By The Tim on August 11th, 2009 at 1:04 PM · 44 Comments
Interesting article over on Crosscut today: Why Seattle won’t grow as fast as planners say
If Seattle’s current estimated population is 602,000 and we add the hypothetical 180,000 and you get 782,000 people by 2040 — considerably short of the 1.2 million that some claim are on the way.
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The assumption is that right now, without changing or increasing any zoning at all, Seattle has the capacity to provide housing for up to 800,000 people without changing the rules to make buildings more dense like the proposed multifamily update or up zoning single family neighborhoods. Theoretically the capacity is already there.
Whichever means of calculating you use, it turns out we aren’t anywhere near capacity.
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According to Seattle’s own numbers from January 2005 through March of 2009, over 28,000 housing units have been added to Seattle’s stock either built (16,504 units) or permitted and at various stages of construction (11,721 units). Seattle in just 51 months has reached 60 percent of its 20-year target. At this rate we’ll add over 110,000 units under current zoning by 2024, over twice the rate needed to fulfill our targets.
It should be noted that this article is focusing on Seattle proper, not the entire metro area. That being said, the author points out some interesting facts that would seem to point to continued downward pressure on home prices, even in the “close in” in-city neighborhoods.
It is also worth mentioning that I made similar points back in 2007 that apply on a county-wide basis.
Categories: News
Tags: Crosscut, growth_management, population, predictions, Seattle, supply
By The Tim on April 14th, 2009 at 9:53 AM · 9 Comments
According to a pair of reports released yesterday, the real estate slowdown is still a serious drag on state and local revenues, thanks to significant sagging in real estate excise tax collections.
From the latest state revenue collection report (pdf):
Collections [for the March 11, 2009 – April 10, 2009 collection period] were $8.7 million (17.8%) below the March forecast.
Most of the forecast variance was in the real estate excise tax (REET), which came in $7.9 million (29.4%) below the forecast.
March REET taxable activity reported by the counties is down 47.5% year-over-year.
Meanwhile, the city of Seattle announced a series of cuts (pdf) to attempt to close the rather large budget hole created by flagging excise tax collections. The kicker is on page 8:
If I’m interpreting this document correctly, that’s an over $20 million budget shortfall—almost 30%—entirely due to real estate excise taxes (REET). Ouch.
The good news is now that home prices are approaching reasonable levels again, sales volume is likely to pick up, which will bring excise tax collections up as well.
Hat Tips to West Seattle Blog and The Olympian’s Politics Blog.
Categories: News
Tags: Olympia, Seattle, tax revenues
I have a couple of RSS feeds from real estate sites that I use to monitor listings that might be of interest to me. They are targeted at a couple of neighborhoods, and focused on homes that are likely to be mid-century modern. Over the past couple of weeks, I had noted that the volume of new listings had really dropped off. I mean, there was almost no activity. I attributed it to the market slowing down – figured it was just a late summer phenomenon.
Then I checked them this morning, and was surprised to find five or six new listings on each. What was going on? So I headed over to Redfin to check to see what Seattle had in the way of new listings overall (side note: what did we ever do before Redfin!?). What I found there was pretty interesting:
- There were 108 new listings in Seattle yesterday, versus 123 in the last three days and 350 in the last week. The rate of new listings was double the average of the last three, seven, or fourteen day period!
- I figured this might be some sort of statistical anomaly – so I checked Bellevue too. It looks almost exactly the same:
Checked Tacoma too. Same story:
I’m not sure what might be going on. I thought that listings were more likely to come on to market early in the month, not late in the month – but they seem to have exploded on the last day of the month. I see three possible explanations:
- It’s normal. The drop off just reflects the fact that homes sold. (I don’t personally think this makes sense. Homes aren’t selling all that quickly, and I don’t think it would explain the big difference between the one and 3 day average)
- There was some sort of glitch in the feed from NWMLS and new listings didn’t get posted for a couple days
- What I initially surmised: that sellers had been waiting to see what happened with the Housing Recovery Bill and decided that since it was signed, it was a great time to jump back into the market.
What say ye? Any other perspectives?
Categories: Statistics
Tags: Bellevue, Inventory Surge, Redfin, Seattle, Tacoma
