A Lull in the Land Market
A rainy week in Walla Walla brings a temporary halt to property speculation, even as new mortgages pile up.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The week just passed has been the quietest in local real estate circles in several months, with total sales aggregating but $17,470.21. The quiet state of the market is attributed to bad weather conditions which prevailed during the whole week. The sale of property amounted to but $7,500 in farm property. The Dean-McLean company saw parcels of property change hands, including one in Walla valued at $1,000 and one in Ritzville of the value of $800. A peculiar feature of the instruments at the auditor's office was the number of mortgages, the total value of which exceeded the total sales of farm and city property by nearly $11,000. The value represented in the 16 mortgages filed was $28,043.28, the largest being a $13,000 mortgage given by the Columbia Lodge No. 8, K. of P., to R. M. Dorothy on a building under erection at the corner of Rose and Fourth streets.
“The quiet state of the market is attributed to bad weather conditions, which prevailed during the whole week.”
The real estate market's sensitivity to seasonality and broader economic trends is a constant, though the scale of these transactions reminds us of the modest beginnings of the regional market before Walla Walla's major 20th-century expansions.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.