A tight year-round rental market and technological barriers preventing some would-be residents from moving here are two recent trends in the local housing market, real estate agents told members of the Haines Chamber of Commerce last week.
On the bright side, Haines Real Estate broker Pam Long and Coldwell Banker real estate agent Glenda Gilbert informed the chamber at its Aug. 14 meeting that land and home sales have increased in recent years.
According to borough statistics provided by Gilbert, land sales increased dramatically in 2014. There were 43 land sales in 2014 compared to 20 in 2013, 26 in 2012 and 15 in 2011 (the numbers exclude Excursion Inlet).
Improved property sales, like homes, have also substantially increased to 45 in 2014, compared to 33 in 2013, 30 in 2012 and 23 in 2011.
Though Haines rentals have tended to fill up seasonally with the summer influx of workers, winter months are now also seeing a squeeze, Gilbert said.
“It’s probably one of the first years that I’ve seen that,” she said. “It’s just been very, very challenging. People call from down south and say, ‘I want to rent a place.’ And it’s like, ‘You better just get here and bang on doors and drive around.’”
When Gilbert puts a “For Rent” sign up in one of her apartments on FAA Road, the place is rented out within days, she said.
Klondike Chiropractic and Thor’s Fitness owner Chris Thorgeson noticed the trend, and last month bought the old Mountain View Motel near the intersection of Mud Bay Road and Second Avenue. Thorgeson said he is renovating the motel and turning the rooms into studio apartments.
“The housing market here is short on rental space and people who want to live here are forced to leave because they can’t find a place and they are living in trailers and buses and tents or whatever,” Thorgeson said.
“If we want Haines to grow, we have to have room for people to move here,” Thorgeson added.
Gilbert and Long speculated the crowded rental market could be the result of a lack of more affordable permanent housing. “If somebody can’t quite afford to buy a house, they’re in the rental market for a lot longer,” Gilbert said.
In 2013 and 2014, Long said about 50 percent of homes sold were in the $200,000 range, though of the remaining 50 percent, more were over $300,000 than under $200,000.
“I may have to argue that maybe (the high number of renters) is a product of not having available things for sale under $200,000. I think there is a sector of our community that really needs to have home prices under that range,” Long said.
Long said there aren’t many homes available in that range because of high building costs in Haines. “It’s hard for anybody to produce a product that is both marketable and in that price range we have been talking about,” she said.
Construction challenges are compounded by the lack of a local inspector, energy rater, appraiser and surveyor, Gilbert pointed out. Builders are disinclined to have an inspector supervise the construction process because that requires paying for the inspector to travel here, she said.
“It will tack on quite a bit of money, and a lot of people don’t do that because it just costs too much more money,” Gilbert said.
Many agencies will loan only on homes that have been energy rated and/or inspected, or at least offer lower interest rates and low down payment options on homes that do, Long said. Many of the homes around Haines don’t qualify for those loans, which especially affects people who are looking for homes under $200,000 and need a low-interest loan or low down payment, she said.
“Oftentimes it is those borrowers that have a hard time finding a house,” Long said. “It puts this sector of the market in a pretty hard position.”
Gilbert and Long also agreed that limited technological infrastructure in Haines such as slow, expensive Internet service affect home and land sales, especially for “location neutral” people whose jobs depend on the Internet.
“I have concrete examples of people that have chosen not to buy here and relocate here or are very cautious about that right now because of their ability to conduct work on the infrastructure we have,” Long said.
Gilbert said when she takes someone to look at a property, the first thing they do is pull out their cell phone to check how many service bars they have. “It does affect our sales,” she said.
Chamber of Commerce executive director Debra Schnabel said she was surprised to learn that Haines’ technology infrastructure is not only a business issue, but a community growth issue. “Before I think I was just kind of focused on whether or not local businesses that already exist here were being adequately served. Now I’m beginning to understand that it’s an issue of whether or not the community can even attract new business that we might need,” Schnabel said.
According to borough statistics provided by Gilbert, while land sales and improved property sales have increased over the past several years, commercial sales dropped to zero in 2014, with four reported in 2013, eight in 2012 and two in 2011.
Long said according to Haines Real Estate statistics, in 2014 and 2015 so far, about 60 percent of land purchasers are locals or people who have come to Haines specifically for a job. Only 10 percent of those land sales were over $100,000, with the majority between $30,000 and $50,000.
Of home sales, 70 percent of buyers have been locals or people coming to Haines with a job in hand, Long said.
When the real estate market peaked in the years around 2006, however, many of the buyers were not local, Long said. The trend is now going back to local buyers, as well as toward more home sales instead of land sales. (In 2006, for example, 25 percent of Haines Real Estate’s sales were home sales. In 2013, 80 percent of all sales were home sales).
“We are having, I believe, a healthy recovery in our local market the past two to three years,” Long said. “We’re still not having a huge influx of outside (buyers), but we are seeing more of that.”