8 • November 2020
BUSINESS NEWS
Coast River Business Journal
Mortgage lender sees another record year
APPLIANCE
Record low interest rates and lack of new listings make for hot market
PACKAGE DEALS
Story by Edward Stratton
Coast River Business Journal
estratton@crbizjournal.com
Before the coronavirus pandemic, real estate
agents already noticed a growing trend of urban
professionals, able to work from anywhere,
choosing to live on the North Coast.
But the pandemic has accelerated the
urban exodus and, combined with record-low
interest rates and a dearth of new home listings,
contributed to a market hotter than some long-
time realtors and lenders have seen since before
the Great Recession.
Debbie Morrow, who manages listings for
the Clatsop Association of Realtors, said she had
100 listings in mid-October, compared to 300 the
year prior.
“Some brokers say it’s the livability of our
county,” she said of Clatsop County. “The COVID
quarantine made people want to live by the beach.
Other brokers say that people have done very well
in the stock market and are looking for a second
home on the coast.”
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National trend
Stories abound of rural markets around
the U.S. inundated with out-of-town buyers
escaping urban areas. The National Association
of Realtors reported home sales and prices in the
U.S. increasing by double digits. Total housing
inventory in September was down nationally by
nearly 20% compared to a year ago, and properties
stayed on the market for 21 days, an all-time low.
“Home sales traditionally taper off toward
the end of the year, but in September they surged
beyond what we normally see during this season,”
Lawrence Yun, the association’s chief economist,
said in a recent news release. “I would attribute
this jump to record-low interest rates and an
abundance of buyers in the marketplace, including
buyers of vacation homes given the greater
flexibility to work from home.”
Hottest market since 2007
Michele Johnson, a real estate agent of more
than 20 years who works for Windermere Realty
Trust in Cannon Beach, said she hasn’t seen such a
hot market since 2007 before the Great Recession.
Home prices have been ramping up significantly
since 2014, she said, and 2020 was earmarked to be
another good year before coronavirus temporarily
shut down much activity. But Johnson described a
perfect storm of factors when business reopened.
“You have historically low interest rates,
COVID, people working from everywhere… and
then I think the social unrest too in a lot of major
cities, Portland and Seattle’s markets, has driven
people to say, ‘We want to get out of these metro
areas,’” she said.
Many of Johnson’s buyers are coming from
The coronavirus pandemic has only exacerbated the number of people moving out of urban
areas to the coast.
Portland and Seattle. But they’ve come from as far
away as a Montana couple she said bought a house
to be close to their son while he attends college in
Portland.
“I had one Portland city employee buy a lot
down here to build for that reason,” she said. “He
said that he most likely wouldn’t be going back into
his office, or maybe have to go into Portland for a
meeting once a month or something like that. But
otherwise, he can work remotely, so he and his wife
are planning on building a house on the coast.”
Mortgage lending: ‘It’s gone nuts’
Greg Cross, with Northwest Lending Group,
has been doing mortgage loans since the mid-
1980s and in Astoria since 1992.
The pandemic and the resulting stimulus
packages caused some short-term pricing
anomalies and some government-backed
financing options to go away, Cross said, along
with new income verification requirements for
business owners and sole proprietors to qualify
for mortgages. But overall, Cross has seen another
record year.
“Because the rates are so low, and they’ve
been low for a while, it’s just gone nuts,” he said.
“I would say it’s probably tripled… over the last
year.”
Much of that increase is people taking
advantage of low rates to refinance their mortgage,
Cross said, but home sales are also up despite the
dearth of inventory. He has also seen the average
loan amounts he issues increase faster than usual
with ballooning home prices.
“As far as the first-time homebuyer, it’s
gotten a little bit tougher, not because of the
qualifying criteria of the loan itself, but just
because the prices are higher,” he said. “Some
people are getting priced out because of that.”
Astoria prices up and up
Andrea Mazzarella with Re/Max River & Sea
became a real estate agent several years ago after
20 years in the service sector. The majority of her
sales are in Astoria, where she said the pandemic
has only exacerbated affordability issues for locals
buying their first home.
“It’s really, really challenging,” she said. “I
thought that the prices were topping out a year ago,
and now they’re even higher. And what you’re
seeing now is every single house that is move-
in ready that’s under $400,000 on the market is
getting multiple offers. They all seem to turn into
a bidding war.”
Mazzarella doesn’t blame people for wanting
to escape the city for the North Coast but said
she feels compelled to remind more well-heeled
buyers about their privilege and the pressure it
puts on local buyers with less money. She sees
housing costs on the North Coast approaching
those of Portland and Seattle.
“I think we have a crazy, inflated cost of
living in Astoria,” she said. “And it’s fascinating
to me that a lot of people don’t see it, because
they live here, and it’s just been this slow, gradual
increase over the last 10 years.”
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