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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: coug who wrote (206261)	6/6/2009 12:21:51 PM
From: neolib	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 306849

In the last couple of weeks I've taken two day trips wandering through the Palouse starting from Walla Walla. First one meandered up to Palouse Falls, over to Colfax, Pullman, Moscow & Lewiston. Next trip via Pasco and up to Spokane, then down to Pullman and back roads from there to Walla Walla. Its really beautiful in the late spring. Prices have risen a lot in this area, and have not fallen much so far. Walla Walla had way too much built, and lots of higher end stuff is sitting empty. Prices have got to drop at some point. A nice example is this place: vue22.com With impeccably bad timing they came on the market as things went south. IIRC, two were "sold" to some of the original investors. After flogging them for a year or so, they then hit on the idea of making some of them time shares (1/5). Not that Walla Walla has much of a market for such. They then started advertising that there were only a few left by which they meant sans the two owner ones, and sans the ones slated for fractional ownership, there were much less than the original number available for exclusive ownership. LOL! Drive by the place and its deserted. Ouch. OTOH, I've got 45 acres and 3/8 of a mile of the Walla Walla river which I paid $95K for, so I've kind of enjoyed the "discovery" of this region by those more enlightened than myself. But I still think prices have gotten out of line. Bare Ag land was about $2K/acre when I bought in the early 90's, and now it is going for 15-20K. Driven by would be vinteurs with more money than sense. Edit: Its been awhile since I looked at the vue22 website, and the prices have indeed dropped now. About 100K IIRC. I guess the reality of a lack of a high end Townhouse market in Walla Walla is finally registering with these guys. The McMansion on 10 Acres market has not yet registered such declines. I expect it will however.