MOUNT VERNON – Just a week after moving in, Becky Patterson is looking forward to getting settled in her spacious new home in the Eaglemont golf course subdivision on the eastern edge of Mount Vernon.
She and her partner, Steve Copson, are among a new wave of home buyers who are snapping up homes in Mount Vernon priced at $400,000 and up.
Drawn by custom-home features, a water or golf course view, meticulous landscaping and a quiet suburban atmosphere, a growing number of buyers are shopping for homes at prices that would surprise many longtime Skagit County residents.
The market for homes priced at close to a half-million dollars in Skagit County has taken off in the past year, according to real estate industry watchers.
While luxury homes are nothing new in the Anacortes market on Fidalgo Island, many Skagit County real-estate experts say they are surprised at how demand for high-end homes has grown farther inland.
“Three years ago, we would have turned our heads at a $400,000 sale,” said Ron Wortham, a real estate agent at Brown McMillan Real Estate in Burlington and current president of the local Realtors association. “But now, the upper end is just amazing.”
Tammy Zimmerman, a mortgage consultant at Wells Fargo Bank with 11 years of experience in the area, said modest earnings preclude most Skagit County residents from buying expensive houses. She says buyers driving the trend are from outside the community.
“I don’t know that the market was there before,” she said. “This is basically a blue-collar area. There’s not a lot of high-dollar business here to bring those executives who can afford these homes.”
For some buyers, prestige and quality of life aren’t the only reasons for wanting to live in an exclusive neighborhood. Many high-end buyers see their purchase decision as an investment, and not just because they’re banking on rising real estate values.
Because of low interest rates and new mortgage options, affluent buyers can get into a high-end home without having to take their cash out of lucrative investments.
Patterson, a teacher at an elementary school in Mount Vernon, was able to get into her new four-bedroom home overlooking the Eaglemont golf course by combining her income with that of her partner, who works in finance.
The couple took out an interest-only loan that allowed them to use their cash elsewhere. They plan to stay in the home about seven years, after which they will shop for a new home in the San Juan Islands.
The prospect of growth in the market for luxury homes in the central Skagit Valley is drawing attention not only from local home builders, but also from companies that in the past were focused primarily on King and Snohomish counties.
Chaffey Homes of Kirkland, which has a reputation for building million-dollar homes around central Puget Sound, recently opened an office in Mount Vernon to serve as a base for its local projects.
While Chaffey has initial plans to build 20 homes in Eaglemont, the company anticipates growing demand for its custom homes in the near future.
“We’re just expanding to where the buyers are,” said Sara Monzo, marketing manager for Chaffey.
Growth in demand for $400,000-plus homes isn’t limited to the Mount Vernon area. Whidbey Island also is seeing significant growth in the market for high-end homes, according to Dan Hewitt of Northwest Properties, who has been an appraiser in northwest Washington for 18 years.
Wortham said he’s convinced a large number of luxury home buyers are recent retirees from Seattle or California looking for a quiet, scenic community with lots of amenities that’s within easy travel distance of their children and grandchildren.
For people who have just sold a home in Seattle for $600,000, he said, a $400,000 home in Mount Vernon looks cheap.
But Hewitt said he sees a lot of people in their late 30s who are looking for a high quality of life along with the prestige of owning a showcase home. Many are Seattle-area commuters driven north by high home prices and crowded neighborhoods in King and Snohomish counties.
“The ones I’m seeing are the ‘baby-boom echo,’ and they’re optimistic about the future of the real estate market,” Hewitt said.
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