Since I am not willing to fork over $10 just to have a bunch of condo hucksters throw advertising pamphlets at me, and because I can think of much better ways to spend my time (especially on my birthday), I did not attend the Seattle Condo Expo over the weekend. However, from the sound of things in the reports I’ve read from those that did attend, I didn’t miss much.
The ever-vigilant Matt Goyer of Urbnlivn reports his impressions (and shares a good collection of links to other reports):
Overall the Expo was a bust but the talks were good. To get a sense of who was all there I uploaded the map of the showroom floor. As you can see there were a lot of downtown condo projects not represented there and for the ones that were there the representation was lacking. Ben summed it up pretty accurately in his blog post about the event:
The expo was billed as the “ultimate urban open house”. If you were a prospective buyer, it was anything but. …
Personally, I didn’t get much value out of the expo other than to get an update on sales numbers and to catch up with a few sales folks on the latest news.
What I did get a lot of value out of was the three talks I attended (click through for my full notes on the talks.) However the talks really did seem all about making us customers feel like the market was still strong and that everyone wants to live downtown.
Economist Matthew Gardner from Gardner Johnson on Seattle area economics and forecast – Matthew’s was the best talk. Not only is he a good public speaker but his PowerPoint deck was full of charts and numbers. He was also very adamant that we were not in a bubble situation, that Seattle could absorb the inventory and that we developments were handling investors much differently than other cities.
Charles Mudede of The Stranger had a more… colorful take (the typical Stranger style):
The excitement is building,” states the website for the second-annual Condo Expo on May 19 and 20 at the downtown Westin Hotel. It’s all about excitement and joy: the joy of growth, of big investments, of exerting architectural power, and of making what may very well prove to be the final step in Seattle’s journey to the big city. Who in the world would miss the opportunity to be in the middle of this madness? Nine thousand units are waiting to move from the planning stages to the streets of the city. Condo towers that are not even built have already sold out. Billions of dollars are doing what billions of dollars love to do: circulate—moving in quick steps from buyers, to realtors, to banks, and back again to buyers, to realtors, to banks. Don’t stop the dance.Granted, as a Marxist (or a Maker’s Marxist), I’m opposed to the way the present economic system distributes wealth, but even I love to see the spectacle of capital, its disco-ball whirls of shimmering desires, its magic dust intoxicating the air and loosening the morals of beautifully made-up women and men. But, sadly, none of this sorcery was at this year’s Condo Expo. It might have been at the inaugural one in 2006, but not in 2007. Did the organizers somehow sober up already and return to the basics, the disenchanted bottom line? Lots of curious people (interested hipsters, married homeowners, ambitious immigrants) came to the expo, but none seemed to stay for long. The event itself didn’t make the effort to stun us into submission. All of the cash being pumped into the Seattle downtown area did not explode into what we wanted to see and feel: an orgy of 21st-century wealth.
…
“[W]e’re celebrating the year of the condo,” says Melissa Vail Coffman in Seattle Business Monthly. The magazine has a table outside of the main hall; it is operated by a man who is halfheartedly handing out free copies. By the bored look on his face and the heaviness of his gestures, I’m certain he has no clue that we are celebrating the year of the condo.At the end of the day, why was this expo so lifeless? The boom is for real; billions of dollars are going in and out of it. So why would an event that’s supposed to reflect this high energy be so flat?
Sounds like the Condo Expo didn’t really accomplish its goal, which was presumably to get people fired up about blowing huge sums of money to live in a downtown with relatively few amenities and nearly zero nightlife. Go figure.
(Matt Goyer, Urbnlivn, 05.20.2007)
(Charles Mudede, The Stranger, 05.23.2007)
“Sounds like the Condo Expo didn’t really accomplish its goal, which was presumably to get people fired up about blowing huge sums of money to live in a downtown with relatively few amenities and nearly zero nightlife.”
Wait, so they expect people to live in them? I thought they were “investment opportunities”, where everyone gets rich by selling condos to each other.
Matthew Gardner’s mythical “deck full of numbers and charts” needs to be critically reviewed. If I read one more fawning, obsequious review of his “adamant” assertions about Seattle’s bubbliness, I may very well experience a sarcasm-induced aneurysm.
Charts and numbers are the new opiates for the masses; include enough of them in a powerpoint slide, and you become immune to critical questions….
I love Charles Mudede. His police beats are a must read.
In case you aren’t keeping up with Ardell’s doings, she pointed to a useful site, condocompare.com, where it shows, among other things, all the active listings in the complex.
For example, you can click on 2200 Westlake and discover 42 active listings in this what I believe is being billed as a sold out venue, no?
So Matthew Gardner is this generations H Ross Perot?? Who could forget all of the charts that guy had… Even more entertaining was the fact that there was no powerpoint.
Perot may have been perceived as a crackpot, but his charts were mostly correct; his predictions of the national debt have been met and then some . . .
Mudede is a Marxist? I need to send him a copy of “The Road To Serfdom”.
apparently it really drew a crowd. check out the action shot