What: Doorways to Luxury homes tour
When: 12 to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, June 6-7
Where: About 25 homes throughout Clark County
More information: www.doorwaystoluxury.com
In addition to this weekend’s luxury home tour, a smaller and more modest home tour of six recently remodeled homes is being offered by Remodelers of Clark County.
The Columbia Credit Union Remodeled Homes Tour will be Saturday and Sunday, with homes on display from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission for adults and children ages 13 and older is $10, with children younger than 13 admitted free. Tickets are available online at www.remodeledhomestour.com or can be purchased at Columbia Credit Union locations. Contract Furnishings Mart or with cash during tour hours at each remodeled home site.
Featured projects in this year’s Remodeled Homes Tour are: Renew Creations, a whole home remodel in Battle Ground; Designers Northwest Inc., a kitchen and bath remodel in Battle Ground; A.C.T. Builders, LLC, two whole home remodels in north Vancouver; Scherer Enterprises, a whole home remodel in Vancouver; and T-Square Remodeling, a whole home remodel in Fairway Village. Directions to each home are posted on the Remodeled Homes Tour website.
The tour is organized by the Building Industry Association of Clark County. Presenting sponsors are Contract Furnishings Mart and DeWils.
— Gordon Oliver, Columbian Business Editor
For those in the market for a luxury home in Clark County, this is the weekend to check out more than two dozen offerings available from $600,000 up to more than $2.5 million.
It’s a rarefied market, especially in the seven-figure range, and it’s been the slowest to bounce back from the housing downturn that ravaged the local real estate market for several years. But sponsors of the Doorways to Luxury spring tour say they’re seeing more activity in the high-end market, with the Columbia River waterfront and Prune Hill in Camas attracting the most interest.
Most of the buyers are from outside our community, said Linda Horowitz, co-chair of Greater Vancouver Luxury Homes Group, the tour’s sponsor, and a real estate agent at Windermere Stellar in Vancouver. Many are drawn by the area’s relatively low taxes and good schools, she said.
For the first time, the free event will be offered for two days instead of one. This year’s inventory of open homes includes some 25 homes spread across the county — not quite as many as last year, in part because offers have been made on a couple of homes that had been slated for the tour, Horowitz said.
Ed Faulk, the home tour’s co-chair and an agent for Coldwell Banker Bain/Seal in Vancouver, also noted the growing number of buyers coming from other areas into Clark County’s luxury housing market. He said luxury homes are drawing prospective homebuyers relocating from other areas to work in some of the county’s growing number of high-paying professional jobs at a few flagship employers.
“We love Fisher Investments,” he said. “We love Kuni (Automotive.)”
Yet these stirrings hardly amount to a full-throated resurgence in the high-end housing market. On average, the homes on the market in April were enough to supply demand for about 2.4 months, the RMLS real estate listing service reported. But the inventory of homes in the $600,000 to $700,000 range would supply demand for 13 months, RMLS said.
The inventory of homes in the $700,001 to $800,000 range would last 15.9 months. The supply for the $801,000 to $900,000 segment would last 28.5 months and the $901,000 to $1 million market had a 34.5 month inventory.
There were 70 homes for sale at $1 million to $5 million. With an average of 2.5 sales per month, that supply would last 28 months, RMLS reported.
Horowitz said the sharp decline in home values during the recession is still holding back the luxury market, since many local homeowners in the middle-price range still have not seen a full recovery of home prices.
Those buyers are finally starting to return to the market, Horowitz said, “but it’s been a long time coming.”
Much of the focus of the Doorways to Luxury tour, she said, is to introduce outsiders to Clark County’s diverse high-end housing market that exists in many communities.
“The bigger picture is that we have a story to tell, and we want to get that story out to the other side of the river,” she said.
Go to www.doorwaystoluxury.com for details about luxury property listings and details of this year’s tour.
In addition to this weekend's luxury home tour, a smaller and more modest home tour of six recently remodeled homes is being offered by Remodelers of Clark County.
The Columbia Credit Union Remodeled Homes Tour will be Saturday and Sunday, with homes on display from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission for adults and children ages 13 and older is $10, with children younger than 13 admitted free. Tickets are available online at www.remodeledhomestour.com or can be purchased at Columbia Credit Union locations. Contract Furnishings Mart or with cash during tour hours at each remodeled home site.
Featured projects in this year's Remodeled Homes Tour are: Renew Creations, a whole home remodel in Battle Ground; Designers Northwest Inc., a kitchen and bath remodel in Battle Ground; A.C.T. Builders, LLC, two whole home remodels in north Vancouver; Scherer Enterprises, a whole home remodel in Vancouver; and T-Square Remodeling, a whole home remodel in Fairway Village. Directions to each home are posted on the Remodeled Homes Tour website.
The tour is organized by the Building Industry Association of Clark County. Presenting sponsors are Contract Furnishings Mart and DeWils.
-- Gordon Oliver, Columbian Business Editor
