping because a friend was doing it and it was fascinating to see how orderly and coordinated those thousands of bees could be: “I just love watching their behavior.”

[Photo of Val Ellis watching the bees vamoose by Sara Perkins.]

MLK School sale not illegal

For the benefit of our readers who missed the story in the major media, we note that the Washington State Auditor has determined that "the Seattle Public Schools followed state law and district policy when the School Board voted last year to sell the former Martin Luther King Elementary School to the lowest bidder."  That, according to the Seattle Times in a copyrighted story today.

The Auditor, however, did not opine on the wisdom of the policy that allowed for an outcome that lost the School District millions of dollars it would have received if selling the abandoned building to the highest bidder, The Bush School.  The Auditor's job was simply to look for violations of law and due process.

It's ironic that we find ourselves linking to the story in the Seattle Times, given our stated position that the paper's failure to properly cover this story in the first place might have been partially responsible for the questionable outcome.  That feeling led us for the first time in the two-plus year history of the Madison Park Blogger to leave our journalistic perch and descend into out and out editorialism.  Or was that a step up?

MPC's Maggie Savarino: Poised to be notable

She's one of those rare folks who both live and work in Madison Park. Maggie Savarino, former food-and-booze columnist for Seattle Weekly, is known to many of us as the front-of-house manager, concoctor of drinks, and sometime bartender at Madison Park Conservatory.  She's also, in the opinion of Seattle Magazine, one of nine people "poised to become the Seattle dining scene's next notable names."  In other words, she has the honor of being in the City's "Next Wave of Tastemakers."

The November issue of the magazine, just out, cites Savarino for "her upstairs bar menu of tinkered, tinctured cocktails and other creative libations," noting that these are "a welcome discovery at an already impressive restaurant." Seattle Magazine also discloses that Savarino recently authored a new book, The Seasonal Cocktail Companion, which will be published next month by Sasquatch Books. Subtitled, 100 Recipes and Projects for 4 Seasons of Drinking, the book, in the words of foodblog seattle.eater.com, "contains DIY projects, including root beer bitters, booze-soaked cherries, and make-your-own 'cellos beyond the standard lemon variety. As the title suggests, the book is organized by season, with at least one drink recipe for each project."  DIY, for the uninitiated, is Do It Yourself.

We caught up with Maggie last week in MPC's upstairs bar, where she not only is responsible for creating the drink menu but also tends the bar on Wednesday evenings. She was modest about her newfound status as a tastemaker and somewhat bashful about getting her picture taken. But she was not shy about talking up her new book or touting the Conservatory. With regard to the book, she reports that her goal in writing it was to demystify the subject.  She accomplishes this by providing cocktail recipes, tips, tricks, and ideas (including how to winterize tequila).

With regard to the restaurant, she notes that there is a new bar menu upstairs, just introduced, which includes some interesting and tasty items not part of MPC's regular fare (such as "a burger of our very own," a grilled cheese/smokey tomato soup combination, and a grilled beef tongue with housemade pickles).  Happy Hour, by the way, is from 4 to 6 pm.

Another thing, she says, is worth noting: Tako Truk is back, at least in abbreviated form.  Chef/owner Cormac Mahoney reintroduced the specialty-taco concept at MPC earlier this summer as the Sunday night cuisine (4-8 pm).  It's an informal, family atmosphere downstairs, Maggie says, with no reservations taken and a menu consisting of interesting, unexpected and tasty tacos (including the popular Coco Piggy).  If you wanted to, she says, you could probably be in and out in twenty minutes (though you probably wouldn't want to).  In addition, there's fun upstairs for the 21-and-over crowd (featured on November 20, for example, is guest DJ Kurt “The Godfather” Bloch of Too Many Bands to Mention).  Details of the Tako Truk experience are available here.

Police Blotter 10/15/11

Madison Park: Crime backwater

The neighborhood is experiencing its typical end-of-summer slowdown in criminal activity, as evidenced by the above map, which shows reported crimes in Madison Park during the 30-day period, September 16 through October 15.  When we contacted the Seattle Police this month to get background for this report, we had virtually nothing to ask about.  While we're hardly crime free here in the Park, it's certainly the case that in relative terms our community remains something of an oasis within the urban jungle.

Of course, if you're the unlucky soul who had his house broken into or car stolen, you may not take such a sanguine view of the matter. While we almost made it through the period without a single burglary, there was one such incident reported: on the 3800 block of E. Crockett St. on September 16 (the star-burst icon on the map).  An "unknown suspect" forcibly entered the residence while no one was at home and stole a computer, two iPods, one iPad, and some cash.  One car, meanwhile, was stolen, that incident occurring on October 13 on the 2400 block of 41st Avenue E.

The only other crimes of note were the theft of a purse from a local restaurant (the victim having left her purse behind and the staff not being able to locate it later), and thefts from properties located on the 1900 block of 39th Avenue E. (on October 11) and 1700 block of E. Galer St. (on October 5).  There were no car prowls in Madison Park proper, although ten such incidents were reported in the Arboretum or nearby during the period.

There was one disturbance investigated by the police, which happened on the 4100 block of E. Madison St. on September 27 (the black mask icon on the map), but the incident was pretty tame.  The "victim" reported to police that a person known to him approached him and yelled at him, acting aggressively before leaving the scene.  The complainant simply wanted the altercation documented, which the police obligingly did.

As we said, not much to report.   Let's hope it stays that way.

Halloween is the day to trick or treat

For some reason unknown to us, the Madison Park Business Association occasionally schedules its annual Halloween Trick or Treat event on a day other than Halloween.  But this year, the big to-do is actually going to happen on Halloween Day. That means that neighborhood kids can dress up and present themselves for tricking or treating purposes at area businesses on Monday, October 31, from 3 until 5 pm.

Again this year, the Madison Park Cooperative Preschool will be taking pictures of the little tricksters at McNae Triangle Park (in front of Bing's) throughout the event.

[Upper graphic by artist Linda Apple.  Photo by Melynda Warner.]

A glimpse into the past

Our posting last week on the death of Governor Albert D. Rosellini elicited an email from Madison Park photographer Bob Peterson, with this photo attached.  Peterson describes the shot, taken in downtown Seattle during the 1960 U.S. Presidential campaign, as his very favorite picture of Governor Rosellini.  The photo shows an open convertible carrying Senator John F. Kennedy in a cavalcade along Fourth Avenue, near University Street (that's the Olympic Hotel in the background).

The Governor, seated next to the future President, is looking mighty pleased (perhaps anticipating his own re-election that fall).  While Rosellini carried the state, Kennedy didn't do so, as Washington went Republican in the presidential contest that year. Seated in the backseat on the other side of Kennedy is probably the First Lady of the State, Ethel Rosellini.  In the front passenger seat is Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson.

Though the car of choice for this ride down Fourth Avenue was a Buick, Governor Rosellini was a Cadillac man himself, in later years tooling around the neighborhood in a big white car of that make, license plate reading "GOV ADR".

[Photo by Bob Peterson.  Click to enlarge.]