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Discounts and incentives alive and well in Seattle

By Matt Goyer October 29, 2007

Seattle Times has an article on Developers dangle discounts, toys to lure home buyers.

Keep in mind this same thing happened last fall. I suspect many developers have their fiscal year lined up with the calendar year and want to move units in order to close their books on a high note.

Of course there’s a quote from Leslie Williams who clearly needs a PR handler just as badly as the Seattle Times needs a fact checker:

“I just toured downtown [Seattle] new condominiums, and no one is offering any incentives,” notes Leslie Williams, president of Williams Marketing, a real-estate marketing firm.

Unit #3102 is brand new at the Cosmo and comes with a Benz. That sounds like an incentive to me! Trace is also offering residents a $2500 referral fee if they bring in a buyer.

Did anyone pick up a Seattle Times Sunday paper? Are any of the downtown projects advertising incentives?

This quote will take a little more time to debunk:

Williams says the lack of incentives makes sense because new downtown condos are aimed at affluent, often repeat buyers who don’t need a financial nudge. “Those buyers have cash.”

But I’m sure someone with more time than me could comb through King County Records and see what percentage of people who bought at Cosmo or 2200 didn’t pay cash.

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32 responses to “Discounts and incentives alive and well in Seattle”

zebra says:

October 29, 2007 at 6:49 pm

I looked at the Luxe and the Decatur last week and they were definitely offering incentives. But maybe they don’t qualify as being “downtown” by Williams Marketing standards.
zebra says:

October 29, 2007 at 10:49 am

I looked at the Luxe and the Decatur last week and they were definitely offering incentives. But maybe they don’t qualify as being “downtown” by Williams Marketing standards.
Matthew says:

October 29, 2007 at 11:04 pm

The first stage is denial, soon acceptance will follow.
Matthew says:

October 29, 2007 at 3:04 pm

The first stage is denial, soon acceptance will follow.
fooman says:

October 30, 2007 at 12:00 am

At some point Williams Marketing is going to exhaust what little credibility they have left. I understand that it is their job to market condos, but when you keep making statements like this, you are not doing yourself or your clients any favors.

What is even more amazing is that these tools are constantly quoted by our papers as reliable sources of trends and metrics.
fooman says:

October 29, 2007 at 4:00 pm

At some point Williams Marketing is going to exhaust what little credibility they have left. I understand that it is their job to market condos, but when you keep making statements like this, you are not doing yourself or your clients any favors.

What is even more amazing is that these tools are constantly quoted by our papers as reliable sources of trends and metrics.
jo says:

October 30, 2007 at 1:04 am

someone should set up a website with leslie williams quotes
jo says:

October 29, 2007 at 5:04 pm

someone should set up a website with leslie williams quotes
EconE says:

October 30, 2007 at 1:15 am

How does one (who might have the time) find out how someone paid for a place? Can we get all the dirty mortgage details? Is it legal?
EconE says:

October 29, 2007 at 5:15 pm

How does one (who might have the time) find out how someone paid for a place? Can we get all the dirty mortgage details? Is it legal?
jdp says:

October 30, 2007 at 2:18 am

Econ- you can go to the King County Recorders Office and look up documents by name. This search will usually result in the excise tax information on the deed and usually a deed of trust with the financing information. You cannot, that I know of, find out what the concessions were from buyer or seller. All that is reported is the gross sales price and deed of trust info that the lender has recorded for the mortgage.
jdp says:

October 29, 2007 at 6:18 pm

Econ- you can go to the King County Recorders Office and look up documents by name. This search will usually result in the excise tax information on the deed and usually a deed of trust with the financing information. You cannot, that I know of, find out what the concessions were from buyer or seller. All that is reported is the gross sales price and deed of trust info that the lender has recorded for the mortgage.
Ross Jordan says:

October 30, 2007 at 4:48 am

The purchase and tax records are available online at the King County parcel search tool. Note that the interface sucks real bad, but there’s a lot of good data in it.
Ross Jordan says:

October 29, 2007 at 8:48 pm

The purchase and tax records are available online at the King County parcel search tool. Note that the interface sucks real bad, but there’s a lot of good data in it.
Eric K says:

October 30, 2007 at 5:54 am

Up until a year ago, you could view the entire scanned versions of mortgage documents online at metrokc.gov. Buried somewhere in the text of the mortgage document is the total price and usually the interest rate. I knew the mortgage market was headed for problems when I saw crazy low teaser rates and 90% to 100% LTV financing on units that were priced to perfection. And that was 2005!

However, King County realized that many people were accessing that information who didn’t have legitimate use for it, and revealing all of that information was a violation of privacy. So they disabled online viewing of all Deed of Trust documents. You can still go downtown to look the information up, although I bet you’ll have to give a really good excuse for why you need the info…

When I checked to see what Deed of Trusts were filled for Cosmo 3102 (the one with the Benz) all you’ll see is that two Deed of Trusts were both recorded on 5/3/07. Since there were two separate deeds, that indicates that the buyer financed from 90% (one 80% and one 10%) to 100% (one 80% and one 20%).

To get a feel for the total number of mortgages in a particular building:
* go to the Official Public Records search
* select ‘Deed of Trust’
* enter the first and last parcel numbers in the building, e.g. 1766000100 to 1766002530 for the Cosmo.

It says that they are more than 100 (the search limit) – I doubt anyone who bought there paid cash, since it really didn’t make sense pre-mortgage market meltdown.

On a related note, it looks like the Cosmo developer still still owns 14 of the 19 penthouses:
http://www5.metrokc.gov/reports/condo_report.asp?PIN=1766000000
Eric K says:

October 29, 2007 at 9:54 pm

Up until a year ago, you could view the entire scanned versions of mortgage documents online at metrokc.gov. Buried somewhere in the text of the mortgage document is the total price and usually the interest rate. I knew the mortgage market was headed for problems when I saw crazy low teaser rates and 90% to 100% LTV financing on units that were priced to perfection. And that was 2005!

However, King County realized that many people were accessing that information who didn’t have legitimate use for it, and revealing all of that information was a violation of privacy. So they disabled online viewing of all Deed of Trust documents. You can still go downtown to look the information up, although I bet you’ll have to give a really good excuse for why you need the info…

When I checked to see what Deed of Trusts were filled for Cosmo 3102 (the one with the Benz) all you’ll see is that two Deed of Trusts were both recorded on 5/3/07. Since there were two separate deeds, that indicates that the buyer financed from 90% (one 80% and one 10%) to 100% (one 80% and one 20%).

To get a feel for the total number of mortgages in a particular building:
* go to the Official Public Records search
* select ‘Deed of Trust’
* enter the first and last parcel numbers in the building, e.g. 1766000100 to 1766002530 for the Cosmo.

It says that they are more than 100 (the search limit) – I doubt anyone who bought there paid cash, since it really didn’t make sense pre-mortgage market meltdown.

On a related note, it looks like the Cosmo developer still still owns 14 of the 19 penthouses:
http://www5.metrokc.gov/reports/condo_report.asp?PIN=1766000000
jo says:

October 30, 2007 at 5:00 pm

“Williams says the lack of incentives makes sense because new downtown condos are aimed at affluent, often repeat buyers who dont need a financial nudge. Those buyers have cash.”

who in their right mind, if they’re able, would pay cash for a house or condo? with rates as low as they are it’d be a financially idiotic decision. surely if those people have enough money to pay cash they’re not that financially stupid to make such a decision.
jo says:

October 30, 2007 at 9:00 am

“Williams says the lack of incentives makes sense because new downtown condos are aimed at affluent, often repeat buyers who don’t need a financial nudge. “Those buyers have cash.””

who in their right mind, if they’re able, would pay cash for a house or condo? with rates as low as they are it’d be a financially idiotic decision. surely if those people have enough money to pay cash they’re not that financially stupid to make such a decision.
CG says:

October 30, 2007 at 6:10 pm

Jo: Hear, hear. And these hollow assurances continue to go unchallenged by either the Seattle Times or PI. More grist for the view that the RE journalists and marketing flacks are in cahoots.
CG says:

October 30, 2007 at 10:10 am

Jo: Hear, hear. And these hollow assurances continue to go unchallenged by either the Seattle Times or PI. More grist for the view that the RE journalists and marketing flacks are in cahoots.
Steve Snider says:

October 30, 2007 at 7:55 pm

I think what Leslie meant by her statement was that downtown buyers have the cash for out of pocket expenses due at closing versus condo conversion buyers who a lot of the time need a buyer bonus or incentive to cover closing costs. The Cosmo closed their sales office yesterday so are there any other downtown new construction condos that are offering incentives?
Steve Snider says:

October 30, 2007 at 11:55 am

I think what Leslie meant by her statement was that downtown buyers have the cash for out of pocket expenses due at closing versus condo conversion buyers who a lot of the time need a buyer bonus or incentive to cover closing costs. The Cosmo closed their sales office yesterday so are there any other downtown new construction condos that are offering incentives?
Tim S says:

October 31, 2007 at 1:49 am

It seems obvious she is referring to new condo developments, not individual units for sale via the MLS… but hey, spin it any way ya want.
Tim S says:

October 30, 2007 at 5:49 pm

It seems obvious she is referring to new condo developments, not individual units for sale via the MLS… but hey, spin it any way ya want.
Heather Morford says:

November 1, 2007 at 7:29 pm

I think that Leslie Williams is trying to position themselves (Williams Marketing) so that buyers are not expecting to receive any incentives when purchasing at the new developments. If you walk in off the street and talk to a site agent then no you probably won’t get an incentive at one of their properties if it’s not advertised. If you ask, keep pressing or have your agent push the developer then yes you can get some sort of an incentive. In my experience selling a lot of new construction, conversions and resales, there is almost always in incentive to get the buyer to buy that can be negotiated out of the seller or developer you just have know what “pain” the seller has. It might be the quickness of closing, it might be they haven’t sold any of a particular floor-plan, it might be overall number of sales, it might be selling that last unit in a project…. Whether it’s an additional parking space, a credit towards closing costs, a flat screen tv or a new Mercedes Benz (as noted previously) incentives come in all shapes and sizes you just have to know how and what to ask for. I don’t buy it that all buyers downtown are affluent and don’t need incentives. Even my highest net worth clients are excited when they get something more then they are expecting. It’s human nature.
Heather Morford says:

November 1, 2007 at 11:29 am

I think that Leslie Williams is trying to position themselves (Williams Marketing) so that buyers are not expecting to receive any incentives when purchasing at the new developments. If you walk in off the street and talk to a site agent then no you probably won’t get an incentive at one of their properties if it’s not advertised. If you ask, keep pressing or have your agent push the developer then yes you can get some sort of an incentive. In my experience selling a lot of new construction, conversions and resales, there is almost always in incentive to get the buyer to buy that can be negotiated out of the seller or developer you just have know what “pain” the seller has. It might be the quickness of closing, it might be they haven’t sold any of a particular floor-plan, it might be overall number of sales, it might be selling that last unit in a project…. Whether it’s an additional parking space, a credit towards closing costs, a flat screen tv or a new Mercedes Benz (as noted previously) incentives come in all shapes and sizes you just have to know how and what to ask for. I don’t buy it that all buyers downtown are affluent and don’t need incentives. Even my highest net worth clients are excited when they get something more then they are expecting. It’s human nature.
JDP says:

November 1, 2007 at 8:06 pm

One thing is for certain, if you do not ask you certainly will not get. Williams would prefer you do not ask and they are not going to state anything to the contrary publicly. To do so would show weakness to their sellers, both present and future sellers. In practice I am sure there is a lot of “dealing” going on, whether that is prepaid homeowners dues, closing costs paid, free blinds, parking spots etc, anything to protect that recorded sales price.
JDP says:

November 1, 2007 at 12:06 pm

One thing is for certain, if you do not ask you certainly will not get. Williams would prefer you do not ask and they are not going to state anything to the contrary publicly. To do so would show weakness to their sellers, both present and future sellers. In practice I am sure there is a lot of “dealing” going on, whether that is prepaid homeowners dues, closing costs paid, free blinds, parking spots etc, anything to protect that recorded sales price.
Heather Morford says:

November 1, 2007 at 9:34 pm

that’s totally true. I’ve been in deals where it was new construction and while the builder/seller would not budge of their sales price they were willing to throw in $25K in extra parking space, an additional 10K in storage unit and pay all the closing costs for my buyers in addition to doing a bunch of custom changes to the unit at their cost just as long as the sales price didn’t change. A lot of that is also driven by their financing on the project, they need to show strong sales prices to the lender in order to continue to receive distribution of funds even though on their bottom line they may be making less with the incentives.
Heather Morford says:

November 1, 2007 at 1:34 pm

that’s totally true. I’ve been in deals where it was new construction and while the builder/seller would not budge of their sales price they were willing to throw in $25K in extra parking space, an additional 10K in storage unit and pay all the closing costs for my buyers in addition to doing a bunch of custom changes to the unit at their cost just as long as the sales price didn’t change. A lot of that is also driven by their financing on the project, they need to show strong sales prices to the lender in order to continue to receive distribution of funds even though on their bottom line they may be making less with the incentives.
jaap says:

November 2, 2007 at 5:32 pm

Oh where’s Fake Leslie Williams when you need her? :)
jaap says:

November 2, 2007 at 9:32 am

Oh where’s Fake Leslie Williams when you need her? :)

Discounts and incentives alive and well in Seattle

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