Anyway, what’s with Seattle? That’s not the Sun Belt!

I’m a born & raised Queen Anne native & resident and have lived on top of the hill since 1968. My sister lives in 98117 now because I sold her a house there thinking it would be good to be on the Green Line (monorail), but it definitely doesn’t compare to Queen Anne. She had an opportunity to buy on Queen Anne when prices were reasonable & chose Ballard because she saw potential with the monorail. The house she passed on in QA is worth double the amount of the one she bought in Ballard, but she’s still happy with it because she has an ADU/mother-in-law apartment that pays a good portion of her mortgage.

This neighboorhood has, and still is being talked up as “special” but there are lots of car prowls, and occasional drug deals late nights going on. Just last week there were two black helecopters (not kidding) hovering above a house two blocks away for over 45 minutes. I was awakened by them, and they were still there and visible while I was waiting for the bus. Occasional “patrols” of fire engines, turning sirens off and on in front of certain houses but never seeming to be going or stopping anywhere near a fire or other emergency.

There is a lot going on there under the surface.

The rest of you whiners can kiss my grits!

I say this because I am currently in the early stages of a basement remodel and I began by getting a bid from a turn key general contractor. At that time all I asked for was framing and sheet rocking an extra bedroom and a total remodel of a spare full bath. Pretty basic stuff and nothing fancy. The bid came back at $86,000 and it didn’t include permit fees, architect drawings, and several other significant items (many of which aren’t necessary but which he assured me they were). My jaw hit the floor. I’ve since expanded the scope of work to be a full remodel, new heating system, etc. and I’m certain that that contractor would be quoting me an easy $200k to do the whole job now. And even with my expanded remodel I’m not doing nearly what Ms. Ryan’s clients did. So, if they used a GC then I believe it cost them a ton, a right arm, or a first born child.

The takeaway is be your own GC and sub out what you can’t or won’t do yourself.

http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/rfs/633399494.html

What do you get for your 1.3 million? No view? This house was about the size of everything else in the neighborhood but twice the cost. Actually it’s mostly a staircase with a few small rooms off of it.

We also looked at a five floor townhouse on Queen Anne for around the same price. The townhouse actually had an elevator. The best art was that each level contained one smallish room. Some developer figured that he could charge twice as much if he took a regular house and stacked it vertically.

I think we need a new section for more overpriced.

I posted an update on the forum thread that you might be interested in.

Found in the nearby similar sales of topic house:
http://www.redfin.com/stingray/do/printable-property?external_id=497723

It is for state/local government revenue projections

“The White House opposes the plan. It says parts of it would actually make the problem worse by depressing some home values.”

So home values dropping are a….bad….thing?

It’s on the other side of the ridge, psychologically several miles from Aurora. There are many reasons not to offer even 3/4 of their asking price but neighborhood isn’t one of them. The next Aurora prostitute to get picked up on NW 3rd will be the first. Even the most fit of the lot couldn’t make it up that hill

If anything good comes out of this housing collapse, I would hope this would be it. Show me an accounting of the improvements you did to justify the 300-500K increase in price and we can go from there. I would hope that future buyers will begin demanding these sorts of things and not just take them at face value. You say you spent 200K on improvements? Prove it!

It looks like the housing inventory is getting backed up. Tim, where is the plunger? It’s starting to stink around here.

I don’t care how much money and time someone spent nor how much risk they took. The only thing that matters to me is the end product.

It is true that you often have to take risks to get rewards, but taking risks doesn’t entitile you to reward — that is why it is called risk.

I think I’ve already stated my opinion on housing prices in this area. That house is not an exception to my belief.

Ha! I’m certainly not in a position to buy an $800K house. But I think the fact that you’re dismissing how much money and work goes into that list shows that you don’t have the first clue about how big and expensive those jobs are. I also can’t believe all you avid fans of market economics totally miss the point about risk and return, but hey.

And this all gets beside the point I originally made–what these sellers did was a heck of a lot more than paint and countertops, or whatever dismissive comment Tim made on the air. Could it really be? Our The Tim, talking out his butt?

$800,000?

And people wonder if this will be a slow bleed or not… There are always fools buying on the way down. This thing is going to take years to play out.

No one is saying this place is a POS, they are saying the emperor has no skivvies and people are finally starting to notice. The only thing which is a better symbol of the bubble than this home are your comments trying to justify its $800,000 price.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89505982

I hear Mother Theresa got her start as a flipper.

Call it mashugyfrued

None of that matters! The house is worth what someone will pay for it. Maybe it is fun to bicker over what we think the house is worth, but we needn’t bother, because soon the market will let us know.

I mostly lurk, my last post was expressing the sentiments of Everett Renter (Used to be Buyer) [#32] last fall – I contacted Murray, Cantwell & McDermott, and of course was given in reply a form-letter of apologistic drivel from each of them. I generally vote Democrat, consider myself liberal/independent/progressive – but that doesn’t matter now – all parties and affiliations will respond as eagerly and earnestly as possible to Americans’ short-term concerns, ignoring anything beyond a 2-week window and television sound-byte.

Try to do a quick mental exercise and envision what effect each one of these ‘fixes’ suggested means to the integrity of our monetary system, and how we trade with each other. There is NO way to rationally argue a palatable and controlled result. More meddling with these horrible decisions will beget and extend instability far beyond any 2-week windows.

Are you frustrated with the ‘fix-it’ apologists and the duct-tape MacGyvers? You should be – I certainly am.

Maybe something has changed about the neighbourhood, but it did not look like a fantastic area to me. Is this the part of Seattle that everybody wants to live in?

Indeed. At my last house, I got a huge lawn weeded, aerated and reseeded, along with some other significant clean-up work for a little under $2,000.

‘On that scale’? That lot can’t be much more that 4000 square feet and flatter than a tabletop. You might want to find a new landscaper, Angie.