The Bellingham Herald recently published an article about home prices in Bellingham being overvalued by 47% no less. This housing valuation analysis was done by Global Insight Inc. and National City Corp. who ranked the Bellingham area as the 20th most overvalued housing market out of 317 metro areas.
I would certainly take this study with a grain of salt. Are those who are putting out this study doing their research from a cubicle somewhere in the desert perhaps, or maybe a wheatfield in the middle of the country.
Bellingham real estate prices continue to slowly climb while much of the rest of the nation is going the other way. We live in a unique corner of the world. It is amazingly beautiful here and I appreciate it every day as I drive around town and see the beauty all around, the Bay, the island’s, mount Baker, Chuckanut drive, green trees, clean air, and not much traffic. If you’re into the outdoors you can hike, bike, kayak, canoe, waterski, fish, mountain bike, ski, climb mountains, sail, camp, go places and all kinds of boats, and anything else you’d like to do outside and it’s all right here or very close by.
Presently Bellingham has three waterfront parks, Larrabee State Park on the Bay is not far away, Bloedel Donovan Park on Lake Whatcom, Lake Padden, Lake Samish. The city has an incredible opportunity to rebuild 139 acres of prime downtown real estate on the Bay, the former industrial site of Georgia-Pacific operations. We could end up with a world-class aquarium, more waterfront park space, and an awesome addition to to an already growing vibrant downtown.
Bellingham is still a relatively small town of about 70,000 people, it has been discovered, it has gotten top ratings year after year as a great place to live from places like AARP and Money magazine, Outdoor magazine, and a host of others. Bellingham, WA has gotten the number 2 spot as best place to live as ranked by Cities Ranked & Rated, I think with more and more people fleeing thecities of our nation Bellingham is certainly an attractive alternative.
Buyers seem to be willing to pay the price and after all that’s what sets the market value not what somebody sitting at a desk in another part of the country with a lot of statistics in front of them.