That goes without saying. I inspected our booth yesterday at the Tacoma Dome Home Show and found just 1 Mtg Company and 500 Realty as the only Real Estate office. The booth only cost 1500.00 and last year there were 3 companies. Watch for continued closure of satellite Brick and Mortar Real Estate offices and many more models resembling ours utilizing Lead Generation for Revenue.

It was planned that in MID 2009 500 Realty Home Show Booths will be sitting alongside 500 Mortgage Booths. It appears it may happen sooner with the impending sale of NCC. I got my “emergency call meeting” for noon tomorrow with NCC. I was supposed to be sitting in the Dome but it appears I get a break at Red Lobster at lunch time to hear the news.

Change is Good!

Spammers don’t pretend to be ethical.

What’s the difference between a REALTOR(R) and a spammer?”

Anyone?

Anyone?

My intention is for Tim to have a million dollars in the bank after taxes and expenses. Let’s give Tim a million dollars.

Wow, The Tim has a stalker.

if this was Tims business he would likely be in the higher ranks among blogs.

Yeah, if you took this more seriously you’d be getting as much traffic as TechCrunch or BoingBoing.

Well, you know, I’d like to have a million dollars in the bank, too, and I’m not going to have it if I hand out ten bucks to every Tim, Dick, and Harry on the Internet.

I still think commissions are involved. Or maybe brainwashing, a la The Manchurian Candidate (Frank Sinatra version, of course!) “The Tim is the nicest, sweetest, most reliable source of real estate information I’ve ever known!”

That actually might make the site better by cutting down on spammers.

What I was really thinking today was about EBay laying people off. So what? EBay can make money by being self monitored and the owners, stock holders, or investors could still make profits.
I was also thinking that Google has gotten to be such a mess that it might improve by charging a fee for searches, annual membership, or subscription fees. It could offer more features rather than relying on advertising. It could even have a research site without all the googley mess of advertisers.

Let’s take Ray and $500 Realty. If two people a week give Ray $500 he makes a $1000 a week for being Ray and having a website.

Better yet, let’s contribute here.

The possibilities of the internet are boundless. Let’s really see what can happen.

That’s only because you haven’t gone public yet. Just wait: people will be clamoring for those Thatch Mound IPO shares.

I think your reminding us that Tim is providing a valuable service/resource is laudable, but I don’t see how him being a millionaire will have an effect on the global credit bubble!

However, I believe that there will be far fewer real estate related advertising dollars in the future (those that would naturally fit with this site) so users paying Tim directly instead of relying on shrinking advertising revenues is a good option.

Thank you for the opportunity to explain my experiment with this site.
For all the talk and comparison to 1930, 1970, 1980, 1990 and the recessions or Great Depression the internet is a wild card. There is an economic theory about the impact of the internet that is obscure. So let’s give it a try.

My intention is for Tim to have a million dollars in the bank after taxes and expenses. Let’s give Tim a million dollars.

If you like the site great, it’s worth the donation. If you question the site, or have a dislike for it, a million dollars may moderate the point of view here.

Another of my posts seems to have vanished into that great SPAM engine of the sky. Would you mind trying to resurrect it?

At last! The Federal Reserve, along with many other central banks around the world, have cut interest rates. This is what the markets have been waiting for, everything will be fine now. After all, the previous rate cuts over the last year have done so well that its obvious that a globally coordinated rate reduction will do wonders.

This is clearly poppycock. Interest rates are already at historic lows but that hasn’t helped the economy. Lowering the cost of borrowing further won’t do anything to encourage people to borrow more, or prevent a further decline in the value of assets. Japan has been trying to almost GIVE money away for nearly 20 years and that didn’t re-ignite their economy, and there is no reason to suppose this recent rate cut is going to help anyone either.

http://surkanstance.blogspot.com/2008/10/another-rate-cut-another-failure.html

How in the world is it possible to buy a home in Seattle/Redmond and keep paying Mortgage for next 30-40 years?

The prices should come down! It will!

More so. It’s like California were a country by itself. Oz has no reasonably priced big cities like Houston or St. Louis. Oz also has a much higher % of the population living in big cities than the US.

Relax already, he’ll be OK financially. I mean, it’s not like he has to pay for the roof over his head or anything.

A donation here is one of the best contributions you can make for quality of information.

Donate to Seattle Bubble

$10.00 – Donation $25.00 – Donation $50.00 – Donation $100.00 – Donation $150.00 – Donation $200.00 – Donation $250.00 – Donation

I guess I counted people who moved to have their house fit their needs as “Move up”. but I see your point.

Spectator.
Thanks for the gallows humor, it made me laugh .

Everett_Tom at #6: What other kinds of buyers are there? Doesn’t that cover just about everyone?

Compulsive shoppers previously enabled by irresponsible lending practices are not in the list for obvious reasons.

A lot of properties make no sense in terms of pricing and people still buy them.

What does make sense is giving this site the credit it deserves. I’m hoping that my pitch for a contribution to this blog by clicking the button at the upper right hand corner of this web site will help continue the good work done here.

I’m compromising on neighborhood and several other things, and I still haven’t seen a home in my price range that’s not crap or in a bad neighborhood.

We’re not near the bottom yet. Amazing: while the rest of the country is talking about a depression, the Seattle media wants to put saddles on the pink ponies.

To add to the Seattle home price collapse witches brew is the frustration Boeing technical employees are apparently having with Boeing management’s globalist “in-sourcing” and “outsourcing” at alleged slave labor rates and incapable/subpar schedule deliveries. Here’s an Aug 2008 SPEEA excerpt:

“…SEATTLE – In a press release issued Aug.
18, SPEEA officials said problems with
contractors contribute to delays with the
787 and other commercial and defense
programs.
Union efforts to address the issue with
Boeing and track contract labor have been
rejected.
“We continue to uncover a pattern of
abuse of foreign contract labor at Boeing
facilities,” said Ray Goforth, SPEEA executive
director. “This is bringing the mistake
of outsourcing, which continues to
delay the 787, right into Boeing offices
and factories.”
In April, SPEEA specifically asked the
aerospace and defense giant for information
on the process used to renew foreign
worker visas and the treatment of the
workers while at Boeing.
“Boeing is refusing to tell us how many
foreign contractors are being brought here
and what programs they are working on,”
Goforth said.
Earlier this year, SPEEA learned that 300
contractors from Russia were working at
Boeing under the B1 (business) visa program.
The B1 visa is typically reserved for
visitors on business trips. All of the foreign
contractors were doing jobs previously performed
by U.S. workers.
“Boeing is undermining its own products
by arming these workers with high-tech
knowledge and skills and then sending
them home with work that should be performed
by U.S. workers,” Goforth said.
“Japan, China and Russia all have large
scale efforts to compete in the commercial
airplane business with skills they learned
from Boeing.”
To see the press release, go to http://www.speea.org….”

It isn’t just the Boeing machinists this local area should be worrying about, no not at all.

there’s someone somewhere who made a lot of money off inflated home prices and they need to be rounded up and dealt with.

375 is not reasonable, it’s just not. call me when we get under 250. that’ll still be nuts, but at least it’ll make homedebting look better than renting.

So if you were goaded in Sept 2007 into buying that “gem” by a used home salesperson you’re out $20,000, plus property taxes, interest on your money side aside to buy your “gem,” maintenance costs, insurance costs AND most importantly the large savings in renting versus owning. you could be out much more than $20,000.

This is also why there was a spike back in April. Regular zero down loans went away effective April 1st, so there was a scramble to get them closed.

November and December are going to be seriously painful for housing.

We’re staring a massive recession in the eye. Major local employeers are going out of business or have rumors of layoffs. Globally, credit is contracting at a remarkable pace. Loans of all kinds are becoming harder to attain. Inflation is up, but wage growth is flat. 60% of Americans now think we’re heading for a depression…

Given all of that, let’s assume that today were the bottom of the real estate market. What kid of premium will I pay for waiting one more year? My guess is 1% at worst given all the trouble in the economy. If I bought a $500k house, that’s just $5,000. That’s a small price to pay for being certain we’ve hit the bottom.

I wish the media would own up to how pathetic the “you’ll be sorry” refrain is at this point. It might be legitimate if the choices are buy today or buy never, but if the choices are buy now or wait several months, we all know what the wisest choice is.

Also, I think it’s important to note that as reasonable paying jobs are outsourced over seas, it has become near to impossible for working class people to accumulate the capital to then meet more stringent lending regs. So, once “Reaganomics” (I consider Clintonomics to be the same thing – deregulate privativize and globalize, took off, the only way to maintain the mortgage industry was to create ponzi scheme lending mechanisms – NINJAs, etc.

What I’m saying is simple; the decline in home ownership does not have to mean increased immiseration if society decides that a large, stable, renting class is a completely legitimate life/culture. And the way to make that a long term viable policy is varying forms of rent stabilization policies.

I realize the above if off the mark re the post; but as home ownership declines and fades away, renting needs to be addressed.

This is a great site for balanced Real Estate news, even if it does slant, in my opinion for good, rather than evil.

You would have to be brain dead to be closing a Real Estate transaction at today’s prices. I advocate making offers on properties that make sense and make the best deal you can.

Whether it’s the FHA NEAMIA program or a gift of 3% interest the majority of properties I see are still at full retail pricing with a 10% discount. It makes no sense.

What does make sense is giving this site the credit it deserves. I’m hoping that my pitch for a contribution to the blog by clicking the button at the upper right hand corner of this web site will help continue the good work done here.

Brokers said it could be a sign the market has hit bottom and is starting to turn around. Or not.

Brilliant reporting.

“I think we’ve got a buildup in pendings simply because the time lags on getting through the approval process have clearly lengthened,” he said.

ABORT! ABORT! You’re straying from the message!

thx for the link. i have antipodean family and have been trying to explain the differences in mortgage law for a while.

what the author fails to mention is that house prices in Oz are just as inflated as they were here and that the economic impact of their correction is going to last much longer and be much more severe because of the differences in mortgage law.

first-time buyers, move-up buyers and investors

What other kinds of buyers are there? Doesn’t that cover just about everyone?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122325772150706655.html

The old voices just want to cash in soon and could care less about a future for the rest of us, while the inexperienced mouth generalizations with no workable plans.

Sounds like the real estate management running Seattle’s media.

Which presidential candidate will cause housing price inflation to resume in Tacoma?

This is me, gleeful that I may one day be able to afford a house that I will both be able to afford and want to live in. Mocking ridiculous MSM pronouncements is just bonus.