If you have a $1 million or more to spend on a home in Snohomish or Island counties, you’ll join a growing number of people who have scooped up a property most of us can only drive by and dream about.
Sales of homes valued at $1 million or more were up 28 percent in Snohomish County in 2006 compared with 2005, when 100 were sold.
The most expensive home sold was a five-bedroom, 12,000-square-foot home on nine acres in Woodway. The new owner paid a cool $6.6 million for the luxury abode. The winner in the condo category was a 2,600-square-foot home in downtown Edmonds priced at $1,459,000.
Vern Holden, owner of the Mill Creek and Everett Windermere offices, says that the bar should be raised when thinking of high-end homes.
“Thirteen years ago I bought the Mill Creek office,” Holden said. “The average home price in Mill Creek was $180,000. Today it is $382,000.”
Using the same logic with a home in the luxury price range shows that what buyers get for $1 million in 2007 is much different than in 1994. “The term million-dollar home is used but now it’s just not the same,” Holden said.
Holden built his home in the 1990s at a cost of $320,000. It sits on 2.3 acres.
“My agents tell me that my home is worth at least a million,” Holden said. “I think, ‘No way.’ “
During the past six months, sales of $1 million homes are up more than 50 percent from Jan. 1 to May 31 over that time period in 2006.
For the first part of this year, 43 single-family homes and one condo have sold in this price range. In 2006, only 27 family homes and two condos had been purchased for $1 million or more by this time.
The highest-priced single-family home sold in the past six months was a five-bedroom, 7,000-square-foot home in Lake Stevens. It went for $2.35 million.
A two-bedroom, 1,900 square-foot condo in Edmonds fetched $1.15 million.
Those purchasing $1 million-plus residences are going for more land and new amenities.
“I see a lot of outdoor kitchens, more room for entertaining,” Holden said of some the features of newly built, high-end homes.
Luxury homebuyers can expect upgrades such as jetted tubs, more hardwood, and granite instead of laminate.
Buyers are also getting more space. Instead of 2,800- or 3,000-square-foot homes, high-end home buyers are going for 4,500 to 5,500 square feet.
A newly constructed 5,300-square-foot home in Holden’s area is listed at $2 million, he said.
“Everyone has a different philosophy of home buying,” Holden said. “Some people want their homes to be a sanctuary and not a showroom.”
Looking at $1 million-plus home sales from June 25, 2006, to June 25, 2007 shows 128 homes sold in that range, said Meribeth Hutchings, managing broker at Windermere Real Estate Lake Stevens and a member of the Northwest Multiple Listing Service board of directors.
“As always a good portion of those are in the Edmonds area,” Hutchings said.
There wasn’t much in the way of homes on a large piece of property.
“Only two were over $1 million that were acreage estates,” Hutchings said.
Eight waterfront sales took place on Camano Island.
The Snohomish County housing market has 44 homes available between $750,000 and $1 million with acreage in the Snohomish, Arlington and Lake Stevens areas.
Both Hutchings and Holden agree that, $1 million homes notwithstanding, the market has shifted to a buyer’s market.
At the beginning of the year there were three homes for every two buyers.
“Now there are three homes for every buyer,” Hutchings said.
Hutchings has seen the market change many times in her 26-year tenure.
“What we have now was a normal market in the ’90s,” she said.
For the most part Hutchings says that our new neighbors in the high-end homes are our old neighbors. Many of the buyers are Snohomish County residents moving upmarket. There are certainly a few transplants, but a lot of luxury home buyers in the Lake Stevens and surrounding area are Microsoft workers. “Either they are the buyers or the sellers,” Hutchings said.
People shopping for high-end homes are typically savvier when it comes to the ins and outs of home buying, Holden said.
They might have researched more about their upcoming mortgage and other aspects of the real-estate transaction and look differently at money altogether.
“That $100,000 bonus to them is like $10,000 to you and me,” Holden said.
Christina Harper is a Snohomish County freelance writer. She can be reached at harper@heraldnet.com.
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