Seattle Bubble

Despite my prediction that we would not see Bibeka Shrestha’s name on another Seattle Times’ real estate article, she has resurfaced this weekend with one of those "neighborhood in focus" type articles. The neighborhood in focus: Queen Anne.
Single-family houses and condominiums in the area that includes Queen Anne had a median price of $483,000 [...]

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From the New York Times today-
“‘Certainly, the housing market is undergoing a measurable adjustment,’ Lawrence Yun, senior economist with the Realtor association, said. The bloated inventory levels, Mr. Yun said, indicate ‘a very sudden change which I have never seen before.’”
-Lawrence Yun, NAR economist.
Earlier this year, he mentioned that he expected Seattle to achieve 30-40% [...]

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How surprising!
This morning at CNBC.com, Reuters news services is reporting that the Department of Justice has dropped charges against Fannie Mae and has concluded their investigation. Fannie Mae was “fined” $400 million.
“The Justice Department probably decided that there was little to be gained by bringing charges against the company because that would only punish [...]

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Given the variety of opinions expressed in the discussions on this blog, I am curious about the general statistical status of the readership, with respect to the issues that we focus on. To satisfy my curiousity, I have created the following series of polls. Vote in as many or as few [...]

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I got into a great argument with one of my allied real estate professional hate mail fans recently. It was good. Educational and revealing too. Not too much spit exchanged. Not like an in your face Lou Piniella type tirade, but quite animated. Man, can you imagine the comments [...]

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As a number of readers have pointed out in the comments, WSU’s Washington Center for Real Estate Research has released their latest quarterly statistics. There’s not much new in there for anyone that has been following the monthly NWMLS releases, but it’s at least worth mentioning. Here’s a blurb from the Associated Press [...]

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