Author: kevin

Scales tip in favor of home buyers – Seattle Times

Economists’ predictions have come true. Like most of the rest of the nation, the greater Seattle-area housing market has slowed to the point where buyers have an edge.

Of course, you can’t dampen the outlook of the real estate professionals:

But the fundamentals behind Seattle’s market — particularly its strong job growth and dearth of new housing — mean “our area is going to thrive and grow,” Lones predicted.

“If it’s going to be any kind of a slowdown, I think it’s going to be false slow,” she said. “We’re in a very desirable place to live.”

San Francisco is also a very desirable place to live, but it hasn’t become a city of 20 million people because of the cost of living. Palm Springs doesn’t have 10 million folks. The job growth and desirability of a place cannot erase the problems of a real estate market out-of-whack with financial reality.

Reader Feedback | Seattle Times Newspaper

Q:
I am moving from Miami to Seattle. Luckily I sold my house in Miami Beach last year. I plan to rent in Seattle since I believe that this market is behind other metro areas by 9-12 months before prices begin to drop in Seattle. Do you think prices will drop returning to more affordable ratios income vs median house prices? Please do not tell me about the great job market. Places like Boston are just as strong in the tech sector and they have seen prices fall 10% YOY. Thank you.
Mon, May 21, 2007 3:23 pm
andy

seattle
A:
We have not seen such drastic decline in values 8 percent in Miami alone for a number of reasons. The biggest of which is that we did not see such rampant speculation by investors/”flippers” boosting prices to extreme levels. Areas that did not increase as much are not likely to decline as much if at all.
Matthew Gardner
Tue, May 22, 2007 12:40 pm

Wow, Matthew Gardner is smoking crack! I don’t know what market he’s looking at, but in my searches for property, at least 50% of properties for sale over the median King Country price were owned for less than two years and had their prices increased 50%-100% which is the mark of the flipper property.

This one personal, about Magnolia

The invasion of Magnolia by the land snatchers was not a “shock and awe” campaign. Initially, it was gradual — a house demolished here, another there, to be replaced by three- and four-story McMansions. The neighborhood was changing, as all neighborhoods will over time.

I didn’t like it, but I told myself that change is inevitable. It can be good. It can revitalize a neighborhood, but Magnolia as I have known it is being destroyed by land snatchers who seize houses only to demolish them. This change is not good.

In recent years, the land snatchers have become rapacious. In the last year alone, I have witnessed the demolition of at least six homes within blocks of my house. The charming traditional homes of Magnolia, the elegant Tudors and the modest cottages, are now an endangered species. I drive down a street in my neighborhood, looking at houses I have long appreciated, and all I see are possible — no, probable — demolitions.

This one from the editors of the Seattle Times

If you’ve ever had the sun blotted or your view blocked by a house on steroids, you’d understand the unneighborly feelings that a megahome can engender.

Trulia hindsight is a neat little mashup between maps and building data, it animates over time showing when houses were built over the last hundred years. (it turns out that most of Capital Hill here in Seattle was filled in by 1930, for example).