Seattle Bubble

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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Aubrey Cohen reports on some interesting population growth data just released by the state Office of Financial Management.
…difficulty selling homes elsewhere has slowed population growth here over the past year, according to new estimates from the state Office of Financial Management.
Seattle and King County grew 1.1 percent and 1.2 percent, respectively, between April 1, 2007, [...]

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Time again already for another inbox-clearing story roundup.
First up, the Seattle City Council is apparently in a development-regulating mood lately. Not only are they tackling the ugly townhome issue, now they’re going after “megahomes” as well.
After years of complaints about suburban-sized homes that devour lawns and encroach on neighbors, the Seattle City Council plans [...]

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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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Yesterday I predicted that the local reporting would focus on the paltry month-to-month median price increase, backed up by a plethora of quotes from peppy real estate agents. Today’s reporting, for the most part, does not disappoint.
I’m starting to get the impression as I read some of these articles that the reporters are just [...]

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