Buying a Home in Bellingham
The mechanics of buying a house are about the same everywhere. You get your financing lined up, you look, you write an offer, you inspect, you close. We have a step-by-step buyer guide that walks through all of that, and we are not going to repeat it here.
This post is about the things that are particular to buying a home in Bellingham, the ones we find ourselves explaining to almost every buyer, and especially to people coming from out of the area. If you are still deciding whether to come at all, start with moving to Bellingham and what it is like to live here.
There is a lot of variety in a small town
For a city this size the range of housing is wide. Fairhaven and the neighborhoods near downtown have some of the oldest houses in town. Barkley is newer, built around a village center with shops, and has townhomes and apartments for people who do not want a yard to look after. Downtown is mostly condos and apartments. Then there are the houses on Lake Whatcom and Lake Samish, the view properties above the bay, and acreage out in the county. Each of those is really its own small market, with its own buyers and its own pace.
That is why we ask so many questions about how you want to live before we send you listings. Distance to work and school matters, and so does whether you need to be able to walk to things, where the boat or the bikes will go, and how you feel about stairs and a steep driveway in the rain. Our tour of the neighborhoods is a good place to start narrowing it down.
Older houses need a careful inspection
Much of the housing people fall for here is old, and old houses in a wet climate have predictable problems. Water is the main one, whether that is the roof, the drainage around the foundation, or a crawl space nobody has looked in for years. Wiring, plumbing and sewer lines can all be original, or replaced piecemeal by three different owners. We would still buy an old house here, and plenty of our clients do. We would just hire a thorough inspector, bring in the specialists when the inspector suggests it, and read the whole report before falling any further in love. There is more on that in our guide to the inspection.
You will also see houses advertised with solar panels, newer heating systems and other efficiency upgrades, which people here care about. They are good to have. Ask for the paperwork, including whether the panels are owned or leased, because that changes what you are buying.
Check the view yourself
A view of the bay and the islands is worth real money in Bellingham, and listing photos are taken on the best day of the year from the best window in the house. Go and stand in the rooms you would really use. If you can, look in winter when the leaves are down, and look at what sits between the house and the water, because trees grow and the lot below you may not stay one story forever. We will tell you what we know about what can be built nearby, and what we do not know we will help you find out.
City or county
Whether a property is inside Bellingham city limits or out in Whatcom County changes more than the mailing address. It can mean city water and sewer or a well and a septic system, and it decides which rules apply if you want to add on or build a shop, and who you call about the road. A septic system or a well is perfectly normal out here, but each one needs its own inspection and its own questions.
Lake Whatcom deserves its own mention, because the lake is the city’s drinking water and there are extra rules around building and clearing in the watershed. Some lake communities also have homeowner associations with dues and rules of their own, and condos anywhere come with association documents you should read before you commit, dull as they are. Our pages on Lake Whatcom and Lake Samish say more about life on the lakes.
Land is a different purchase
Some buyers decide they would rather build. Derek does a lot of work with vacant land and new construction, and the first thing he will tell you is that a pretty lot and a buildable lot are two different things. Access, utilities, slope, wetlands and zoning all have to be checked during a feasibility period before you know what you can put there and roughly what it will cost to get started. It is slower than buying a house and it takes more patience. If that is the direction you are leaning, read land and new construction or look at land for sale.
How competitive it is depends on the month
We are not going to tell you in a blog post whether it is a good time to buy, or how many offers a house is likely to get. That changes with the season, the price range and the neighborhood, and anything we wrote here would be out of date by the time you read it. Ask us and we will tell you what we are seeing this week.
What does not change is that the buyers who do well have their financing sorted before they start looking. Get pre-approved, ideally with a lender who picks up the phone on a Saturday, and know your real ceiling. Washington also has you sign an agreement with your broker early on that spells out what we do for you and how we are paid. We go through it with you line by line, and you should expect that from anybody you work with.
When you are ready to talk about what you are looking for, get in touch.