The Seattle Area is still seeing gains, job growth, and is generally seen as a good bet over the longterm in everything I’ve read lately. While the rest of the country’s real estate downturn makes headlines, the northwest remains a bright spot. From Ballard’s Condo boom, to areas as far away as Port Orchard or Lake Stevens, there’s lots of buyers and sellers in today’s market.

Here’s another article on the Western Washington, and the Pacific Northwest regional real estate market.

http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070817/BUSINESS/208170316/-1/Home

Sleepy towns like Salem, Ore.; Wenatchee, Wash.; and Provo-Orem, Utah, may lack glamour, but they are among the few places in the country where housing prices are growing at double-digit rates, according to a recent federal study.

Experts say population growth and job growth are one reason. Local factors – like proximity to ski slopes, mountain bike trails or nearby cities – are also helping some Western markets escape one of the nation’s worst housing downturns in years. And most of these small to mid-size cities weren’t a part of the original housing boom and speculation that followed, so many of them are still playing catch-up.

“The Pacific Northwest was a little bit late coming to the party,” said Andrew Leventis, an economist with a federal housing agency. “The extreme appreciation over the past five or six years in the country only just began in the Northwest a few years ago.”

In Wenatchee, Wash., a 30,000-resident town east of the Cascade Mountains, homes appreciated an average of 25 percent between the first quarter of 2006 and the first quarter of 2007, according to a recent study by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight.