Orcas Island and the San Juan Island Sales History

Here is the latest scoop on sales in the San Juan Islands, which includes Orcas, San Juan Island, Lopez Island and Shaw.  The chart above shows how prices have changed since 2002, peaked in 2007 and fell in 2009. Now at last in Seattle we are seeing the market stabilizing and actually showing small increases. In the past, the Orcas Island Real Estate Market has followed the Seattle Market.

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If you are considering selling property on the San Juan's this chart tells you just how far you need to plan ahead. What it does not say is how much the properties that actually sold had to drop their price.

Innman News - reported the following today:

"SAN FRANCISCO -- The financial crisis is over and the economy is growing at a fast enough clip that the Federal Reserve and other policymakers have already fallen behind the curve in preventing the next asset bubble, economist Ken Rosen said today.
Rosen, the chairman of the University of California, Berkeley's Fisher Center for Real Estate, acknowledged that most economists are still more worried about deflation than inflation."

If you too have been hearing that we have hit the bottom, in fact hit the bottom last summer, and you are thinking of a new lifestyle - check out the San Juan Islands.

To see what is currently available go to: www.orcasdreams.com

Or Email kate@orcasdreams.com

Plan to make your dreams come true!

My Client Got a Loan Modified!!

I feel like celebrating!  One of our clients just got his loan modified for his home on Orcas Island- just about cut in half - to an amount that he can actually afford. He has never been well, but the downturn in our economy and the devaluation of his land was the final straw. I did not know what would happen to him.

This client, like so many fellow Americans has always worked to pay his bills, and made a real estate investment which should of made him some money based on his work on the property. Instead it looked like it might result in his becoming homeless..and bankrupt.  But today, he called and he got a modification! I could not be happier!

There are some hidden downsides to getting help from your lender. Of course the 9 months to a year fighting with them to help you is the first and most obvious nightmare. But what many people don't know is that as soon as you ask for help your credit is affected. It can drop your credit score as much as 100 points according to MSNBC news, as soon as you ask for help EVEN if you have managed to pay your bills on time! So don't be surprised if your credit card companies start notifying you that your line of credit has been slashed to 10% of what it was formerly.


"Why should people's credit be hurt even worse when they're trying to do the right thing?" said Eileen Anderson, senior vice president at Community Development Corp. of Long Island, a housing counseling group in New York.

And many homeowners are angry that a program designed to help carries such a penalty, said Kathy Conley, a housing counselor with GreenPath Inc., a nonprofit group in Farmington Hills, Mich.

"It's a feeling of being duped," she said.

Credit score issues are an unexpected consequence of the program that has been plagued with problems and disappointing results since its launch last year. Only about 170,000 homeowners had completed the process as of February. Hundreds of thousands more are still in limbo, but one lucky homeowner will sleep better tonight.