When Emily Browne first began looking to buy a home on Vashon last fall, her progress was slowed by the marked lack of houses available, but when a small home went up for sale last spring, she acted fast and is now happily living on the island.

“It all worked out for me in the end,” she said. “I was really thrilled. It has been fantastic. Even through the storm last week, it was great.”

Acting fast is key in Vashon’s current real estate climate, those in the profession say, as Vashon closes another strong year in home sales. Through Oct. 31 of this year, 153 island houses sold, the same number as through Oct. 31 last year, but several more homes are slated to close before the year ends, and sales are expected to exceed last year’s total of 182 homes.

“I would say it has been a fabulous year,” said Ken Zaglin, the owner of the John L. Scott office on Vashon.

The Seattle real estate market is frequently in the news, with tales of rapidly escalating prices, bidding wars and cash sales. Vashon is more balanced than that, Zaglin said, and many people — from young families to grandparents — are taking notice of the island as a more affordable option than some other nearby communities.

“We’re looking to be an extremely good option for folks,” he said. “Relative to Seattle and the Eastside, we are such a wonderful, available market.”

Like others in the real estate profession on Vashon, his advice for people looking to purchase a home in the $300,000 to $600,000 range is to be ready to buy, be informed when homes come on the market and look at them as quickly as possible.

Buyers broker Emma Amiad agrees about speed being important, but has a different interpretation of the height of this year’s buying season, saying that spring and summer were like a feeding frenzy.

“It was horrible. Everyone who wanted to play had to run really fast,” she said. “Buyers had to have money in hand and make quick decisions.”

In situations like that, pausing to think about purchasing a home could easily mean losing out.

“There is no time to dilly dally and think about it,” she said. “A week or two later, and it will be too late.”

Buyers in that $300,000 to $600,000 price range account for the bulk of Vashon’s homebuyers, with more than 80 of the 153 homes sold so far in that category, according to statistics provided by real estate professionals.

Windermere owner Beth de Groen noted that sales of houses at the upper end of that range and a bit higher — from $550,000 to $700,000 — typically used as primary residences of upper middle class families, also increased this year.

“That area is so much healthier,” she said.  “People were not buying in that price range since 2008.”

Twenty-two homes have sold in that price range so far this year, a number she said she believed was double or triple that of recent years.

Like Zaglin, she noted that she has seen a lot of younger Amazon employees and others who work in Seattle’s booming South Lake Union neighborhood. In Seattle they might need to pay $650,000 for a modest house in Ballard, but on Vashon, they could pay $550,000 and get a three bedroom home with a view.

“We are still cheap by King County standards,” she said.

While that may be true, a great many people cannot afford homes even close to those amounts, but islanders Maria Glanz and Kenny Judd recently found one in their range: $250,000. Only six homes between $200,000 and $250,000 have sold this year, and Glanz said she knows she and her husband are lucky.

“We were thrilled we found something,” she said. “We had one choice. It is not easy for people in our economic tier.”

That economic tier is the middle class, she said, noting that she and Judd are both college-educated artists who work on the island. She had been looking at houses for sale for more than a year online, but the couple looked in earnest for only about six weeks after getting pre-approved for a mortgage. They also looked in north Tacoma and on the Kitsap Peninsula, but wanted to remain on Vashon.

“We were just lucky something came on the market,” she said. “We moved really fast. I knew there was not going to be another one for quite awhile.”

Windermere’s de Groen noted that in the current housing market, anything under $325,000 is the low end, but that was not true just a few years ago.

“During the darkness (of the recession) you could buy a wonderful house for $325,000, but no one had any money to buy anything.”

Vashon’s real estate market was at its peak in 2004, when 209 homes were sold, according to statistics provided by Windermere. The median price was $365,000, and prices continued to rise until the recession struck in the winter of 2007. One hundred thirty-nine houses were sold on the island that year with a median price of $535,000. In 2008, however, only 83 houses sold, and the market has been coming back ever since.

In recent years, 2011 saw the lowest median price, $337,000, which has been rising since. Last year the median was price $416,500, and this year, so far, it is $462,500.

In King County as a whole, the median price of homes sold in October was $480,000, 7.3 percent higher than one year ago, according to The Seattle Times. Around the region, there is a great deal of variation. On the Eastside, October’s median price for homes sold was $667,000, while in Seattle it was $550,000. Southwest King County, including Burien, Des Moines and Federal Way, continues to be a more affordable option, with the median price below $298,000.

Currently on Vashon, inventory is low again, as the holiday season is typically not a busy time for home sales, but the island’s real estate professionals say they expect next year will be strong again.

“It’s a healthy market,” Zaglin said. “It’s a strong recovery.”