By The Tim on August 12th, 2009 at 8:41 AM · 88 Comments
When I started Seattle Bubble just over four years ago in August 2005, there were many sources for local real estate news—The Seattle Times, The Seattle P-I, Rain City Guide, etc… I started this site not due to a lack of news sources, but due to what I felt was a lack of consumer-oriented local real estate news. All of the existing sources were heavy on the industry cheerleading and light on actual investigation and digging into the numbers.
Lately the local real estate news scene has been changing quite a bit…
Back in November of last year the Seattle Times’ dedicated real estate reporter Elizabeth Rhodes was voluntarily downsized. Yesterday SeattlePI.com real estate reporter Aubrey Cohen announced that he is moving to the aerospace beat, with no mention of anyone moving into the dedicated real estate position.
Over at the Times, business reporter Eric Pryne has been doing a good job with the occasional real estate story, and Aubrey says that he will “continue to help guide” the real estate reporting at the P-I. I don’t doubt that both news outlets will continue to cover real estate issues, but neither seems to have a dedicated reporter for the subject.
Meanwhile, the P-I “reader blog” Seattle Real Estate Professionals is all but dead, averaging about one post every other week. Rain City Guide has evolved itself into some sort of real estate search / general industry discussion site with Seattle-specific stories having become quite rare.
It would seem that after four years, Seattle Bubble is now Seattle’s only source for dedicated local real estate reporting.
With that in mind, I’d like to open up a conversation with you, the readers, about what you would like to get out of the local real estate reporting provided here at Seattle Bubble. Rather than kicking back and using the lack of competition as an excuse to be lazy, I’d prefer to take this opportunity to improve the site even more.
So what would you like to get out of Seattle Bubble? More personal interest stories? More interactive maps and interactive charts? Additional community-driven features? Coverage of specific neighborhood issues? Let’s hear your ideas.
Categories: Features
Tags: Rain City Guide, real_estate_professionals, Seattle_PI, Seattle_Times
By The Tim on August 5th, 2009 at 10:17 AM · 7 Comments
Couple of interesting developments in local real estate search this week.
First up, local discount brokerage Findwell (a Seattle Bubble advertiser) announced today that they are partnering with Estately to provide a more user-friendly search experience. Sounds like it should be a good match for both parties. A good search tool was the one (big) thing that the Findwell site lacked in its competition with Redfin. I think they could attract more people to use it if they put it more prominently on the front page, but this definitely seems like a step in the right direction to me.
Secondly, Seattle’s all-industry real estate blog continues to evolve beyond its pure blogging roots. Yesterday founder Dustin Luther unveiled a newly polished, more commercial site design as well as their very own home search tool. Personally, their new search feels clunkly to me compared to the offerings that have been available for years from Redfin and Estately. With the real estate search market as saturated as it is (especially here in Seattle), I think Dustin’s got a pretty difficult uphill battle on this one.
So what’s your opinion of the Findwell / Estately partnership and Rain City Guide’s new look and search tool?
Categories: News
Tags: Estately, Findwell, Rain City Guide, real estate search
This weekend’s open thread touched on one example of a bank bidding nearly 25% less than what it was owed for a foreclosed home at the courthouse auction.
Well, our good friend Jillayne Schlicke over at Rain City Guide actually attended a foreclosure auction a week ago, and wrote up an interesting post on this new phenomenon: Why are Banks Setting the Opening Auction Bid Below The Principal Balance?
I attended a foreclosure auction in Bellevue, WA last week to discover if the rumor was true that banks are opening their bids below the amount owed. I received confirmation from three professional investors that yes, the banks have been doing that, it’s no secret, and there seems to be no discernable pattern. It’s not one particular bank or lender, it’s not particular types of property or in any specific area. It appears to be random.
…
Only a few of the trustee sales attracted bidders, and the rest were deeded back to the bank. Out of the 92 active sales, 25 had opening bids below the amount owed to the bank.
Jillayne has also uploaded a series of videos she took at the foreclosure auction to her YouTube page.
Interesting stuff. Anybody have any theories on this? Does this open the door to possibly getting a good deal at a courthouse foreclosure auction?
Categories: News
Tags: auction, foreclosures, Rain City Guide, Schlicke
By The Tim on August 3rd, 2008 at 8:20 PM · 47 Comments
Rain City Guide, Seattle Real Estate Professionals, and Seattle Bubble all get mentions in Aubrey Cohen’s latest piece for the P-I: Debate over real estate goes online
Real estate agent John “Mack” McCoy wasn’t expecting an argument when he started blogging about housing and commenting on other posts and news stories online.
“I started out thinking that people might be interested in what a real estate professional has to say about buying and selling homes,” he said.
“Now, it seems that the audience is (composed) of people who want to tell real estate professionals what they know about buying and selling homes.”
…
“I’m not speaking from the perspective of someone who has something to sell, but rather just a guy that is taking in a ton of information and trying to process it all to make it easier for other people to get beyond the sales pitches and find out what’s really going on,” [Seattle Bubble author Tim] Ellis said.
The article is worth a read, although there’s not really any new information in there for anyone that has been following any of those three sites. I guess the purpose of the article is more to point out the online discussion to folks that tend to just read the newspapers.
Categories: News
Tags: Cohen, Rain City Guide, real_estate_professionals, Seattle_PI
At 4:00 today I’ll be joining Dustin and the Rain City Guide crew for a live podcast sort of thing that they’re calling Rain City Radio.
You can join in on the conversation via chat or call-in by going here, or via the embedded widget on this post (if I did it right). If you can’t listen live, you can listen to the recorded call there later.
Update: That was fun. You should be able to use the widget on this post to listen to the recording. Here are a few of the posts I mentioned in the call:
Categories: Administrative
Tags: radio, Rain City Guide
By The Tim on June 27th, 2008 at 10:08 AM · 51 Comments
Here are a few recent stories that have been covered elsewhere and are worth at least mentioning here.
Latest foreclosure statistics: Seattle P-I, Foreclosures in Seattle higher, but much lower than nation’s
The Seattle area had about twice as many foreclosures in May as it did a year earlier but continued to have a far lower foreclosure rate than the country as a whole, according to new reports.
King and Snohomish counties had a combined 881 trustee-sale notices and bank repossessions in May, one for every 1,219 households, according to RealtyTrac, an Irvine, Calif., company that tracks foreclosures. The area’s rate put it 148th out of 229 metro areas the company ranks.
FHA tries to ride in to the rescue housing bubble (they’re a little late for that). Coverage:
The much-vaunted commercial real estate market is apparently showing signs of weakness as well: Seattle Times, Commercial real estate brokers worry about Seattle buildings
After climbing for years, are office lease rates in downtown Seattle getting ready to turn south?
Some commercial real-estate professionals think so.
…
More than 2 million square feet of new office space — the equivalent of 1 ½ Columbia Centers — will come on the market in greater downtown next year. Almost none of it is pre-leased.
And lastly, Christine Gregoire is taking her turn beating the dead horse that is Countrywide. Where was she when they were busily pumping the housing bubble up with all of these ridiculous loans? Not running for re-election, that’s where. Coverage:
Did I miss any recent stories that should have been included?
(Aubrey Cohen, Seattle P-I, 06.13.2008)
(Elizabeth Rhodes, Seattle Times, 06.13.2008)
(Aubrey Cohen, Seattle P-I, 06.16.2008)
(Eric Pryne, Seattle Times, 06.26.2008)
(Phuong Cat Le, Consumer Smarts (P-I Blog), 06.25.2008)
(Phuong Cat Le, Seattle P-I, 06.26.2008)
(Susan Kelleher, Seattle Times, 06.26.2008)
(Jillayne Schlicke, Rain City Guide, 06.25.2008)
Categories: News
Tags: Cat Le, Cohen, commercial, Countrywide, dead horse, FHA, foreclosures, Gregoire, Kelleher, link_roundup, Pryne, Rain City Guide, Rhodes, Seattle_PI, Seattle_Times
