Tales from the Seattle housing market: Modest home almost gets $1 million

Between the soaring housing prices, plummeting inventory, and insane bidding war stories, we keep hearing about how crazy the Seattle housing market is. So we've asked local real estate agents, sellers and buyers to share their nutty stories about a recent home sale or purchase to prove just how true it all is. Do you have a crazy story to share about prices gone mad or ludicrous offers? Let us know and we might share it.

Today, we get the story on a turn-of-the-century home in the Stevens neighborhood that turned potential buyers on their heads from Windermere’s Tracy Treseder.

Windermere

The owners of the 1908 Central Seattle residence needed to make a sale happen quickly when they put an offer down on another home that was contingent on selling their place first. The 2,100 square-foot four-bedroom hit the market with less than a week of prep time. Treseder priced it slightly below market ($729,000) given the desired speed of sale and also to compensate for the busy nature of 23rd Avenue. The expectations was that they might be able to get $775,000 in the end.

Windermere

14 pre-inspections and 10 offers later, those expectations were left in the dust. Most of the offers came in at or around $850,000. One offer even came with an escalation clause that maxed out at $952,000. In the end, the homeowners took an all-cash offer with zero contingencies for $900,000. The home is currently pending and is expected to close on December 20.

Windermere

As Treseder puts it, “the fact that a modest home on a busy street could sell for almost a million dollars is pretty insane.” Such is the current state of the Seattle housing market.

FYI, this place might look familiar to you. It’s because we featured it in our Pricespotter challenge when it first hit the market. The closest guess to the asking price we received? $650K.

• 523 23rd Ave E [Windermere]
• Big Reveal: $729K for this renovated Capitol Hill 4-BR [CS]