“The Everett Market Place Is Changing”
Earlier this week the Leader Herald interviewed well-known and highly respected local real estate broker Sandy Juliano of JRS Properties, Inc. Here’s what she had to say.
Q. What’s your impression of the current Everett real estate market place?
A. With interest rates rising it is more difficult for would be buyers to afford higher prices. I see prices coming down – not rapidly but significantly. Buyers don’t have the same amount of buying power anymore. It will become a buyer’s market soon.
Q. Where is the demand unchanged?
A. Basically, multi families. People we serve in Everett need income to pay their mortgages. Single families are going to be the first hurt. Twos and threes still work.
Q. Do you think we are in a housing recession?
A. I’m not sure we are there yet but we are headed that way.
Q. Older multi family homes – twos and threes. What’s up?
A. They are still selling fairly rapidly if priced right. The time of over asking is not happening as frequently right now. Outsiders coming to convert two’s and three’s into sixes, nines and twelves are changing the market place.
Q. Do you see gentrification as a problem or an asset?
A. I see it as a problem. We’ve always been a Blue Collar community. Now people from other nations coming here can’t afford to buy. Gentrification pushes up the price for properties and that excludes immigrants coming here.
Q. How is the average person who wants to live in Everett able to pay much higher rents?
A. They absolutely cannot. Rents are too high in the modern structures and even in the older multi-unit homes. Blue collar folks are being pushed out. Higher income people are coming in.
Q. Where does this cycle stop or does it ever stop?
A. I don’t know. I don’t know the answer to that. We need to get back to a much better system about what is allowed to be built. If you don’t allow two and three family owners to just live their lives here without higher taxes, then you will not gain new buyers who want to put down roots and to engender a sense of neighborhood. That era is gone.
Q. Six months from now. Where are we at?
A. I believe a moratorium on new construction should be imposed for a short time so we can all catch our breath. We need a plan, a citywide plan to save the neighborhoods what remains of them.
Q. What do we need?
A. We need neighborhoods. We need commercial development so we can raise more in tax revenues instead of putting the taxes on the backs of homeowners.
Q. What kind of year was it for local brokers in 2022?
A. A little slower. People are taking longer to make up their minds. Buyers aren’t jumping as quickly they were. Again, higher interest rates are affecting sales. Not as many buyers can afford the costs associated with higher interest rates.