Seattle Bubble

ActiveRain, a site that describes itself as “a free online community for real estate professionals designed to help them promote and grow their business,” has launched a new site called Localism. Localism describes itself as the “world’s most complete neighborpedia,” and the front page invites users to “Go Hyper Local!”

It is the latest entrant into what seems to be an already over-served online market. For people that want so-called “hyper local” content, there are already a ton of choices out there including sites like Yelp, StreetAdvisor, and outside.in. Also, because it’s so trivially simple to set up a free blog, many neighborhoods have dedicated blogs that are just a simple Google search away.

John Cook put out a pair of stories about Localism today, one on the P-I and one on his P-I blog. Here’s a brief excerpt:

Of course, since real estate professionals are doing most of the writing there will also be a fair share of stories about buying and selling homes.

Initially, the site — segmented into various communities by state, county, city and neighborhood — will be authored by some of the 90,000 real estate professionals on ActiveRain. But over time, ActiveRain founder Jonathan Washburn said it plans to open the platform to everyone. He also envisions people creating new online communities around schools, subdivisions or churches.

Since John Cook covered the basics of Localism’s press release in his stories, I thought I’d take a different approach. Let’s compare Localism to what I think is their toughest competition: local blogs. For this contest, I picked three (update: four) Seattle-area neighborhoods: two three are currently served by local blogs, and one is not. Let’s see how Localism compares…

[Read more →]

Here’s the latest update on months of supply, or “absorption rates” for the 30 NWMLS areas in King County. For an explanation of what months of supply means, please refer to the original neighborhood MOS breakdown post.

Remember: Over 6 MOS is a buyer’s market, which gives buyers more negotiating power, but doesn’t mean homes are priced attractively for buyers or that it’s a good time to buy. Before this year, the longest that King County as a whole has sustained a MOS above 6 was 4-5 months in the winter of 1994-1995. May MOS for King County came in at 6.97 (up 0.76 points from April), bringing the current run to nine months.

In the graphs below, you’re looking at the MOS for the “Res Only” data from the NWMLS King County Breakout pdfs for the ten-month period of July 2007 through May 2008. The bar graph is centered vertically on 6.0 MOS, so that it is easier to visually tell the difference between a seller’s and buyer’s market (i.e. - shorter bars mean a more balanced market). Each graph again has the same scale on the vertical axis and has the King County aggregate figure plotted in red, so they can be easily compared.

Unfortunately I haven’t yet gotten the fancy color-coded maps ready, but I did make some improvements to the enhanced area map, which can now be found on this page. My goal is to have interactive color-coded maps for next month’s neighborhood update post.

[Read more →]

Here’s the latest update on months of supply, or “absorption rates” for the 30 NWMLS areas in King County. For an explanation of what months of supply means, please refer to the original neighborhood MOS breakdown post.

Remember: Over 6 MOS is a buyer’s market, which gives buyers more negotiating power, but doesn’t mean homes are priced attractively for buyers or that it’s a good time to buy. Before this year, the longest that King County as a whole has sustained a MOS above 6 was 4-5 months in the winter of 1994-1995. April MOS for King County came in at 6.21 (up slightly from March), bringing the current run to eight months. In seven of the last eight years, March has been the low point for MOS (2003 was the exception, when MOS bottomed in July). It seems unlikely that the county-wide MOS will drop back below six this year.

In the graphs below, you’re looking at the MOS for the “Res Only” data from the NWMLS King County Breakout pdfs for the nine-month period of July 2007 through March 2008. The bar graph is centered vertically on 6.0 MOS, so that it is easier to visually tell the difference between a seller’s and buyer’s market (i.e. - shorter bars mean a more balanced market). Each graph again has the same scale on the vertical axis and has the King County aggregate figure plotted in red, so they can be easily compared.

[Read more →]

I wonder if Aubrey Cohen is getting story ideas from reading Seattle Bubble? In the big front page feature article in today’s P-I, Aubrey takes a look at something a that a few home seekers commenting here have talked about: the continued competition for homes in a handful of certain price ranges and neighborhoods.

Erin and Andy Mathias started looking for a new house around the start of the year on the north side of Seattle because it was convenient to work, shopping, parks and other amenities.

They found a good selection, but at least as much competition for anything decent in their price range, up to $350,000.

“We would see a listing the day it came out, try and see the house either that day or the following day, have our Realtor check into it and there were already multiple offers on the table,” Erin Mathias said. “It became a little frustrating after a while.”

Although the Seattle-area real estate market has slowed, buyers still don’t have the advantage over sellers in such areas as North Seattle, West Seattle, Capitol Hill, Lake Forest Park and East Bellevue.

This phenomenon can be seen in the stories from home-seeking commenters here, as well as in our monthly neighborhood months of supply updates.

The article mostly focuses on the few areas around Seattle where sellers still have the slight upper hand, but it does admit that this has become the exception rather than the rule.

Some homes still are selling above asking price with multiple offers, without contingencies for financing or inspection. But those with less-ideal prices and conditions are sitting much longer than they would have a year ago, even in popular neighborhoods.

Despite their relative strength, North Seattle neighborhood inventories over the past seven months have doubled, on average, from the same months a year earlier.

If that sounds familiar, it might be because I said the same exact thing two weeks ago in the March Neighborhood Months of Supply Update. Of course, I didn’t have a spiffy color-coded map to illustrate my point. But don’t worry, we will soon.

(Aubrey Cohen, Seattle P-I, 05.01.2008)

Here’s the latest update on months of supply, or “absorption rates” for the 30 NWMLS areas in King County. For an explanation of what months of supply means, please refer to the original neighborhood MOS breakdown post.

Remember our metric: less than 6 MOS is a sellers market and above 6 is a buyer’s market, meaning that buyers have better negotiating power, not that homes are necessarily priced attractively for buyers. Before this year, the longest that King County as a whole has sustained a MOS above 6 was 4-5 months in the winter of 1994-1995. March MOS for King County came in at 6.19 (slightly higher than February), bringing the current run to seven months.

In the graphs below, you’re looking at the MOS for the “Res Only” data from the NWMLS King County Breakout pdfs for the nine-month period of July 2007 through March 2008. The bar graph is centered vertically on 6.0 MOS, so that it is easier to visually tell the difference between a seller’s and buyer’s market (i.e. - shorter bars mean a more balanced market). Each graph again has the same scale on the vertical axis and has the King County aggregate figure plotted in red, so they can be easily compared.

[Read more →]

I was going to spread out the stats posts a bit, but since people have been asking for months of supply (a.k.a. “absorption rate”) data after yesterday’s inventory post, I’m posting it today. For an explanation of what months of supply means, please refer to the original neighborhood MOS breakdown post.

Keep in mind that we are considering below 6 MOS to be a sellers market and above 6 as a buyer’s market. Based on the sketchy pre-2000 data we have available, the longest that King County as a whole has sustained a MOS above 6 was 4-5 months in the winter of 1994-1995. With February’s 6.14 MOS, the current run is up to six months.

In the graphs below, you’re looking at the MOS for the “Res Only” data from the NWMLS King County Breakout pdfs for July 2007 through February 2008. The bar graph is centered vertically on 6.0 MOS, so that it is easier to visually tell the difference between a seller’s and buyer’s market (i.e. - shorter bars mean a more balanced market). Each graph again has the same scale on the vertical axis and has the King County aggregate figure plotted in red, so they can be easily compared.

[Read more →]