Your boss has just broken the news. Your company is opening a new branch in Tacoma, Washington, and they're sending someone from the Toronto office to run it: you! You're excited but also scared, because it means you have to sell your comfortable, familiar, condo real estate in Toronto and start all over again in Tacoma. What can you even get there for your money, anyway? You don't know, because you've never needed to ask. Well if you're asking right now, we've got the answers. Here are the current market conditions for Tacoma, Washington, accurate to October 2009.

If you've even glanced at a newspaper headline or television news show in the last year or so, then you've got a pretty good idea of how American real estate markets are doing right now. The combined, one two blow of the sub-prime mortgage crisis and recession have taken their toll everywhere, dropping the values of everything from Mississauga real estate to the houses you'll be looking at down in Tacoma. In some places the values are still dropping, more than a year after the blow landed, but in Tacoma things are gradually improving.

What does this mean for you, a person moving into Tacoma from afar? It means that you have the advantage over Tacoma sellers if you move quickly. As depressing as it is, the fact that thousands of homes in the city have been foreclosed upon by lenders is an opportunity for you to pick up real estate for less. As a bonus, the Canadian market wasn't hit as hard as the American market, so your Rockwood homes for sale might bring in a little more than you'll need to pay out in Tacoma.

Just how much will you be able to afford? Well, we can't see your bank accounts, but we can give you the figures and let you compare them to your finances. The average house listing in Tacoma right now is priced at just over $295,000. However, the median sale value, or "middle of the road" home price, is only about $171,000. That's much less than you could get for your Oshawa real estate at the current prices, so by moving to Tacoma you're upgrading unless your current city fared worse in the crisis.

Different zip codes within Tacoma sell for different prices, of course, as some neighborhoods are more expensive than others. Currently the most popular ones with buyers are listing between $241,000 and $446,000. These figures are for residential homes only. Commercial mortgages have their own separate set of averages. Generally speaking, though, the price per square foot of a property in Tacoma is about $156, a number which is down about 14% from its value at this time last year.