The Kitsap Housing Coalition is staging its third annual Parade of Affordable Homes on June 1.
The tour, which will be from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., will include dozens of open houses in Kitsap County at homes priced at $225,000 or less.
All the houses, along with a map showing their locations, will be published on the Kitsap Housing Coalition (kitsaphousingcoalition.org) Facebook page, which can be found by typing ParadeOfAffordableHomes in the Facebook search bar.
Booklets and maps may be picked up at local real estate offices starting May 30. read more »
PR Newswire
SEATTLE — After several years of depressed demand for homes, buyers are returning to the market in droves. However, many homebuyers may be ill-prepared to take out a mortgage, answering basic questions about mortgage information wrong nearly one-third (32.5 percent) of the time, according to a Zillow® Mortgage Marketplace survey of prospective and current homeowners.
For example, one-third (34 percent) of first-time homebuyers in the survey were not aware that it is possible to get a home loan with a down payment of less than 5 percent. In fact, the number of lenders on Zillow Mortgage Marketplace quoting loan requests with a down payment between 3.5 and 5 percent has risen by 570 percent over the past two years. read more »
Kitsap County’s housing market gained more new listings in April than the same month in 2012, although the total number of active listings and the median home price were still below figures from a year earlier, according to Northwest Multiple Listing Service statistics.
The Northwest MLS reported 543 new Kitsap listings in April, bringing the total to 1,287 active listings at the end of last month, compared with 1,395 for April 2012.
The median price for year-to-date listings in 2013 is $259,950, compared with $266,900 for listings in the first four months of last year.
The second home lending office opened this year in Kitsap County by 1st Security Bank will have Kathy Hite on staff as loan officer.
The Mountlake Terrace-based bank’s new office is in Port Orchard at 1140 Bethel Road. The bank’s Poulsbo home lending office opened in February.
Hite has been a loan officer in the area since 2000 and has worked in the industry for over 20 years.
Starting Aug. 1, owners of both residential and commercial buildings in Bremerton that are considered abandoned will have to register their properties with the city and inspect them monthly. The owners will also have to correct any nuisances, such as overgrown grass, trash or graffiti.
The ordinance, which the Bremerton City Council passed unanimously in April, is the first of its kind in Washington state. It imposes steep fines for noncompliance with the new rules.
Abandoned properties are defined as those that are vacant and have either been foreclosed (or have a deed in lieu of foreclosure), are under a notice of default or trustee sale, or are the subject of a pending tax assessor’s lien sale. The ordinance requires the properties to be properly maintained, and if the owner is a lender or another entity out of the area, it must retain a local property manager who will be responsible for complying with the ordinance. read more »
The corner building where Myrhe’s restaurant and bar served Port Orchard patrons for decades has been empty since a kitchen fire gutted the two-story structure in July 2011, and prospects for a revival are dim.
The boarded-up site has become an eyesore on Bay Street. The foreclosed property is scheduled to be sold at auction in a trustee’s sale in June. The last owners of the restaurant, John Lora and Mindy Oliver of Milton, owe thousands of dollars in delinquent property taxes, and they are being sued by four companies that started restoration work on the building last year. They claim Lora did not pay them for work they did, even though he received about $633,000 from an insurance claim before Travelers Insurance denied further payment on the claim because of alleged fraud. read more »
A year after plans for the Port Orchard Public Market were announced, the site of businessman Don Ryan’s ambitious project had an open-air feel when he took several prospective market vendors inside recently. The long-vacant Bay Street building was missing its roof — but that was a sign of progress.
The building that’s been empty since the Slip 45 nightclub closed several years ago has been gutted, and interior work to transform the space is in progress under a new roof. Rising above the building’s flat roof is the 25-by-50-foot frame for the clear story skylight over the market’s central area. When work is completed, there will be a new façade above the Bay Street entrance, which will have wide doors that can be rolled up to make the indoor market more visible from outside and add to the ambience. read more »
What was so unusual about Phillip Ratliff’s experience in getting approval for his first mortgage was that it wasn’t difficult at all — even though he could afford a down payment of only 5 percent.
In the years after the housing bubble burst, borrowers had to practically promise their firstborn child to secure a mortgage.
And while the requirements are still pretty rigorous, particularly for those with less than perfect credit, there are signs that at least some regional lenders and mortgage insurers are beginning to ease up. Some regional banks and credit unions are even offering products that vaguely resemble the more aggressive financing that became all too common during the boom days and eventually got many borrowers into trouble. read more »
WASHINGTON — U.S. homebuilders broke the 1 million mark in March for the first time since June 2008. The gain signals continued strength for the housing recovery at the start of the spring buying season.
The overall pace of homes started rose 7 percent from February to March to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.04 million, the Commerce Department said April 16.
Apartment construction, which tends to fluctuate sharply from month to month, led the surge: It jumped nearly 31 percent to an annual rate of 417,000, the fastest pace since January 2006. read more »
