Seattle Bubble

Downtown Seattle: decent jobs, passable entertainment, increasingly unaffordable housing. So what’s the solution? According to today’s P-I, the time has come for the incredible shrinking condo.
Park two of GMC’s biggest Sierra pickups next to each other. That’s a lot of truck, but a small condominium — at least by Seattle standards.
But a local developer is [...]

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CNBC’s Jane Wells is reporting that Internet data miners indicate the online search queries for “homes for sale” is up 42%, suggesting that the housing market is poised to pick up.
The reader who e-mailed me this article suggests maybe that the opposite is true. People are searching to see what homes are [...]

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I think it’s time to update you on some of the local action (or lack thereof) that I’ve been keeping my eye on. I’ll take these in the order that they were originally posted.
First up, we’ve got the park-backing property down the street from me. The last time I mentioned it (way back [...]

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Thanks to reader Peckhammer for pointing out an apparently self-contradictory article in today’s Seattle P-I. It begins quite predictably, with the usual examples that purport to show that the Seattle market is still hot, hot, hot…
House hunter Vicky Tsai has paid for two inspections of homes she didn’t buy: one that she [...]

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From today’s information at Calculated Risk Blog. It appears that federal regulation regarding non-traditional mortgages may be in place within 60 days. If this ends up having any teeth at all, it could make it more challenging for borrowers to qualify for interest-only loans or pay-option loans.
As one blogger responded: [...]

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These don’t necessarily have to do with the Seattle area specifically, they’re just a collection of interesting housing-related links that I have come across in the last week or so and thought I would share.

What Lemmings Believe (a comic panel)
Housing Doom Blog Investigates Seattle’s #’s
"There hasn’t been any slowdown at all" in Eastern Washington
If construction [...]

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