Port Ludlow is an unincorporated community in Jefferson County near the mouth of the Hood Canal separating the Olympic and Kitsap peninsulas. The estimated total population in 2014 was 2,461; nearly 70 percent of that population was on social security payments and 44.2 percent were drawing retirement. SFRs comprise 85.5 percent of the local housing stock in Port Ludlow.
Given the market drivers in this location, the supply of homes for sale is often out of balance
with demand, so sellers and their agents need to be especially diligent about pricing and marketing properties. Until 2015, monthly supply provided little guidance to the prospective time on market. In the early summer, however, Port Ludlow moved to a more balanced position. The months in inventory averaged 8.9 in both 2014 and 2015.
Port Ludlow’s location at the eastern end of Jefferson County, just over the Hood Canal Bridge
from Kitsap County, enables it to draw weekend refugees from Seattle and elsewhere around the Sound. As a result, the median sale price of homes in Port Ludlow has exceeded that of Jefferson County at large by 5.5 percent—unsurprisingly, as so much of the county comprises rural areas and wilderness further west. Port Ludlow is one among six of the 24 areas
studied in which prices did not outpace their county medians. Although in this case, not by much: the Jefferson County gain was only 4.05 percent year-over-year. Sellers throughout Jefferson County have tended to price properties too high, but price reductions in Port Ludlow have not reached the levels found to the north or west in the county.
