“You guys are sick….” – you wouldn’t happen to have a job in the RE industry, would you?

I’m frankly surprised and disgusted by the excitement you apparently feel at the thought of people losing their homes.

No, no. Get it right. We’re not excited about people losing their houses, we’re excited about you losing your house.

Did you have any sympathy for the people that lost money during the tech bubble burst? Why or why not?

How was it different from people that are losing the bet that their homes will continue to appreciate perpetually? They gambled and now they lost. Simple as that, just as betting in the stock market.

on August 7th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
Why is everyone on here jumping up and down that the market is slowing down? Are you all so bitter that you couldn’t afford to buy?”

You forgot jealous (as in Jealous Bitter Renters).

Yeah, we’re all psychological cripples, due to our pathetic inability to get on the Equity Escalator, and our stubborn unwillingness to buy houses with suicide financing.

According to wikipedia (I know not always the best source), the top 5% for household income is 167K and up. 100k is probably closer to top 17 or 18%.

id

Thank god I was able to convince my wife that it is ok stay in huge apartment and pay rent rather than dump all money into House …

For those of you wondering about our income ..we both earn 6 digits ..and we can afford to buy a 500K house ..

Gig harbor and Bellingham mentioned in Ben Jones’ HBB today.
Deep Into a Buyers Market

Home Sales Report: What’s Left?

-Cheers!

I think King County as a whole is probably a better representation of the area. According to Sperling’s 39% of King county rents… http://www.bestplaces.net/County/King_WA-HOUSING-DATA-45303300031.aspx

Data updated January 2007

Renters make up 50.39% of the Seattle, WA, population

Ha, Meshugy couldn’t afford to buy his own house again even at 2005 prices using todays standards.

Anyone have recent stats for the actual percentage of renters in-city in Seattle, or where objective data can be found outside of the 2005 census?

Last I heard renters were slightly just over 50%. That incuded a lot of people who are renting SFH’s, not just apartment and repartment dwellers.

“Seattle-based Washington Mutual, another big lender, in March stopped offering such loans to subprime borrowers, typically people with poor credit. It also reduced the size of loans to other borrowers.

“It used to be that we would finance a loan up to $1 million with no down payment for a first-time homebuyer,” said Daniel H. Aminoff, a senior loan consultant at Washington Mutual Home Loans in Alexandria, Va. “But as of March, we will only finance a loan of $417,000 with no down payment.”"

It’s possible and perhaps even very likely that the only people buying that come into the state are the ones with high incomes.

You’ve obviously never heard of Interest Only, Pay Option Arm, 0% down, and Stated Income loans.

Yes, I agree, since 1978, housing in Seattle has always been a top 20% of the income level endeavor. The problem is “new jobs”.

There simply aren’t enough higher paying “new jobs” to help Seattle. The unemployment rate is just a barometer of what we’ve settled down for in salaries.

Some of laid off Seattle-ites from 2002-2003 could get re-hired by Boeing lately, but ya know, they likely aren’t in the “current” housing market anyway, they bought in a long time ago.

Its new young blood you need and guest workers make even less than most domestic re-hired laid offs. Its hopeless to expect Bill Gates’ type foreign outsourcing to help Seattle real estate.

We need a major interest rate uptick to support domestic retirement annuities too, or hardly no one will be able to afford to retire earlier to let our kids in sooner to the dwindling Boeing type employment.

Think about it pragmatically, low interest might have kept homes selling temporarily [but the subprime monster payment downturn is growing each day, as we recalculate their mortgage payment contracts in coming years for low income subprime families, most of the new Seattle real estate market], but it also keeps retirees not in the housing market at work longer….

What if housing IS the economy?

The average Wal*Mart shopper has a family income of $40K.

Imagine that. A family living on $40K/yr. In a society where a low 6 figure family income is just a step above working poor, Wal*Mart is in the extreme low end of retailing.

However, I think we should be careful about using the entire range of incomes to decide if something is affordable or not. Whether you like it or not, low income jobs have RARELY given families the ability to own a home. I believe the rough percentage is that about 30-35% of residences are rented. If you look at the incomes, you’ll find that these people *tend* to have lower incomes. (yes yes, there are exceptions of course, no need to get all weird and start foaming at the mouth). So when you look at the median income, you cannot directly compare that to the median value of a house for sale.

What you *can* do is look at the median income of people looking to buy a house and compare that. It’s possible and perhaps even very likely that the only people buying that come into the state are the ones with high incomes. It doesn’t matter that it’s a small percentage, but if they’re all looking to buy houses, that will affect prices. I mean, inventory is at about 10,000 right now and that’s high compared to the last few years. It only takes 5000 additional buyers a year to put a large bump in demand.

Where I think the traditional “echo chamber” journalist goes wrong is that the demand created would in no way have inflated the prices to the point they are at today without stupid financing. Prices would have perhaps gone up 5% a year, people would have "female dog"ed they couldn’t afford a house, builders would have caught up, and we would have been fine.

There are only $30-40K lower paying jobs available and the average Seattle household income is 1.2 workers, as its been at that average level for decades.

Can Seattle families afford $1000 1-2 bdrm apartment rent, let alone its clear they don’t qualify for a Seattle Condo anymore?

I imagine Texas or cheaper midwest states are looking far better for a lot of salary stretched Seatte-ites. Its also ludicrous to think with all the guest worker and outsourcing hitting Seattle’s dwindling low pay job market, that all the stay-at-home moms can get jobs to double up the incomes….

Since when did it take two incomes to survive in America?

Off topic; but related. It’s very telling when Wal-Mart blames gas prices for not hitting their numbers. Gas goes up 30% in a year, so the monthly household gas bill goes from let’s say $200 to $260. Wal-mart housholds can not absorve the $60 increase? Imagine what $200 to $500 mortgage jumps do to those families.

considering the media always lags actual events… I wonder what’s next…

Well one thing is obvious, according to Elizabeth Rhodes, not only must the Real Estate advertising department is located in a different building from her desk (you know, to avoid the appearance of impropriety with the S.Times pay masters?), I can only assume Drew’s desk is somewhere in another building as well, because she obvious can’t get it together to back blanket Realtor statements about “robust job-growth driving housing demand” with any sort of statistic or fact…

Remember these Rhodester gems?…

“All the fundamentals are in place for good job growth and in-migration…Fueling the replay will be wage and job growth, which spur demand,”