Sounds like a reasonable idea for areas that are grossly overbuilt with shrinking economies and populations. But for any area where someone might actually want to live in those houses at some point in time, it seems like a rather huge waste of resources.

That’s one of the best ideas I’ve read in a while. We can grow organic broccoli where McMansions once stood.

I’m watching east King County and the home developments were bulldozed then fenced in and sit there with no more development for 6+ months [no money?]. I’m also seeing many units of new leased space vacant…..its been three months now…..

I imagine this conundrum doesn’t get tracked by Tim’s charts, but its definitely an over-supply cancer too.

I believe the housing bailout plan should include an approx 50% budget to bulldoze and cleanup the overbuilt vacant homes; before they turn into rat traps. Then turn the developments back in to green lands again to counter global warming.

This is the first time I really paid attention to the MOS charts, and I was actually slightly surprised at Seattle’s MOS. It seems a lot better than I had expected. Except the areas 701, 390 (afforability?) and 385 (less desirable than other neighborhoods?), one can almost claim that it’s a buyer’s market in Seattle!

“I barely have money to survive,” he said.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/380145_homeowners23.html

There are usually 2 – 3 postings per day on craigslist trying to rent units in this complex out. It’s a pretty interesting space, but clearly not selling.

The pool that is willing to buy at today’s prices is very small. As prices fall the pool of willing buyers will grow.

The number of new buyers that come onto the market for a given price drop is referred to as elasticity. It is tough to get data on that. So instead we estimate a single point using tody’s data.

But, Losh, if you’re equating yourself to a developer with 80 unsold condos and a massive construction loan to pay off, you’re not fooling anyone. ;)

What about all of those other people who did list, advertise, and committ huge resources to selling for over 200 days on market then left the market.
Are they counted?

Yep. They are counted. They are expending resources to advertise their assets. Presumably they wouldn’t do this if they didn’t think their price was in a reasonable ballpark.

Show me an MLS listing for your house at $725k and then we can count it in inventory. Then we can ask your realtor why he would waste his time listing it at that price and heckle him about his time being worth nothing.

I get your point though. You’ve made it before. How do you measure supply and demand? I would buy the house down the road for $1. Does that mean I am part of the demand? Probably not. We only count supply and demand that is likely to sell or buy. We don’t have a buyers registration database so we can only estimate that by counting closings. We do have a registration database for sellers. It costs money to get into that database. Persumably, people aren’t going to waste their money or time and will only put their property in that database if they intend to sell. Some will advertise a price that is too high. Maybe they would take a lower price. Who knows. It is all estimation anyway. If you think you can get a better estimate then do it and beat the market.

I think there may be something to this buyer registration database. When buyers are scarce then the sellers should do the legwork to convince a buyer. There is your million dollar idea, David. Take it and run if you want.

Hire an agent. Put it on the MLS. Allocate resources into advertising it and then we can consider it as part of the MOS.

The three toughest markets for sellers were Medina / Clyde Hill / W. Bellevue (520) at 15.76, Enumclaw (300) at 11.31, and Mercer Island (510) at 11.06. 520 has now been over 10 MOS for a full year.

That these three areas are relatively the highest in the area is not surprising. They’re some of the most expensive neighborhoods, and more expensive homes tend to stay on market longer and go for slightly larger discounts (see the sale-to-list price data on Redfin:
http://blog.redfin.com/seattle/2008/07/a_better_deal_in_hawthorne_hills_or_madison_park.html)

What is interesting is the absolute level- that the months of supply is so much greater than it was last year.

yes…you are seeing things correctly…many unlisted units in buildings that are both completed or currently under construction that are not listed on the MLS. I wonder what will happen if the flippers of projects yet to be delivered decide not to close after seeing other flippers that have been sitting on their condos (unable to sell) for over 18 months now. Surely they can do the math…well…perhaps.

http://www.personal.psu.edu/cab38/ColorBrewer/ColorBrewer_intro.html

It is designed by a cartography professor at Penn State whose research involves the cognition of color in maps. It’s a nifty tool to choose colors that people can easily differentiate between, especially for the large segment of the population who have color vision impairment.

Look at what color your color is next to. For example 530 color is hard to distinguish, but it is to the right of the orange bar.

Taking the Trace North building at 1414 12th Ave as an example:

103 units total.

According to the King County Recorder’s Office, the developer (12th & Madison LLC) still owns *80* of those units. 12th & Madison does not offer units for rent, as far as I can tell, although I’m sure a few of the 23 sold units are not owner-occupied.

Of the 80 unsold units in Trace North, only 18 are listed for sale (at least on Redfin – maybe MLS has more, but I assume not.)

In other words, at least in the case of Trace North, one unit listed for sale actually represents 4.44 unsold units. If this is typical of the supply for the downtown condo market, the MOS situation is definitely skewed!

Maybe this has already been covered or is otherwise accounted for in the MOS numbers, but I just got to wondering — what about all the unsold, unlisted new construction? I notice that in a lot of the new condos in Seattle (e.g. Trace Lofts), the King County Recorder’s Office shows a large number of unsold units, only a fraction of which are listed for sale.

Maybe I’m missing something, or maybe the condo & downwon MOS numbers are substantially affected this way.

It looks pretty n’ all, but I think more contrasting and distinct colors might help a little.