Wasilla Real Estate News, Valley Market Real Estate

Five Steps To Buying The Right House January 2nd, 2007

Categories: For Buyers

You have made the decision to purchase a house in the Mat-Su Valley.  You recognize that you can get more house on more land by looking at Wasilla Real Estate and the surrounding area than you can in Anchorage.  This is a good move, but now what?

• Pre-qualify.  The first thing you need to do is go to a lender to determine which loan you will use and how much of a house you will want to buy. It is very important to find an experienced mortgage lender.  At the end of this article are Wasilla lenders that have proven to be very helpful.
• Written Requirements. After you have settled on a lender and know what your closing costs and house payments will be you need to put all your desires in writing.  Actually list them out on paper.  Feel free to put everything down that you will want in a house.  Now that you have the long list go back through it and separate the absolute needs from the wants.  Make two separate lists on the same sheet of paper, one with needs and one with wants.
• Shop, shop, shop. Now you need a Realtor that will actually help you find what you need, not sell you on what they want you to buy. You need to be able to look at enough houses to satisfy yourself that you have a good feel for the market in your price range and area. 

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  Written by Marty Van Diest Please leave a comment.

Can a snapshot tell us anything about 2007? January 1st, 2007

Categories: Market Trends

It’s not much of a photo, but after lots of tries I actually caught one burst of the modest fireworks displays I observed last night.  It’s a new year…welcomed in today with more snow.  I was up on Lazy Mountain where it looks like they got about twice as much snow as my area near Trunk Road.

In addition to the above snapshot, I thought I’d take a snapshot of the real estate market to see if it can tell us anything.  I took a look at November of 2006 compared to November of 2005 See Market News for more about real estate trends.   This is a comprehensive search of the Valley MLS system which includes data not only in Wasilla and Palmer but from Talkeetna and Trapper Creek to Sheep Mountain. 

November of 2005 showed 265 closed residential sales at a median price of $208,000 which were on the market for 51 days.  November 2006 showed 188 sales at a median price of $216,833 that spent 66 days on the market. 

What does this mean to you?  While we could use a lot more info to get the whole picture, it does seem to show that our red hot market has cooled a little.  Prices are still up but sales are slightly down at the end of the year. However, when we look at the market news for all of 2006 we don’t see much of a drop in sales. 

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Written by Marty Van Diest Please leave a comment.