Want to buy a house in Silverdale? Better act quickly

Jennifer and Joseph Calkins felt the pinch of a tight Silverdale real estate market during their six-month search for the perfect home.

They looked at 30 places before selecting one in the Ridgetop area.

“It’s definitely the right time time buy a house” because of low interest rates, Joseph said. “But there aren’t many on the market.”

The search took longer than expected, Jennifer said, but she acknowledged that was partly because she was a picky shopper.

“There were some houses we drove by and said no, others we walked in the door and said no. Others we didn’t get to see because they had already sold. The market is tight right now,” Joseph said.

These first-time home buyers experienced a trend in the Silverdale real estate market.

The median home price here jumped to $188,772 this year, $4,651 more than 2000, according to Frank Wilson, the managing broker at the Windermere office in Silverdale. Homes weren’t on the market as long, either — an average of 81 days this year compared to 86 last year. In King County, homes were on the market for an average of 43 days; in Mason County, 122.

In east Silverdale, that figure was even more pronounced: homes were on the market an average of 60 days this year, down from 71 in 2000.

A confluence of several factors are responsible, local real estate agents said.

Rock-bottom mortgage rates, hovering between 6.5 and 7 percent, are one explanation. King County housing prices also continued to rise, making the ferry commute more attractive to home hunters, said Frank Leach, owner of the Silverdale RE/MAX.

“Looking at the big picture, we still have some of the most affordable housing in the Puget Sound area, and we have some of the best quality of life in the Puget Sound region. That’s What I think the draw is,” said Wilson, who also is president of the Kitsap County Association of Realtors.

High rental prices might also prompt people to build equity in a home rather than rent, Wilson added.

“The movement of key military personnel into the area has also helped buoy our area up,” Leach said.

One area where the Silverdale real estate market has taken a hit is in new-home construction.

“If you go back prior to growth management, we were doing 1,800 (single family home) permits per year. It’s drastically reduced since then,” Leach said.

In 2000, 712 single-family permits were issued, according to Kitsap County building permit data.

“(Growth management) threw our county into a position of uncertainty. Literally, we have had some of our bigger builders leave or reduce the amount of business they do here,” Wilson said.

This was largely due to a more restrictive permitting process and limits on how rural land can be subdivided, according to the agents.

The lack of new homes built has put pressure on the resale market, Leach said, and he predicted future growth will be urban-centered.

“That’s where we’ll see a lot of growth, in the urban growth areas, in the in-fill lots,” Leach said.

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