Seattle Bubble

In the past, we have had an extremely hands-off approach to comments here at Seattle Bubble.  The only type of comment that was moderated or deleted was blatant spam.  It was up to the participants of the discussions to keep things interesting and civil, and for the most part, that is what happened.

Unfortunately, in recent weeks a handful of people have been coming in here and leaving comments that are quite clearly intended to antagonize, anger, and upset others.  You can thank this small group of people for ruining the hands-off policy for everybody.

So, starting now and for the foreseeable future, this is the comment policy that will be enforced on Seattle Bubble.

If your comment contains any of the following, it will be either edited or deleted:

• name-calling
• blatant antagonism
• swearing

Antagonism is obviously subjective, but I will probably more readily delete a comment that seems like it might be antagonistic than leave it up.

Also, from now on, no commercial links may be left in the body of the comment.  If you want to fill in your business link in the comment form where it says “website,” feel free to do that, and it will be linked to your name.  But posts with links to a business in the body of the comment will be edited or deleted.  If you want to advertise your business on Seattle Bubble, you need to pay just like everyone else.

Commenters that repeatedly choose to violate these simple rules will be banned.

Feel free to express whatever opinion you want, but find a way to express it that doesn’t come across like a jerk. I gladly welcome dissenting opinions, but I do not welcome rude and hostile trolls.  The comment section of Seattle Bubble is intended to be a place for productive discussion of the posts.  It is not some sort of internet fight club.  If you want to sling insults at people, go find some other forum.

And the “Best Comment of the Week” award goes to rose-colored-coolaid for his gem on yesterday’s post:

Anyone else starting to notice that the ‘bubbles are forever’ positions are starting to sound a lot more like Jon Madden? “Boom, you see this house? What it wants to do is appreciate in value. So it’s going to use granite countertops here and here and here [scribbles all over the screen] to keep the bubbleheads off balance. We ran the countertop play in Oakland, and it always either worked or didn’t.”

Hilarious!

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!

Last Wednesday there was some great conversation about what people are experiencing as they are out there right now trying to find a home. I think it’s worth re-posting these comments on the front page, since they give a good feel for what the housing market is really like right now that you can’t get just by looking at graphs and spreadsheets.

Peter:

I’ve actually started looking seriously at homes in the $400k-$500k range and have toured probably at least a dozen from the Kennydale Area up to Juanita/Kirkland. Here’s what I’ve noticed:

1) Pretty much everything you’ve heard about flipper renovations is true. These people are morons. I’ve seen some work so shoddy that it would blow your mind. We toured a home in Newport Hills and the owners were still there - he pointed at the electrical plates and said, “we upgraded to the latest style!” Um, yeah. You went to Home Depot and dropped a hundred bucks and spent the afternoon with a flathead screwdriver. No.

2) The $400k-$500k unrenovated properties are bottom of the barrel garbage. Borderline unliveable. Most of these are in such a state of disrepair they will probably need to be torn down. We saw a house in Finn Hill that had been vacant for quite some time. It smelled like death. My wife said, “this place is haunted!” I saw something - I’m not sure what - but it was brown, papery, and slightly organic looking in the fireplace. I asked our agent what it was and she just said, “let’s get out of here!” And a steal at only $450k.

3) Prices are all over the board and don’t appear to be based on recent nearby sales or appraised value + whatever. People are just asking whatever they feel like and seeing if they can get any bites.

4) The increase of inventory is definitely accelerating. It’s all crap though.

5) Most builders are idiots. They will shoehorn a house into just about any space, regardless if the front door of one house is directly facing the house next door. Yeah, I want to look out of my living room window and see my neighbor reading the newspaper in his bathroom. Most are still not offering concessions.

6) I’m not seeing any of these houses move. No one is buying them. However, if a decent house at a decent price does get listed, it is snapped up immediately. The crap is sitting forever though.

7) This has been one of the worst and most depressing experiences of my life. I’ve seen more than one house that *could* have been nice but had been ravaged by a flipper and had the price jacked up $100k from the purchase price a year ago. It seems every flipper runs out of money and you can tell exactly where they did - 4 out of 5 rooms will have hardwood floors, for example. The last one will have 30 year old filthy carpeting in it. 3 out of 5 closets will have been redone - the last two look like something like the meat locker from Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Anyone who thinks this is a “healthy market” is certifiably insane.

Alan:

I know what you mean, Peter. My wife and I went to an open house a few weekends ago. We could tell that the owner had done some shoddy renovations, but we thought we would have to redo it and so we would have wanted a discount *because* of the renovations (if we had even wanted the house — which we didn’t because the floorplan was horrible).

I enjoy messing with the realtors. They ask if I am in the market and I say, “No, I’m currently priced out of this market. I only make $X per year.” (where X is significantly above the mean income for the area). The last realtor I said this too got excited and started telling me that the owners would probably sell for less than the asking price and that he could get me a good deal on the house.

B:

Peter:

Wow, I haven’t been looking as hard at as many properties as you have, but your observations exactly parallel my own. What a strange twilight-zone of inventory and comps we’re looking at right now.

I came back from the last place we walked through (SFH in Greenlake listed at $699, which was absolute junk inside) with a resolve to renew my apartment lease through 2007 - let the flippers flop.

The only thing worth less than a “fixer” is a house where someone did a crappy remodel/flip on a fixer. Now I have to tear out all your shoddy garbage and re-do it. Honestly!

stephen:

If you are going to buy (like we are) it is extremely important to do loads of homework and tons of driving. We’ve been looking since the first and still haven’t set foot in a house. One passed the drive by sniff test but fell out due to the flood report.

So have any other readers been out there looking at homes? What have you experienced? Is the market as strong as local real estate agents would have us believe? Let’s hear your tales.