I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!  In this weeks update we are looking closely at the PCE to see if rate will stay the same or go up on December 12th.

November 27th weekly update.

Dupre’ and Scott Apartment Advisors, Fall Apartment Rent and Vacancy Survey has shown improving trends for rental market. I will concentrate on the Snohomish county market in this article but you can see the complete survey results by clicking on the link. Snohomish county vacancy rate improved to 3.9% in the past six months for 20-unit or larger apartments. This is an improvement over the 4.7% vacancy rate for the six months prior. Typically, as vacancy rates go down, rents go up. Here are some current rent averages for complexes with 20 or more units in different areas of Snohomish county. These stats are for one bedroom units only:

Central Everett- just under $550
Edmonds- around $625
Marysville/Monroe- near $635
Silver Lake- close to $665
Mountlake Terrace- near $670
Paine Field- around $675
Lynnwood- close to $680
Mill Creek- just over $800
Thrashers Corner- near $825

The average rent for 20-unit or larger apartments, all unit types rose in September to just above $800 – up from the $775 range in March of 2006.

Vacancy rates for 20-unit or larger apartments, all unit types, dropped to 5% in September from 5.75% in March of 2006.

Is it time to raise rents? Individual landlords are going to have to make that decision for themselves. All in all, buying income-producing real estate is starting to payoff again.

* 763 went pending in the month of October

As we enter into the Holiday months the real estate market historically tends to slow down and we are starting to see this happen. Market times have increased, original asking prices are starting to drop, and the number of available homes on the market has slowly increased. But the interest rates remain pretty steady for now, which in turn has the potential to slowly turning the upcoming months into more of a normal market. I wouldn’t say that it's a buyer's or a seller's market at this point - it's pretty neutral.  With this months saturation rate being at 2.2 months worth of residential real estate, there is a good number of available homes for buyers but not too much competition for sellers.

Interest rates remain for a 30-year fixed with no points is around or below 6.25%.