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Contributors
Marce Edwards is the business editor. She has been at The News Tribune for seven years and has written about technology and big businesses in the South Sound including Weyerhaeuser and Russell. Before moving to Tacoma, she worked at The Idaho Statesman in Boise. She is a Northwest native who likes to garden and refuses to use an umbrella. She lives in Tacoma with her husband and two kids.
C.R. Roberts is a Tacoma native. Before joining The News Tribune, he worked as a freelance writer and part-time cowhand on a cattle ranch in Northern Idaho. He writes about small business, personal finance and other business issues.
John Gillie writes about the aerospace and airline industries, commercial development and consumer issues. During his 30-year-tenure at The News Tribune he has covered issues as diverse as the Native American fishing rights disputes, crime and the courts, the wood products industry and energy. He lived in Tacoma with his family for 25 years, but now lives in Kent because his wife heads a five-state non-profit foundation headquartered in Ballard, and it only seemed a sensible compromise to make considering their workplaces are 40 miles apart.
Kelly Kearsley has been a business reporter at The News Tribune since 2005. She covers the Port of Tacoma and international trade. Being born and raised in Spokane she’s used to living in cities with inferiority complexes and, in fact, prefers it. Prior to working at The News Tribune, she spent three years as a reporter for The Bulletin in Bend, Oregon and another year working stints for The Associated Press and Seattle Times. She graduated from Pacific Lutheran University. She lives in Tacoma with her husband and miniature schnauzer.
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Kelly Kearsley sent this in:
Snow, cold temperatures and a sluggish economy pushed Pierce County’s median home price down by 13 percent in December, according to figures released by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service Tuesday. That was the largest year-over-year monthly decline in 2008.
The end-of-the-year snowpocolypse didn’t help the already weakened real estate market as the weather kept buyers and agents from touring homes or even making it to work.
“I wasn’t seeing too many faces during the last half of the month and a lot of it had to do with the weather and it being too dangerous to drive,” said Dick Beeson, a NWMLS director and broker/owner of Windermere/Commencement Associates in Tacoma.
At $235,000, the median price for a single-family home or condo did perk up a bit from November when it was $230,000. The median home price in December of 2008 was $269,950. (Median means half of the homes sold for more and half sold for less.)
Pending sales in the county during December were down almost 14 percent and the number of homes and condos for sale decreased by 11 percent compared to the same month last year.
The latter is good news for home sellers.
“The (high) inventory levels have been one of the problems,” Beeson said. Too many houses for sale makes buyers nervous and tends to drive down prices.
Whether the county has hit the bottom of its price depreciation is anyone’s guess, though Beeson anticipates that the current low interest rates, new president and a promise of an economic stimulus from Congress will boost consumer confidence – and ultimately the real estate market.
Margo Hass Klein, an associate broker with Coldwell Banker Bain, said the buyers are out there – it’s getting the financing that’s tricky. Now Klein prepares her clients for finding financing before she starts showing them properties.
Still she is optimistic about 2009.
“I’ve already had four offers this year,” she said. “There’s still going to be a bit of a trickle down, but I’ve had nothing but good signs.”
