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The secret is out: Spokane Valley – and Eastern Washington in general – is a pretty nice place to live.
So as more west-siders, Californians and Arizonans move here, the need for housing – especially affordable housing – is going to rise.
Spokane Valley City Council members were briefed at their Tuesday study session that it would behoove them to entice developers to build more new $150,000 homes and less $300,000 ones, as rising prices will force those who make under $50,000 a year to either move, rent an apartment or live in homes “I wouldn’t want my clients in,” according to Ken Mewhinney, a Realtor and member of the Spokane Affordable Homeownership Task Force.
Mewhinney – who was joined by Spokane City Council Member Al French and Chris Venne, a finance manager with Community Frameworks and past chairman of the Spokane Neighborhood Economic Development Alliance board of directors – said that Eastern Washington has become the go-to spot for those who are getting priced out of home ownership in coastal areas like Seattle and California because there are simply fewer places left to build.
According to the Washington state Department of Licensing, 10,000 new driver’s licenses were issued in Spokane County to folks who came from outside Washington from April 2006 to April 2007. Only 1,400 of those people were from Idaho and at least five came from every state in the union, Mewhinney said.
As more and more magazine and Internet articles list the Spokane area as an attractive place to live or retire, the demand for homes will continue to go up. And U-Haul reported last year that Spokane was the seventh most moved-to city in the country, Mewhinney said.
The average home price now is $207,000 – to high for the average Joe to afford on his own on a single income, he added.
“They just can’t afford that kind of house,” Mewhinney said.
Local governments can encourage and offer financial incentives to builders to add smaller – yet still attractive – homes to developments so that first-time or low-income home buyers aren’t forced to purchase something rundown or in a crummy neighborhood. Offering developers “bonus densities” or allowing them to pay fees after buyers have moved in are common tools, Venne said.
Council Member Bill Gothmann asked what’s necessarily wrong with a buyer who’s strapped for cash buying something that isn’t new.
“First-time buyers in Spokane buy an older home – period,” he said.
Whinney countered that if a person couldn’t afford to spend money for a nicer home, they probably can’t afford the costs to repair a fixer-upper.
French said there are plenty of people who equate affordable housing with something that’s not going to hold its value.
“What we’ve found is that they’re more valuable on a square-foot basis,”
French said. “Just because it’s a different product, doesn’t mean it’s worth less.”
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By
Mike Huffman
