Seattle Bubble

Oh man. They let Elizabeth Rhodes take just one day off, and look what happens:

Gahh! It’s right there in giant black print, above the fold on the front page! I can’t imagine the Seattle Times’ real estate advertisers feeling too great about this…

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Wait a minute… I thought only California had lots of people that took out dangerous loans, and are now at risk of foreclosure.

Counselors overwhelmed with calls from desperate homeowners

Housing advocates and lending counselors say they’re being overwhelmed with calls for help from desperate Seattle-area homeowners, many on the brink of foreclosure.
…
As interest rates reset, thousands of Seattle-area homeowners are facing skyrocketing mortgage payments – payments many people just can’t afford.

Hmm…

(Linda Byron, KING 5 News, 08.28.2008)

Are you a first-time reader that saw me (Tim Ellis) on KING 5 Evening Magazine this evening? If so, welcome to Seattle Bubble.

First let me say that while I am flattered that John Curley and Jim Dever referred to me as a “real estate guru,” that is not a title that I have ever or would ever give myself. As I said in the segment, “I’m just a guy doing all this research, and putting it out there for you to see as well.” I hope that you find this resource to be of use.

Seattle Bubble is the Seattle area’s top resource for news, analysis, commentary, and community discussion on the local real estate market. We focus on productive discussion, improving understanding, and dispelling myths.

Please take a moment to look around the site. Drop by the About Page for a brief summary of what we do.

Here are some recent stories that summarize what’s going on in today’s real estate market around Seattle:

• Case-Shiller: Seattle Prices Rewound to Summer ‘06
  This link shows that despite John Curley’s apparent skepticism about falling home prices in Seattle, the best available index indicates that as of February, prices have fallen back to levels last seen in July 2006.
• NWMLS: Anybody seen my spring mojo? I can’t find it.
• March Neighborhood Months of Supply Update
• Puget Sound Counties March NWMLS Update

For anyone that is interested but didn’t catch Evening Magazine tonight, you can view the video on the KING 5 website, or right here (if you don’t mind YouTube’s lousy quality).

Update: Sweet, you can view a much higher-quality version on YouTube itself (but I can’t embed it).

Just a quick note to let you know that King 5 Evening Magazine will be airing a series of segments this week under the banner “Real Estate ‘08,” which as you can guess, are all about the local real estate market. You can catch the segments on their website, or on TV from 7:00 to 7:30. Yesterday’s stories looked at building perks to try to lure you into condos (with a guest appearance from my least-favorite SPU profs), Zillow’s “Make Me Move” feature, and (I wish I were making this up), a “house-selling spiritualist.”

One of the segments later this week will feature me gabbing with co-host Jim Dever about Seattle Bubble and the local market. I’ll probably post that particular segment on here once it airs.

P.S. (If the King 5 website tries to get you to register to view any of the above links, just remove the “http://www.king5.com/sharedcontent/membership/join.jsp?fw=” part from the address bar and try again.)

Update: I’ll be on tomorrow night. In the promo after tonight’s show they plugged my segment with the line “he’s the Seattle Real Estate guru who doesn’t even own a house!” That’s amusing to me, because I have never, nor would I ever refer to myself as a “real estate guru.”

I would have posted the reporting roundup on Saturday, but I was out of town for the weekend, and my only Internet access was dial-up (*shudder*). The tone of this month’s reporting isn’t too much different from last month, except that we’ve got a small dose of optimism thanks to a slight spring improvement. Of course, we’ve got still more bottom-calling as well, so that’s fun.

Also, Seattle Bubble gets yet another mention on TV.

Chris Ingalls, KING 5 News: A tale of two first-time Seattle home buyers

Real estate agents say that now is the time to buy in Seattle, especially for first-time home buyers.

But others say the latest data on home sales in the region suggests home prices could fall even more.
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A recent report on the month of March says that home prices are stable — not dropping — and that means maybe they’ve hit the bottom.

The Northwest Multiple Listing Service, sponsored by the realty industry, says housing prices have stabilized for six months — a signal of the end for falling home prices.
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But [potential first-time homebuyer Brendon] Duran isn’t convinced that the price drop is over.

“I think we’re content to wait and see what happens,” he said.

Analysts outside the real estate industry aren’t either.

Seattle Bubble, a real estate blog site, uses multiple listing service data to conclude the stabilization in home prices now is seasonal and that “now is not a good time to buy a home in Seattle.”

You can watch video of this report here. It would seem that Seattle Bubble is becoming a go-to source for King 5 News on the local real estate market. It’s good to see at least one news outlet getting quotes from someone other than real estate insiders. Thanks, King 5!

Click below for the rest of this month’s reporting.

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King 5 News ran a great little piece yesterday that demonstrates just how ridiculous it is to call falling home prices “doom and gloom.”

The flat real estate market has been a source of concern for many.

But for some charities like Habitat for Humanity, it’s providing a long awaited opportunity to advance their cause.

After years of being priced out of the market, Habitat for Humanity closed on the purchase of 4 and a half acres in Renton on Monday.

It’s not much to look at now, but in due time 41 new town homes will be built there.
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“We’re hoping if there is a silver lining in this downturn in the real estate market, that maybe it is for low income families to be able to afford to buy homes,” [Habitat for Humanity spokesman Tom] Granger said.

Last month Cory Lynn Berrios and her family moved into a new townhouse which she and her husband were able to help build and buy thanks to Habitat for Humanity of east King County.

“Silver lining?” Mr. Granger, affordability is the main event. And not just affordability for charities building cheap townhomes for low-income families. How about middle-class, responsible people that have been priced out of the market thanks to the housing bubble? How about modest single-family homes that shot up to $500,000 or more, driven by the mass hysteria of a pyramid scheme, that are now heading back down to earth?

This housing downturn would probably be better described as a return to housing market sanity, which I contend is good for society as a whole.

(Deborah Feldman, KING 5 News, 04.01.2008)