Seattle Bubble

As you may recall, a few months ago the NWMLS statistics for April showed a slight increase in prices (+2.0%) month-to-month. Well, the April Case-Shiller Home Price Index has been published, and surprisingly, they show an increase for April as well, but not nearly as much:
Up 0.7% March to April.
Down 4.9% YOY.
According to Case-Shiller, [...]

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Last week the Puget Sound Business Journal ran a piece comparing King County to San Diego County. It was behind a subscriber-only wall, but now it’s fully available on their website: How King County dodged mortgage mess compared to San Diego. Unfortunately, the article doesn’t really have any new material that regular readers [...]

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The March Case-Shiller Home Price Index came in fairly close to, but slightly worse than the NWMLS statistics for the same month.
Down 0.9% February to March.
Down 4.4% YOY.
According to Case-Shiller, home prices in Seattle have now declined a total of 7.3% from their July 2007 peak, and have retreated to just above where they were [...]

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I thought it would be fun to check back in with an update on the San Diego / King County home price comparison I made back in March.
As of the latest Case-Shiller data (February) home prices San Diego have fallen 24% from their November 2006 peak. The Seattle area has dropped 6.5% from its [...]

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Here’s an interesting comparison.
As of December’s Case-Shiller data, prices in San Diego County have fallen nearly 20% from their November 2005 peak. As of last month, their median price for all homes sold (single-family and condos) was $415,000 (source: San Diego Union-Tribune).
In the Seattle area, December’s Case-Shiller put prices off 4% from their July [...]

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A couple people pointed me to a great article in today’s Wall Street Journal on the prevalence of sub-prime lending across the country over the last few years. The article discusses the surge in such risky loans, and the fallout that is already underway and likely to continue.
The data suggest that financial suffering is [...]

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