A short distance west of Port Angeles is a great area.  And there’s a super custom home built on a one acre parcel just waiting for you.  Here’s a brief description:

Extraordinary custom home, living room with three-sided propane fireplace, vaulted ceiling, formal dining room has oak flooring, vaulted ceiling and French doors to back deck. Gourmet kitchen with designer lighting, custom cabinets and appliances. Master suite with bath featuring heated floor and Jacuzzi tub. Separate shower with heated floor and double shower heads. Library has built-in shelves and pocket doors.

See the full listing data sheet with photos:  Port Angeles Custom Home for Sale

You can find it by driving west on Highway 101 and turning right on Highway 112.  About four miles later you turn right on Place Road and right again on Hunt Road.  Drive until you see a Sequim & Port Angeles Real Estate, LLC sign on the left.

Want a preview?  Here’s a little video for your viewing pleasure.

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Port Angeles homes are selling even with the market down from last year, but something interesting is happening.  Actually, two things.

First, even though the inventory is higher, the buyers here are cherry picking the best homes.  That means the competition is keener than you might think for the top 10% of the homes on the market, the kind that most people really want.  These homes are selling and gone from the inventory.

Second, the price of some homes is very negotiable, and the price of other homes is not very negotiable.  This second point requires an explanation.  In almost 30 years in the real estate business, I’ve never seen such elasticity in the listing prices and selling prices of homes.  An example will probably help explain what I mean.

One house is for sale for $284,500, already down substantially from the original listing price over a year earlier.  A buyer makes an offer of $260,000, which is $24,500 less than the listed price.  While that might not sound like a huge discounted offer at 8.6% below the current listed price, when you take into consideration that the original listed price was much higher, this is a pretty serious hit for a seller to take in this market.

The offer was accepted at $260,000, and the buyer proceeded with his due diligence, which included the home inspection, the community septic inspection, and the well inspection.  During the home inspection it was discovered that the back concrete patio was settling, most likely because the subsurface had not been properly compacted.  The concrete was cracking in several places, and the settling was resulting in water draining toward the crawl space under the house at one corner.  The pest inspection showed some indication of moisture ants under the house at that location.

After further volleys, the seller agreed to further reduce the price by $9,000 because of the concrete patio problems, so the final price at closing was $251,000.  (There is so much more to negotiating than most people realize, and a lot of effective tricks in the trade for the experienced professional.)

This 2005 home is a custom built, 1900 square foot home with a large double car garage.  It is a very nice custom home and definitely above the average stick-built home.  The home was a steal at $251,000.  This buyer won the lottery, even considering the present state of the market.  I know all this because I represented the buyer as the buyer’s agent.  The photo above is the home.   It was owned by a relocation company, which bought it from their employee who was transferred across the country.  The price of this home was negotiable.

The price of other homes may not be so negotiable.  Not all sellers are either desperate to sell or need to.  Many sellers would like to sell, but they can hang onto their home for a year or more if they don’t sell it.  These homes, and there are many, are not so negotiable on price or terms.

So we have a real estate market that is essentially bifurcated.  There is a segment of the market that is normal with supply and demand playing out, but with normal buyers and with sellers that are not desperate or under financial pressure to sell.  Then there is another segment of the market that is full of foreclosures, distressed properties, and sellers who must sell sooner rather than later.  The chaos that results in the market creates a segmented market where one house is dramatically effected by the economic forces to drive the price lower, but the house across the street may not be effected at all by the same variables.

If you are qualified to buy, and that is your intention, don’t ignore the first factor I mentioned.  Buyers are cherry picking the best homes right now, so the home you would consider ideal may be sold before you make a decision.

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Port Angeles Homes Sold, Sequim Homes Sold.  As I analyzed what homes are selling in Sequim and Port Angeles, I charted the sales in $50,000 increments. This helped me see what percentage of homes are selling in each price category. It’s very revealing.  It does help explain why homes in the upper price ranges are not selling. They represent a very small percentage of the market.

Here’s an example of how to use this graphic.  If you’re selling a home above $400,000 and less than $450,000, this chart tells us that only 7% of all homes sold are in that price range in Sequim and 6% in Port Angeles.  If you have a home for sale in Port Angeles priced above $450,000 and less than $500,000, you are only reaching 1% of the entire buyer’s market.  Don’t be surprised if it is hard to find that 1 in 100 buyer.  If you’re selling a Sequim home or a Port Angeles home, this certainly broadcasts the need for effective marketing, doesn’t it?

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This is a beautiful large home in a park like setting and a water view in a peaceful area. See this to believe it in Port Angeles.

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This home is no longer available, but contact me to find out if the home you’re looking for is.

Chuck Marunde, J.D.
Broker/Owner/Realtor
Sequim & Port Angeles Real Estate, LLC
360-775-5424

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Freshwater Bay, just west of Port Angeles, Washington is about a 12 minute drive from the city, and is one of the Olympic Peninsula’s most beautiful water front havens on the entire west coast.   Gorgeous five acre parcels are common, and extraordinary views of International waters from the first and second decks are also common. Here’s a photo of the public boat launch on Freshwater Bay that gives all the homeowners free access to the Bay and the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

When I took this photo, I sighed and said, “Another day in Paradise.”

If you’re looking for a home or land in this gorgeous paradise, email me.  I’d be glad to help.

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Beautiful 5 acre Port Angeles Freshwater Bay Cedar home for sale, 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, 1,167 square feet, and priced at $298,000.

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92 Lawrence Pointe Road, Port Angeles, Washington.  Every once in a while a really great property comes up for sale.  Here’s one I would love to own myself.  It sits on a 5 acre parcel in one of our best areas, Freshwater Bay.  This isn’t a water view lot, but it is a fairly private and selectively cleared piece of Heaven.

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Port Angeles WA Water View Home for Sale at Freshwater Bay

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Port Angeles Country home For Sale with large shop. This is not a foreclosure sale but it is a distress sale. Motivated sellers. Located on the West side of Port Angeles, Washington near Freshwater Bay.

This home is a few miles west of Port Angeles on 2.27 acres, and it borders on 80 acres of State DNR land with a walking trail down to Freshwater Bay on the beautiful Strait of Juan de Fuca! This is almost too good to be true.

Imagine almost 2,600 square feet of comfortable country living in a contemporary 4 bedroom castle, a gorgeous living room with beautiful cathedral ceilings (as you can see from photos), a jetted tub in a large bathroom, a sweet kitchen, and . .

For the man of the house . . . there’s a gigantic shop building, 36 x 60 feet with steel beams on the front of the shop (this thing is practically hurricane proof, although we don’t have hurricanes here).

The garage doors are 14 feet high, and the shop ceiling is about 16 feet high. The inside of the shop is what you might expect of a man who uses it for working on equipment and vehicles, but don’t expect a finished touch. If you want sheetrock and trim, you can do that with your own touch. Hey, be thankful the owner didn’t sink more money into the shop, because this property would be a lot more expensive.

Want to see more photos and details? Go to Port Angeles Country Home for Sale.

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