The first quarter results for San Juan Island were pretty exciting as the real estate dollar volume reflected an increase of 31% as compared to the same three-month period in 2016; darn nice production for the start of the year. The number of transactions reflected an increase of 30 period. Overall, the County had a 23 percent increase in volume and 28 percent increase in the number of transactions.

Coldwell Banker San Juan Islands was up 49 percent as compared to last year same period.

The most obvious contributing factor to the healthy increase in volume is the volume attributed to the high-end sales. On San Juan, we had 5 sales close in the first quarter that were in excess of $1,000,000 each as compared to the 2 sales in 2016 for the same period.

The County had a total of 6 high-end sales the first quarter; 5 were sourced to San Juan and 1 was on Shaw Island. This number for the County is equal to the number in 2016 during the first quarter. The sales volume for the high-end properties on San Juan Island was $9,250,000 or 37 percent of the entire volume. The number of high-end sales was 10 percent of the total number of transactions. The average sales price for the 5 sales was $1,850,000.

For the entire year of 2016, the high-end volume on San Juan represented 32 percent of the total and the number of transactions represented 9 percent. The high-end sales volume for the County during 2016 was 28 percent.

Pending high-end sales on San Juan includes a total of 6 properties with a grand total of 8 in the County.

One of the sales this first quarter for San Juan was the Harbor Village Office/Retail/Health Club complex. This sale is strong evidence of our market recovery. This property has been off and on the market for over 18 years with several agents having an opportunity to list it, including myself. I had it listed in 2001 for $3.8; wasn’t I the optimistic agent with short hair back then? This property closed 16 years later at $2,250,000 with local buyers.

Agents have benchmarks during a market recovery and this sale was surely one of them due to length of time on the market. The future use for the complex includes the second floor offering hostel accommodations with many other improvements planned.

Historically, the first quarter of each year has been volatile and this year is no exception, unlike last year, the volume and transaction number reflects a favorable increase of 31 percent where last year it was a decrease of 20 percent.

Link to finish article:www.sanjuanislands.com/PDF/MarketUpdate31717MAS.pdf