In the Market Update section of my website, I have included the latest report of sales on Whidbey Island for the 2006, 2007 and 2008 years. We plan to have another update by June which will include the 1st quarter numbers.
I attended a meeting with 4 appraisers from Whidbey Island recently. They gave us an update on the lending situation. One of the most difficult parts of their job at present, is providing a lender with comps. With few sales, and in a market like ours, with few homes with the same features, it is difficult to support the appraised prices they are working with. They have had to work with a difficult market, but they have seen an improvement in bank requests, and pending sales which are much higher now than they have been in the recent past. So there seems good justification to state that the market seems to be stabilizing.