Seattle Bubble

There has been some great stuff coming out of our Seattle-area “alternative” real estate businesses Redfin and Zillow this week that deserve to be mentioned.
First up, Redfin came out with a great paper called Seven Tactics for Real Estate Bargaining. Check out their blog post announcing the study here. They analyzed recent sales [...]

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All right, after a bit of a technical glitch yesterday, things seem to be back to normal today, so it’s time for NWMLS July statistics.
Here’s the NWMLS press release: July’s Pending Home Sales Dip Slightly From June, Prices Edge Up.
Here is your summary along with the usual graphs and other updates.
Here’s your King County SFH [...]

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Here’s an interesting way to look at the Case-Shiller data: comparing the actual index values to theoretical values as they would look if they grew at a steady rate year-over-year.

The data starts in 1990 because that is the first year that the Case-Shiller index began tracking Seattle. 1990 may not be the best year [...]

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The point has been made many times here that exposure to downturns needs to be viewed in the context of how much a market rose during the boom.  I thought it would be interesting to test this by comparing the total percentage gain during the boom years to the total percentage drop from peak to [...]

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Here’s our monthly look at Seattle’s price tiers from Case-Shiller. Remember that Case-Shiller’s “Seattle” data is based on single-family home repeat sales in King, Pierce, and Snohomish counties.
Now here come the graphs. First up is the straight graph of the index from January 2000 through May 2008.

Click to enlarge
As you can see, April’s [...]

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Last month’s Case-Shiller data showed a slight increase in prices month to month, possibly signaling the end of the bust for Seattle. Or not. This month’s Case-Shiller Home Price Index would seem to indicate that the bust is not over yet.
Down 0.5% April to May.
Down 6.3% YOY.
Last year prices rose 0.95% from April [...]

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