Here is a quick look on how things are looking for condos in Belltown, Downtown and South Lake Union:
Enso at South Lake Union has closed 98 homes with a few more pending. By the end of the year, they will probably have 80% of homes sold. According to the sales center, pricing has stayed stable and homes are closing for list price. If you're using their preferred lender, Bank of America, there is a $2,500 credit at closing and the seller will match that credit as well. However, they are not to be combined with other concessions.
Fifteen Twenty-One has sold 102 out of 143 homes with several more pending being scheduled. There has been quite a number of contingent buyers lately in this building. Read more here. Sales have started picking up as these folks successfully sell their single family homes. The website has also been using testimonials from current residents to promote the building. I have to say it's a pretty smart marketing move and it's surprising more projects don't do the same thing. Inventory for their more popular plans (at certain price points) are getting thin. Remaining homes range from $1M to $5.5M.
Escala has sold 82 homes, 77 of them since March 27, 2010. They closed 61 of them, nearly 25% of the building is closed as of last week. The building is averaging about 9 sales per month and the sales center is anticipating having 50% of the building sold by their one year anniversary on March 27, 2011. It would be interesting to see if they will make some price adjustments over the next few months to meet this goal.
Gallery in Belltown has sold 188 homes out of 233. The 45 remaining homes range from 571 square feet to 1,160 square feet. Prices start at $249,000 and go up to $465,000. As some of you might recall, they had their auction in September 2009 and sold around 40 homes. After the auction, they have lowered the prices for their remaining inventory based on the auction results and since then have sold over 120 condos in the last twelve months. Gallery is FHA and VA approved.
This seems promising for the market, that so many condos have sold in these buildings. But the monthly numbers don’t look promising. Do the monthly numbers you post take these sales into account or do they never make it into MLS?
Not all sales were listed on the MLS. The inventory level is still much higher than the sale level.