Wasilla & Palmer Alaska's Real Estate Market Update 10-28-26

My name is Jaymen. I'm your first friend in Alaska. Luckily for you, I'm also an associate real estate broker. Today, we're going to be talking about what's going on in the Mat-Su Valley, looking at the single family homes, the raw land, and the multifamily market. Before we do that though, I do really want you to make sure you give this video a big thumbs up and make sure you subscribe. That really does help me out quite a bit. I would love to get to about, we'll say 13,000 subscribers before the end of the year, and we've got a little ways to go. So do make sure you go ahead and do that. Without further ado, though, let's jump into it, looking at the single family market. All right, looking first at the active inventory for the single family homes. We see that this time last year, there was about 570 properties available, and now we're looking at about 620 properties that are available. So seeing a little bit of an increase there year over year. I'll take anything that we can get. Historically, though, we would expect to see anywhere from about 700, 780 to about 830. So we're still quite a ways off from where we were prior to COVID. So inventory, relatively speaking, is still pretty low. Also, one thing I would like to know is how much of this inventory is actual ready to go move in ready homes and how much of it is just, you know, builders putting like a listing out there where it's just like a plan and some dirt and they haven't even started construction on the home yet. I don't know about you. I don't really consider that like a part of the active inventory. So how much of that? is made up here. You know, based off of that, I can't say with 100% certainty. I bet it's a pretty good portion of it. But either way, inventory is way low compared to what it was before. It's still based off the number of properties we have available. It's still by far the largest real estate market we have in the entire state, though. Now for the number of properties that we have available, we see that this time last year there were 161 properties that actually sold, and this year it's 180. So we've seen a bit of an increase there year over year. Historically, you know, that's actually about on par. We would expect to see about 180 to 190, so despite the inventory being so low compared to what it was before, you know, we're still seeing a pretty healthy demand for families and, I'm sorry, for multi, Not multi-family, for single-family homes in the Valley. So that's probably not gonna change anytime in the near future. All right, now looking at the average sold price year to date, the reason that most of you actually tune in, we see that the average sold price went from about 440,000 this time last year to about 454,000 this year, which means we've seen about a 3% increase. for the average sold price in the entire Mat-Su Valley. Now, a lot of you might be looking at this and thinking, well, hold on now, how are we seeing an increase in the average sold price when the interest rates have gone up? Like, isn't this supposed to happen the other way around? Like our interest rates go up, therefore like prices come down, not necessarily. Okay, a couple of reasons. Like number one, we're still, we still need a couple of months before we do see any impact if there is an impact. for it to actually show up statistically so it'll take a couple months for that to show up but number two i'm not a hundred percent sure we're going to see a big impact Uh, that we can measure statistically as far as the average sold price go, it might slow the appreciation down a little bit, 3%. That's about what I would like to see. Once you start getting past, you know, five or 6%, that starts to get a little hot for me. I, I like to see kind of that, that slow and steady, uh, progression, but either way it would take a little while for it to show up. But again, I'm not really convinced it's going to happen. Oops. Sorry. It's going to happen really at all. And the reason for that... Is because what normally happens when the interest rates go up, people freak out for a couple of weeks to a month and then things settle back down and then people kind of get back into their into the normal swing of things. And every single time I say that, regardless what year it is or. You know, what percentage it's gone up. People always say, well, this time it's different. You know, this time it's different. Like, it's gone too affordable. This is the breaking point. No one's going to be buying houses anymore. The whole market's about to collapse. You know, go get some raw land and a shotgun and go out in the middle of the woods. Like, that's the message every single time. Strongly suspect that is not what's going to happen this time. I think we're probably going to continue to see some. I think we'll probably see a little bit of a lull in the market for a little bit, you know, a couple of weeks to a month, and then it'll kind of get right back to where we are now. Also, keep in mind, historically, there's a little bit of a lull there in the during the winter months in Alaska, just because it's not the ideal time of year that people like to buy and sell homes. We still do quite a bit of it. So don't get me wrong, but it's just not the ideal time for a lot of people for their own personal reasons. So we'll probably see a bit of a lull seasonally anyway. Anecdotally, we have seen a bit of a slackening off for my listings that are out there. But again, that's not to be unexpected. So we'll see what happens in the coming months. I'm just not expecting this big, you know, I'm not expecting the market to fall off a cliff or anything in the near future. All right, let's switch gears a little bit and talk about some raw land. So with the raw land, we see that the amount of inventory available went from about 620 this time last year to about 740 this year. So we are seeing a pretty nice little jump for the available inventory for multifamilies. Keep in mind, I don't know, looking at this, if this is just a bunch of like small little postage stamp. Size lots out there, or if these are big, like, you know, 10, 20, 30, 180 acre parcels, I just don't know. I just have like the raw number for the total number of pieces of land that are available right now. I will say normally prior to COVID, we'd see about 1100 properties available on the market. So we're still seeing a pretty big decrease, but you know, I'll take any increase for Any increase in inventory that I can get now for the number of parcels that have actually sold this time last year, we saw 60 parcels sell and this year it's 45. So seeing about a 25% drop year over year as far as the parcels that are actually selling. Let's kind of have, let's go ahead and just hold off a little bit and just see how the, how the market responds to that moving forward. I don't know if that's indicative that suddenly the demand for land is just going to completely fall off a cliff. But, you know, we do have to face the facts that a lot of people buying raw land are builders and cost of doing business for them has gone up just, you know, as everything has gone up. Keep in mind, Alaska is at the end of a very long transportation route to get stuff up here. And so it's going to be pretty expensive for builder just with their just with their materials. And, you know, there's only so much that... That they can do there. So, you know, we'll see if that continues. It might just be a month over month or month compared to the month from the year before fluke. So we'll see. All right, now looking at the average sale price. Um, you would think maybe that, uh, there's less property selling, maybe that's going to create like some, uh, more inventory, uh, in relation to the demand that's out there. Maybe that'll kind of force the prices down. That is not what we're seeing. We see that the average sale price went from about 97,000 this year to about 105 this year, which means we're seeing about an 8.7% increase year over year for raw land. So you know a couple things number one um anecdotally like the the land that i've listed lately it's it's pended pretty quick okay so it's raw land is still in demand out there and if you're trying to find something that's just super on the cheap then you're gonna have to one be willing to go way far out or two you're gonna have to settle for something that's A little bit on the small size. Okay, so raw land in the valley is going to continue going up in value because a lot of people are moving here. And so the dirt that you can build houses on is going to go up in value. That is just the way that it works. Again, one thing to keep in mind, these averages, we don't know if like maybe there was just one big large parcel that sold for like multi-million dollars and that's what's throwing it off. But anecdotally, I can say that, you know, the land listings I've had lately have not had any problem with selling. All right, let's go and take a break real quick here. For those who've been watching for a little bit, you do know that I have a quiz for those of you who are considering making the move up here. If you're trying to get a good sense as to where's going to be the best fit for for you based on Like your lifestyle, how important your career is, how far of a commute you want to do, what kind of outdoor activities are you wanting to do, just stuff like that. So if that's something that would be of use to you, make sure you go take that Alaska Town Quiz. Link for that will be in the description section down below. Do make sure you include your phone number so I can go ahead and give you a call and kind of fill in the gaps for any questions you might have after taking the quiz. And, you know, maybe answer some questions for whatever you're talking about. The top result was that you got on your quiz. So make sure you go take advantage of that. Let's go and finish up today's market update, looking at the multifamily sector of the market though. Now for the multifamily market. We see that this time last year, there were 43 properties available. Now there are 49. So seeing a little bit of an increase there, nothing too crazy, but it definitely is going up a bit. Now looking at the number of properties that have actually sold in the Mat-Su Valley, as far as multifamily properties go, we see that it went from nine this time last year to 10 this year. So that's, you know, it's keeping a pretty good relative Year over year demand for multifamily properties. So, you know, that's good. Normally prior to COVID, we'd expect to see anywhere from about eight to 12. So 10 is right there in that range of what we would expect, even when the inventory was significantly higher then, than what it is now. Last but not least, we see the average sold price for multifamilies went from about 651,000 to about 659,000. year to date and we see with that being the case that there's been an increase of approximately 1.2%. So I kind of suspect that we've seen in real terms, we've probably seen an increase for the average sold price a little bit higher than this. Um, just because, you know, the average sold price, first off, it's not the most exact method to kind of figure out what's, um, what's going on with the sold prices, especially Especially with multifamily, because You have everything from the duplex all the way up to the big commercial property that's going to sell for multi-millions. So I suspect that it has gone up probably more so than what we're seeing right here, but it's kind of hard to just kind of parse it out a little bit and compare duplexes to duplexes, triplexes to triplexes, fourplexes to fourplexes year over year. So yeah, but I, you know. From a macro level, we do see that it's going in the right direction. Well, depending on who you are, it's going in a good direction that's healthy for the market, so I'll definitely take it. Okay, what am I seeing here? Well, if I'm a buyer, I'm not going to completely lose hope because the interest rates went up a little bit. I know It's the doom and gloom out there and you're going to lose followers and all that if you're not going to lean into it and try to scare the heck out of people. That's not what I'm about. We're looking off the stats here. What the historical trends are, and I can tell you after being in this market for over a decade, the trend is interest rates go up, people panic for a couple of weeks to a month, and then we get back down to business. Okay. And people have to kind of adjust their expectations a little bit. And you might see like some more concessions being made in certain price points as people are deciding, hey, maybe I don't need to buy in this price point anymore. Maybe I'm more interested. And finding something more in this price point. Or maybe I'm willing to go further out. Because my dollar is going to stretch a lot further. And that's what they're going to do. So there's kind of a theory of unintended consequences. And that's really what we're probably going to see here. You're probably going to see some price points. If there is an impact on the market at all. That we can statistically follow. You're probably gonna see some price points are gonna suffer more than others. And you're probably gonna see like certain areas are gonna be able to just sell like hotcakes. All of a sudden in other areas, it gets tougher to sell because it might be a higher price point. And what people get is just not, it's not conducive with what the demographic wants who would consider moving to that area. What do I mean by that? If you have a property in an area that's going to appeal primarily to Primarily to first-time homebuyers at, we'll say, $400 price point or something like that. That area might struggle and they might have to go find something that's a little further out of town. Like, that's kind of what I'm talking about. Also, if you know someone who is trying to scare the heck out of you, which there's a lot of that online right now, please do keep in mind, everybody thought the entire market was going to end in 2021. Do you remember that? Like everyone was saying, oh, you need to just sit on the sideline. We're going to wait for the market to collapse and then we're going to get our own and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm being very facetious and a little obnoxious right now. because i know those people are definitely not watching this channel anymore because we pretty commonly locked horns back in the day and i was like no this is not This is not the time to sit back. And the reason I was so adamant about that is because the market has drastically appreciated since then. If you sat on the sidelines back then, waiting for the market to collapse, specifically in the Mat-Su Valley, you know what? I'm not gonna guess. I'm gonna actually look what the stats are here. If you had just sat back and not done anything, the market has increased. By about $153,000, the average sale price has increased by $153,000 starting in 2020, year to date to what it is today. If you sat on the sidelines waiting for the market to collapse and you thought you were going to get a big discount. I'm sorry that is just not how it works there's some unintended consequences so you need to make sure you try to make the best guess you can based off the information that we have available and right now the information is just saying we're probably not going to see a collapse if for no other reason than just because the inventory is so low. Because everyone got their refinancing or they bought a property at a super low interest rate and they ain't going nowhere, okay? And that's why the inventory has been so low, even in the Valley, compared to what it has been historically. So what are the what's going to be the impact of the interest rates? We don't know for sure. For sure, though, I can say the trend is that the interest rates go up, people freak out a little bit, and then we get back to normal. And then you see some ripple effects in some different price ranges, depending on, you know, the price point that we're talking about. So that's what we're seeing. No for sure predictions, but I'm not seeing a collapse anytime in the near future. For those of you saying that I'm just going to say whatever I need to do because somehow that's going to help me. I work primarily with buyers. So honestly, coming out here and saying the market is about to collapse and You know, now's the time you're about to get your own. That would probably serve me a whole lot better, but you know, that's okay. Say whatever you want in the comment section. It helps my algorithm either way. Okay, thank you very much. If you have any questions, make sure you reach out to me and my website down below, and thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.