Seattle Bubble

The big local housing story today is a study that was released recently by University of Washington Economics professor Theo Eicher. The thrilling title of the study is “Municipal and Statewide Land Use Regulations and Housing Prices Across 250 Major US Cities,” and it may be found (along with a number of related materials) [...]

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For those that continue to insist that home prices around Seattle are high because “supply isn’t keeping up with demand,” I would like to point out the 2007 King County Buildable Lands Report.
This is what the report has to say about building activity in King County from 2001 through 2005:

King County gained more than 49,000 [...]

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Aubrey Cohen reports on a recently-released report out of Harvard. The report isn’t your usual rah-rah, go housing type of fluff, and actually shows Washington State as being among the markets with a larger percentage of risky loans. I don’t imagine it’s a coincidence that there’s not even a passing mention of the [...]

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A common argument about housing prices that I’ve personally noticed popping up frequently in the last few weeks is that they are as high as they are here in King County thanks in very large part to the Growth Management Act (GMA). Specifically, the argument claims that the Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) has so [...]

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Check out this absolutely delightful paid advertisement masquerading as a “guest editorial” in today’s Seattle Times. It’s penned by Mr. Samuel L. Anderson, the executive officer of the Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties.
The media have been all abuzz over the past year about the softening in the housing market.…At the same [...]

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Here’s a guest editorial from today’s Seattle Times that says something I’ve been saying all along: The “home prices are high because we’re running out of land because of Growth Management” argument doesn’t hold water.
The cost of housing is spiraling out of control in many parts of the Puget Sound region. King County is redefining [...]

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