First of two parts
There is no housing boom on the North Olympic Peninsula.
The loud noise you heard when you opened your property assessment notice was one of four big bangs: one each in Forks, Port Angeles, Sequim and Port Townsend.
Property prices are rising in many parts of the United States, but the hikes here are driven by separate economic engines:
* Port Townsend attracts many folks with “California equity” — profits from the overheated housing market in that state who find “bargains” in the $700,000 range.
* Sequim draws retirees who are bypassing traditional sunshine states like Florida and Arizona and flocking to the Olympic Mountains’ rain shadow.
In the meantime, though, the workers in the city’s “big box” stores cannot afford to live there.
* Port Angeles is climbing out of a depression it suffered in the 1990s after the Rayonier paper mill closed and other economic misfortunes befell it.
* Forks beckons with bargain prices that trail markets farther east.
The four phenomena have similar results, however:
* Many first-time buyers are hard put to find an affordable house.
* Some properties fetch multiple offers that exceed their owners’ asking price. Some buyers put escalator clauses in their offers, promising to top any other offer by thousands of dollars.
* Longtime owners face spiking property taxes, assessed for value they can’t afford to cash in.
* Owners may sell their homes for huge profits but still be unable to “trade up.”
* Too many real estate agents are chasing too few homes.
* A shortage of skilled carpenters bedevils contractors who are eager to enter a sellers’ market.
Some sales are the stuff of legend.
‘Double sales’
Clallam County Assessor Linda Owings-Rosenburgh has a list of “double sales” — property that changed hands twice from 2003 to 2005.
On the low end, one home that sold for $59,000 in March 2003 sold for $80,000 three months later, a 36 percent rise.
One that sold for $34,500 in April 2003 fetched $82,000 in October 2004, a gain of 138 percent.
More expensive properties reaped handsome profits, too.
A home that cost $305,000 in January 2003 brought $445,000 in December 2004, a 46 percent windfall.
Owings-Rosenburgh has taken more than her share of heat for doing her job — reassessing houses at their fair-market value according to state law, often using sales figures almost a year old.
“I had a guy who was so nasty, I thought he was going to have a stroke,” she recalls.
The man had built a home on a piece of farmland, boosting its value from $40,000 to $138,500.
He could have taken his case to the county Board of Equalization within 30 days of receiving his valuation change notice.
In a few weeks, however, he sold the property for $349,000, Owings-Rosenburgh says.