Seattle Bubble

FYI, Seattle P-I real estate reporter Aubrey Cohen has entered the blogging fray. Check out his new P-I-sponsored blog: Seattle Real Estate News.

Such a creative name. (I kid, I kid.)

Seriously though, I applaud Aubrey for engaging the readers in the more open, discussion-oriented format that blogging provides. Hopefully he will get some good ground-level feedback that will help him continue to improve his reporting as the Seattle real estate market enters this interesting transitional time. In my experience blogging, I’ve found that you can learn a lot more from the feedback of informed readers than you can by reading just press releases and newspaper articles.

Let’s welcome Aubrey to the blogging party. I encourage everybody to head over to his blog and leave some comments. Just do me a favor and keep it productive and civil, mmm-kay? Thanks.

While I am fairly satisfied with the present design of Seattle Bubble’s website, I readily admit that there are aspects that need work. For example, it would be nice if the format of the forums matched the format of the blog. Also, I think it would help the be more engaging if I could incorporate pictures and graphics a bit more often. Not in every post just for the sake of adding graphics, and not just chart after chart, but just a little color to supplement what can become large blocks of intimidating text.

Along those lines, I think something that Seattle Bubble needs is a logo. Unfortunately, my skills of an artist are somewhat lacking (to put it lightly). I’ve got some concepts that I think would make a cool logo, but very little ability to translate the images in my head into images on paper (or computer).

That’s where you, the readers of Seattle Bubble come in. I’d like to solicit your assistance in coming up with a great logo for Seattle Bubble. Here are the qualities I’m looking for:

• Succinct - Gets across the purpose of the site in a plain manner.
• Simple - Would look equally good in a website header, on a business card, or on a t-shirt.
• Clever - This ain’t no accounting firm letterhead.
• Polished - Looks sharp. Something you’d be proud to display.
• Original - Should be obvious, but taking some existing work and tweaking it is a no-go.

Now, I’m fully aware that logo design is something that big businesses pay hojillions of bucks for, and I’m probably coming across like some kind of street corner bum begging for money. Not surprisingly, I don’t really care how it comes across, I just thought it would be something fun we could discuss together and maybe come up with a great result. Obviously if we come up with a cool enough logo, I’d be more than happy to offer it on a t-shirt, and whoever designed the logo would get at least a free shirt out of the deal.

Even if (like me) you don’t have any real artistic skills, feel free to comment with your ideas of what could be put into a logo. I’ll kick things off with a few of my own ideas. One would have simple black sketches of various Seattle landmarks such as the Space Needle, the Smith Tower, and the Pike Place sign, inside a soap bubble that’s about to be popped by a needle. Another one is to have a simplistic but recognizable Seattle skyline inside of one of those snow-globe things.

P.S. (If you like, you can email your submissions to me at TimothyEllis ~at~ gmail ~dot~ com.)

Inventory Reaches Big Round Number

As some astute readers have noticed, as of noon today, the number of single-family homes on the market in King County passed the big round 10,000 mark (see the left sidebar—which I am continually working to improve based on your suggestions). Since surpassing the previous confirmed high (Sept. ‘02 - 9,176) last month, inventory has grown at an average rate of about 26 homes added per day, despite decreasing by over 150 during the days leading up to Independence Day.

Also worth noting is that in my recent research of the historical Seattle Real Estate Research Reports mentioned by Steve Tytler, I was able to obtain inventory information for King & Snohomish (combined) back through 1988. The highest level of inventory in these reports was in August 1991 at 26,646 (that includes SFH, Condo, Land, Mobile, Commercial, & Multi-family). In breakdown data that was provided from 1993 to 1996, approximately 59% of total listings were SFH. This translates to a record of roughly 15,721 SFH on the market in King and Snohomish counties in August 1991. As of this post there are 15,648. I’m betting we break the all-time record here really soon.

Guest Posting at Get Rich Slowly

Tomorrow I have a guest post going up over at the excellent personal finance blog Get Rich Slowly. As you might expect, the subject of my post is how renting vs. buying affects ones personal finances. Head over there tomorrow to check out my post, and bookmark J.D.’s site or add it to your feed reader. I highly recommend it.

Seattle Civil Defense Manual

I mentioned this before on here, but it was way back when there were a few hundred readers a day instead of a few thousand, so I thought I’d throw it out there again. Check out the Seattle Civil Defense Manual from 1951. It has nothing to do with real estate, but it is probably of interest to anyone living in Seattle that enjoys a bit of history.

The Civil Defense Manual is a 25 page booklet that instructs local residents on how to be prepared for an atomic attack. A coworker discovered it in his garage, and it was so interesting I had to scan it and share it online. Be sure to check out pages 10 and 11, which contain pictures of Seattle and other Puget Sound points of interest as they existed 54 years ago. The entire publication is both interesting and amusing in a twisted sort of way.

Dragonfly

Lastly, check out this picture of a cool dragonfly that I took in our flower garden on Friday:

Click to enlarge

I’d like to introduce a new feature that I have added to Seattle Bubble: Sidebar Inventory Tracking.

Over on the left sidebar, you will notice a new section titled “Inventory.” With the number of homes on the market continuing to climb daily into record territory, I thought it would be fun to see the inventory at-a-glance. I now have the ability to automatically update the number of listings on the market (in the MLS) in any Western Washington county and of any type (SFH, condo, etc.).

So far, I’ve only added King County SFH, since this is the number that I highlight in the monthly stats reports. However, since it is fairly easy to add other counties or property types, I would like to solicit requests from you, the readers.

Which counties and property types would you like to see added the the hourly inventory tracker? Also, do you have any fun suggestions for other features I could add to the site?

Update: I have added SFH and Condos for King, Pierce, and Snohomish. I’ll try to make time this weekend to add some contextual info as well. And to make the forum link at the top of the page bigger.

Here are a couple of comments that have been posted recently to Seattle Bubble.

Brian on June 26:

Hey Tim, I’m a fairly new reader, and enjoying your blog, but I have 2 comments:

1. It’s going to sound lame, but I’m sometimes a bit thrown off by your use of sarcasm. If you can make it a bit more clear or tone it down a bit I think it’d be easier to read, and probably more professional.

2. I don’t know if you can do anything about it, but Google Reader doesn’t handle your quotes properly, so you can’t tell what’s a quote.

VictoryHeights on June 27:

I’ve only been reading Seattle Bubble for a few days but I’ve quickly come to the conclusion that most of the people here suffer frame the same problem that they accuse the media of having. Just as they seem to be cheerleading the real estate market, you people seem to be [censored] on it. All news is good news for them; all news is bad news for you.

Furthermore, the “analysis” you present cracks me up. It is called a cycle. Real estate prices tend to rise and fall in cycles. Just because you can over lay price data to show the cycles in several markets, doesn’t mean you’ve provided any insight into a possible “bubble.” Time to stop reading Seattle Bubble.

Maybe I’ll check back next year… or the year after…. or the year after. Eventually you may be right. Don’t worry; I’ll just adjust the horizontal axis to demonstrate you were right all along.

To be perfectly honest, I actually quite enjoyed both of these comments, although each for different reasons. Constructive criticism such as Brian’s comment is a useful way for me to find out ways I can improve the blog, while name-calling rants like VictoryHeights’ are a simply an entertaining source of amusement.

Therefore, for the enrichment and amusement of both the readers and writers of Seattle Bubble, I offer this post as a clearinghouse for your complaints. What would you like to see improved? Exactly what kind of idiot am I for even running this blog? Just let it all out.

Before we get started, I’d like to comment briefly on some previous complaints. First off, I think I have figured out the Google Reader problem Brian refers to above, and it should be fixed in new posts made from here on out (plus I went back and fixed yesterday’s post as well). Let me know if it still gives you problems. Secondly, I haven’t forgotten about our discussion regarding open threads, I just haven’t made the time to come up with a good compromise yet.

If you have nothing but love for Seattle Bubble, I’d like to request that you sit this post out. No ragging on the drive-by commenters, or ripping apart other people’s criticisms. If you want to say something nice about Seattle Bubble, how about making a small donation instead? This thread is for complaints and constructive criticisms only.

Thanks, and have at it!

I’m working on a post that I’d like to make this week where some real-world examples of renting versus purchasing would be really handy. There’s a thread on the forums on the subject, but I’d like to pose the question here as well.

Basically what I’m looking for are some concrete examples (with links and addresses) of homes available for rent vs. comparable homes (i.e. - similar bed / bath, square footage, lot size, neighborhood, etc.) available for sale. Ideally I’d like to throw some condos vs. apartments into the mix as well.

Here’s an example of my own to kick things off. (I did this research a few weeks ago, and since then both have gone off the market, so I don’t have links anymore.)

For Rent:
1,840 square foot house
3 bedroom, 2.5 bath
2-car garage
8,282 square foot lot
Near 74th Pl NE & NE 148th Ln, 98028
Price: $1,495 / month

For Purchase:
1,850 square foot house
3 bedroom, 2.5 bath
2-car garage
9,660 square foot lot
Near 87th Ave NE & NE 132nd Pl, 98034
Price: $424,950
PITI*: $2,750 / month
* (Assumes 20% down, 30-year fixed @ 6.625%, Insurance @ 0.46%, property taxes at 1.15%)

So what are your best rent vs. purchase examples in the Seattle area?