“Tim is doing really good job to try to put numbers and graphs to something that sometimes is not predictable”

I’d say his predictions are the most accurate I’ve come across. More accurate than any local RE professional.

Now to address your rant that would probably be more appropriate elsewhere.

I do agree that we are very spoiled in this country.

Now that you are here…you are very spoiled also.

Don’t like it? Then feel free to return to your “culture” and your “country” and stop coming in here and painting everybody with a broad brush stroke.

When I travel to countries with “less spoiled” people. Often I find that there are more people who are dishonest and try to hustle me. Does that mean that you are the same way? Is everybody from your culture/country dishonest conniving thieves?

I didn’t think so.

I’ve been to trailer parks and seen meth heads. Does this mean I should assume that your first example is a meth addict and that the only way that she came out ahead is that she took so much speed that she could work 80 hours a week and didn’t have to spend a dime on food?

Oh…I’m wrong again?

If I want to hear special interest sob stories I’ll turn on the news.

“Meet the typical American family.

It has about $3,800 in the bank. No one has a retirement account, and the neighbors who do only have about $35,000 in theirs. Mutual funds? Stocks? Bonds? Nope. The house is worth $160,000, but the family owes $95,000 on it to the bank. The breadwinners make more than $43,000 a year but can’t manage to pay off a $2,200 credit card balance.

Mid-Career
Max Out Contribution Limits To Prepare for Retirement
Households headed by someone age 45 to 54 would appear, at first glance, to be in better shape than their younger counterparts. They make more money, $61,100 a year, and have a six-figure net worth.
Upper Income
Bring Savings Rate in Line By Curbing Some Expenses
Upper-income Americans suffer from some of the same problems as other families but may not know it.
The Retired
Home Equity Can Be Changed Into Cash
Retirees on average are living on very low incomes — a median of $24,400 — but have significantly more money tied up in their homes than other low-income Americans.
Lower Income
Rein in Spending to Build A Cushion for Emergencies
The biggest challenge facing lower-income Americans is that they don’t make enough money. That statement may seem so blindingly obvious as to be unhelpful, but financial planners say there are ways to boost the finances of those with a family income of $25,700 a year — short of helping them find…
The Young
Capitalize On Time to Lift Meager Savings
Households headed by someone under age 35 have one big factor in their favor: time. These families and individuals tend to have piddling savings — a median $14,200 net worth, and only $1,800 in cash savings among those with a bank account.

That is the portrait of the median American household as painted by the Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finances. The survey, which does not distinguish between sizes of families, nevertheless offers the most detailed look available of the balance sheet of U.S. households.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/04/AR2006030400238.html

That was in 2006. It’s probably worse now.

I don’t get the “if you don’t get right out there and spend 300K on a piece of crap SFH or a lcloset-sized leaking and hastily builit condo/townhouse then you are a whining , entitiled Mama’s boy/girl” angle.

I’m glad you enjoy it here, but maybe you should take the time to meet some people ooutside your culture. Many of the folks I grew up were dirt poor (in a middle class Chicago suburb). Almost everybody worked after high school as few had “rich” parents; one friend worked the whole 2nd shift in a factory after school.

Most folks in this country live from paycheck to paycheck. Health care is unaffordable to many. It may be better and richer than where you came from, but that’s because our citizens worked hard to make it that way.

Housing prices in Seattle just don’t compare to those expensive places like SF, Paris and London.

I’ve seen worse traffic in LA, in the middle of a Sunday night, in the early 90’s (at that point, traffic was officially heavier on the weekends than the commute hours).

When it rains in CA it pours, here you get a like sprinkle (I’m talking Seattle proper, not the foothills). I never owned an umbrella or trenchcoat until I worked in SF.

Coastal fog in CA – it’s heavy and usually worse in the early summer. The big scam in Malibu used to be: rent your beach front house out in June to unsuspecting newbies or stewardesses, cause they’ll never see the ocean.

I love it up here.

Did you bother to look at what you get for the money? And you’re just talking rents, not actual prices.

“Perhaps the reason you’ve heard about parents co-signing leases, is because most young Parisians have horrible jobs with low wages.”

Ah ah ah! Young Parisians with low wages don’t exist. A low wage in France for a full time employee is about 1000 euros a month after taxes. Do you believe that you can even rent in Paris when you make so little? You said it yourself, rents in the Quartier Latin are north of 1000 euros. People making that kind of money live in the “banlieues”, usually in state owned projects with controlled rents (they’re called HLM).

As for parents co-signing it’s common practice. Even my brother who’s a college graduate and holds a management position with a well known multinational company had to go through that. Landlords do it because they can. They can literally pick any tenant they want so why not take those that come with the lowest risk of default?

And yes, my brother had to go line up at 7:00 AM to apply for an apartment, not through a rental agency though. The owner was having an “open house” and taking applications. You won’t have to line up at rental agencies because they’re open all day but competition is nonetheless very fierce. Not to mention that although discrimination on the base of ethnicity is illegal, it is alive and well. There was a trial recently where a rental agency admitted they had “codes” in their files to indicate what sort of tenant each landlord was looking for (or trying to avoid).

Really, the real estate market in Seattle has nothing in common with those of “world class cities”. And if we ever qualify as one, you’re going to wish you were back in the good old days when a SFH merely cost $450K.

First, in relation to the 2nd article quoted, Mr Shelby’s quote is very misleading. Cropland has gone up 30-50% nearly everywhere, and it has nothing to do with people drifting. Commodity crop prices have gone up significantly in that time frame, for many reasons, and it’s made farming on marginal land profitable again. Farmers all across the country are buying up land and farming it, when a few years ago many were shutting down and moving to the city.

As for Seattle’s affordability and appeal… It’s far from unlivable. It’s difficult to get started if you don’t have affluent & benevolent parents. It’s hard to relocate from much of the country because of the huge disparity in housing costs. But that’s a tradeoff. These articles, and some of the comments, make it seem like you want it all. Seattle’s outdoors & economy, but with San Diego’s sun, San Fran’s “city culture” (whatever that means – the two cities have more in common than they have differences), small town traffic, and dirt cheap housing. It just ain’t going to happen. As an individual, you need to assess your situation. If you hate traffic, move to a medium sized city. Cheap housing really important? Detroit has “gems” aplenty. Need more sun? Move to California or Texas or Florida. Hate the people here? Move somewhere else. Seattle is a nice city with a lot going for it, but trying to make it something it isn’t will only lead to disappointment.

The price of a decent SFH in Seattle gets you a crappy apartment in one of Paris’ worst district (like the 19th or 20th). For crying out loud this is a city where even renting is a major obstacle course. Landlords demand that grown men and women have their parents co-sign their lease. Why? Because they can. Whenever a rental comes on the market people line up in the street hours in advance just to get a chance to fill an application.

That doesn’t jive with what I saw. Rents in the Latin Quarter ranged from 1000-2000 Euros per month, and I didn’t see any lines at the rental agency. Talked to several students at Le Cordon Bleu who were renting in the outer districts for less than that.

Perhaps the reason you’ve heard about parents co-signing leases, is because most young Parisians have horrible jobs with low wages. It’s a problematic, well-known phenomenon in France, but it has nothing to do with the rental market.

http://www.ncpamd.com/seasonal.htm

You might like grey skies and no sunshine but the fact is that it’s unpleasant for most and a real problem for many wether you like it or not.

This reminds me of a refrain I often hear about Washington DC:

“DC real estate prices are only going up. It’s the least expensive capitol city of any western nation, foreigners see what a bargain it is.”

Yet, prices in much of the district (and especially surrounding suburbs) are dropping. Go figure. You’d think the whole “nations capitol” aspect would make the local RE market somehow “special” or “different” than podunk port cities like…

Does it tell you what type of person you might find at a ‘Starbucks”? One who pays $4 for a cup of coffee on their credit card? I love coffee, but you won’t find me at a Starbucks, I’m the one you hear laughing and engaging with others by the window seat. Please join us! Seattle is livable, fun and you always dry out eventually.

Wow! Thanks for the tip NotaBull. I’ve been wondering why that line never worked very well for me.

Too funny!

You’re the one being a bit provincial here. Seattle might not be in the same league as Moscow or Paris but neither are its real estate prices. I know Paris quite well and it’s a whole different ball game over there. The price of a decent SFH in Seattle gets you a crappy apartment in one of Paris’ worst district (like the 19th or 20th). For crying out loud this is a city where even renting is a major obstacle course. Landlords demand that grown men and women have their parents co-sign their lease. Why? Because they can. Whenever a rental comes on the market people line up in the street hours in advance just to get a chance to fill an application. Most people in Paris know that they will never own real estate in that town. Not only are prices an order of magnitude higher than they are in Seattle but salaries don’t even come close to what a qualified professional can hope to make here.
Seattle might not be a “world class city” but trust me, it has nowhere near the problem those cities have… especially when it comes to real estate.

One of the old timers I know here (born and raised) suggested that when the Berlin wall came down we should have had it shipped here and deployed on the Oregon border. He’s not a bad guy. He just preferred a Fremont with dock workers and artists instead of yuppies and Thai restaurants. I’m not from here, but I’ve been here longer than anywhere else and so I can see where he’s coming from.

Is that why the region has one of the highest rates weather related depression?

Saying you’re not sure about the morality of abortion is *not* an innocuous conversation topic to discuss with a STRANGER at Starbucks while waiting for your espresso. If you believe that’s the case, then you should probably redefine your library of chit-chat conversation starters. I recommend staying away from these:

“Hey there. My name is Bob. Topic: euthanasia and the right to choose one’s own destiny, even including assisted suicide outcomes. Grab your latte and we’ll talk, K?”

“Hi. Nice day out today. I wonder if it’s immoral to abort an unborn fetus… Have you ever had an abortion? If so, did you feel immoral or were you fine with it?”

“Hello stranger. Waiting for a latte? Inter-racial marriage and its effects on racial integration in the United States since 1960. Let’s discuss over a lemon loaf.”

“Howdy non-friend! Women have slightly smaller brains than men, and I was wondering if this has an impact on intelligence. You’re a women, so I thought you might have a unique perspective on that topic. Let’s chat”

Seattle is in the much smaller group of unaffordable places that aren’t financial centers. I guess we’re in a club with San Diego and … Miami?

All the art galleries in Georgetown are very cool, I have been to several fun parties there. When have artists ever been able to afford living close in before they made it? I distinctly remember dave grohl saying at a foo fighters show they drove down aurora to the lawn mower shop by Beth’s to buy go karts after nevermind came out. If nirvana had to live in shoreline in 1991, being an artist in Georgetown today seems like a pretty good deal.

To me, Seattle is just a necessary evil. A means to an end. I live here so I can make a respectable living while enjoying the overall pacific northwest region. I could not care less about Seattle’s frumpy, flaccid residents, its self-doubting obession with all things ‘world-class’, or the latest tapas bar.

I grew up here, and for me, it was nice before all these annoyances were part of the scene. I guess one man’s annoyance is another man’s coveted prize. I work from home now, so the necessary evil is not so necessary anymore. Just be glad that you can pack up and shove off. Many citizens of the world don’t have that ability, thanks to oppressive governments or economic strife.

By the way, I find it interesting that those who give off the “Seattle Freeze” vibe are usually recent transplants themselves. They have an attitude that only they themselves are worthy to live in this Emerald Kingdom and anyone else who has a similar idea of starting a new life here is just not worthy should go home. Most of the old-timers I know are extroverts.

Didn’t they play at Neumo’s a while back?

Pay a visit north of the border and you’ll find a city that has Seattle totally outclassed in the uptight, self-important provincial asses department.

Said city also has no major employers, higher taxes, and San Francisco prices.

There’s also an overgrown small town across the water that is more expensive than Seattle.

Count your blessings.

As real estate gets cheaper in CA again and our ever-worsening nationwide speculative bubble series comes to a head in a full-blown economic catastrophe, the losses here are going to accelerate versus other cities, not weaken. You see, these idiots in Washington are working very hard to ensure that this crisis gets even worse by actually continuing to pursue – even more aggressively – the very policies that got us in this humongous mess in the first place. When the "chocolate" hits the fan, it’s going to end in a lot of tears and depression and maybe even social unrest and it’s going to affect Seattle employment. Seattle is a boom bust town and it’s going to be that much worse this time because of the national and global picture. 15 years ago Belltown was a sketchy neighborhood. But look around at the remaining older buildings next time you’re down there. Yes, it was not always so in earlier cycles. My expectation is that it will become a sketchy neighborhood again before this is all over.

Another major issue for Seattle yuppie housing speculators, as several posters have pointed out, is that the premium to live in SF or San Diego is narrowing. And while Seattle culture has become considerably less cool than it was in the 90’s with the influx of money and outsiders who think Seattle should change to suit them, ultimately, Seattle is going to remain Seattle and that is going to frustrate a lot of cultural imperialists who expect the city to conform to their expectations. Personally, I think “when in Rome…” If you can’t accept Seattle as it is, it’s probably best for everyone if you move along.

No offense to Californians, BTW. I like California, actually. At least to visit. And some Californians are very cool people. I just (a) wouldn’t want to live in California and (b) would never expect it to become something it’s not (as so many people moving to Seattle seem to expect).

Don’t like the “freeze”? Move to the Missouri where everybody and their "golly" mother wants to know your business to see what the other extreme is.

You want superficial conversation (and even more superficial people)? Move to Los Angeles. Every brainless beauty seems to have moved there to “make it big” in the industry. You start to go crazy listening to everybody’s pie in the sky acting dreams.

Want to feel like a true outsider? Move to New England where the families have been there for generations and have little respect or admiriation for the “left coast” or it’s people…and they certainly don’t want you moving there.

Want to feel like a pinball and have to perfect the way you walk so you don’t constantly run into people? Move to Manhattan. How much peace of mind do you think you’ll find there outside of a yoga studio?

Is the laid back (yet active) life your style? San Luis Obispo is great…until all the Arizona retirees show up in the Summer creating traffic havoc when there really isn’t much traffic to speak of. Not to mention…you have to drive almost 200 miles to get to any city for either culture or air travel.

Urban Cowboy your thing? Sacramento’s your place.

Every place has it’s benefits and it’s drawbacks with regards to both geography, people, climate, attractions etc…but everywhere I have lived, I have always been able to make good friends and don’t really have any regrets.

I agree with you, those places have all had various bubbles blown and burst over the last 30-40 years in their real estate markets. I guess my point is that somewhere like Seattle could not sustain having extremely expensive housing over a period of 10+ years like San Francisco has managed to do, it would just kill the city outright. I think for the people who hope that Seattle will defy gravity and somehow emerge from this bubble with relatively small losses don’t realize it will mean the cities death. People move to Seattle because it has tech jobs and is cheaper than SF and Boston. If you remove the cheaper, nobody is going to move there and likely people and companies will move away instead.

Places like SF, NYC and Boston can sustain long periods of expensive real estate because they were built up eons ago and have job bases that Seattle will likely never be able to match in the next 50 years.

But this doesn’t mean that SF, NYC, or Boston can’t experience significant real-estate declines. Manhattan saw 40% price declines in the early to mid-90s, and the credit bust slowly rolling through wall-street is leading it to another major downturn. Heck, they are even reporting that the Hamptons are seeing significant numbers of foreclosures, which has been unheard of.

San Francisco isn’t immune from problems either. Just look at how the hinterlands areound SF are getting hit harder and harder with the real-estate downturn. Even places like Marin and Sonoma are now seeing significant price depreciation.

The whole debate about whether Seattle is as “special” as San Francisco or New York are irrelevant since there is nothing “special” about those places to begin with, and the real-estate crash is beginning to show just that.

Comparing the Seattle area I had in the 60s and 70s as a youth, to the cement city housing developments of today, is like comparing a controlled growth utopia to a packed LA.

I remember when Boeing headquarters was at Boeing field, not in a midwest river town. I remember when Kent valley was all farmland, then became aerospace manufacturing subcontractor plants, now MOR furniture and rug/floor/countertop storage areas. I remember in 1990, when the Seattle area had 1/5th the popualtion density than it does now, and yet, the roads were clogged back then too and it took you 2 hrs to get 20 miles home [Lord only knows how we move now].

There is something the same today as in the past Seattle, we have the same basic freeways and accesses to freeways that were built when I was a kid.

When I was a kid, my dad was a technical at Boeing, with one income and had the biggest house in the neighborhood. I was born about ten years after the Baby Boomers, so my high school class, after college, was born a bit too late for Seattle. It now took two incomes to buy about 1/2 my dad’s house. It hasn’t changed much in Seattle on housing affordability since my young adult years; and buildable land with its own freeway access ran out.in 1978.

My kids now require 4 incomes to buy 1/2 the house I could. Its mostly gloom and doom for them, especially their wages collapsing per Tim’s article. Isn’t unplanned growth history in Seattle fascinating though?

The Baby Boomers aren’t laughing either. That $1M retirement the lucky top 5% saved is like $1k/mo to retire on after taxes, while hyper-inflation with uncontrolled growth makes that $1M annuity decrease like -10% [its even worse if you're heavily into stocks]. You make about a thousand a month and lose about ten thousand a month in buying power due to hyper-inflation making your savings [and home] worth less and less, as time goes on.

At this rate, soon we’ll all be average world class globalist incomes in America, making the equivalent of $3-4K/yr [buying power] just like everyone else. Its only fair isn’t it?

I do make friends with a lot of newcomers though….until they get assimilated.