Seattle Bubble

Even when we have direct access to the hard facts of the local real estate market, it’s still fun to see what kind of spin the local papers put into their report of the data. So, it is time yet again to continue our monthly tradition of rounding up all the local “mainstream” articles [...]

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Foreclosures are still on the rise in Washington State and in the Seattle area, according to the Seattle Times.
Washington state foreclosure filings were up 69 percent last month compared with the previous June and up almost 10 percent from May, as the mortgage meltdown continues despite government and private efforts to help struggling homeowners.
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There were [...]

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This month’s theme is “let’s scare fence-sitters by telling them that rising interest rates will eliminate any savings from falling home prices.” Let’s see how well our local papers do at driving this point home.
Read on for the this month’s roundup…

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I realized we have beat the subject to death with a pair of posts and this week’s poll, but I had to at least point out a Rhodes piece in today’s Seattle Times on the issue of gas prices and home buying patterns: Will gas prices drive homebuyers away from suburbs?
The article starts off with [...]

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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 [...]

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Before we begin May’s reporting roundup, let’s have a little review of the year so far.
January
Barb Lamoureux, owner and broker with Lamoureux Real Estate in Everett, said the typical slow December market is over. She’s seen signs the market is picking up, including a significant increase in open house traffic and even some multiple offers [...]

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