Seattle Bubble

According to KING 5, Quadrant homes announced some major layoffs yesterday.
The slowdown in home sales nationwide has now hit one of the largest home builders in Washington state in the form of layoffs.
Quadrant Homes is cutting up to six percent of its workforce.
In an e-mail to employees, Quadrant’s CEO announced a formal reduction in force, [...]

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Yesterday’s Tacoma News Tribune had an article about new construction in outlying areas, which is becoming front line of the Puget Sound housing bust. In short: it ain’t pretty for builders.
Facing fewer buyers and many, many homes for sale, South Sound builders are pulling back and getting extra promotional.
Builders have slowed construction schedules in [...]

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Aubrey Cohen is on a roll lately, doing a great job of reporting what’s really going on with the Seattle-area real estate market, instead of just painting the rosy picture that agents and builders would like to see printed. Here is Cohen’s latest, on the drastic price-cutting measures that builders just outside Seattle are [...]

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Here’s a roundup of some local real estate stories that came out this weekend.

The Times and the P-I give Redfin some free advertising by covering their list of Seven Tactics for Selling Your Home.
According to the Times, local builder Quadrant Homes (owned by Weyerhaeuser) is impervious to the housing market slowdown.
From the sounds of Phuong [...]

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I got this in the mail earlier this week, and just had to share. Houses are still cheaper than latte’s, apparently…
Deejayoh

addendum:
I clicked through to the site that the postcard directs you to. The “bonuses” are pretty significant relative to the starting prices, it seems to me
Buyer Bonuses at Select Communities
For purchases on October 1, 2007 [...]

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Elizabeth Rhodes hits us this morning with a fun little morsel: Developers dangle discounts, toys to lure home buyers. (I wonder why this article wasn’t in the big weekend real estate section? Hmm… Edit: It would appear that the answer to that question is that they were saving it for the front page [...]

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