Seattle Bubble Forum Archive

Seattle, Washington, is a diverse city with a healthy -- maybe even booming -- 2007 real estate market.

Local experts are reporting, "The urban condo market is hot," with condo prices rising faster than single family homes -- a first. "Inventory can not keep up with demand."

The median sales price for King County is $429,000, with the number of pending sales up a whopping 31 percent in February of this year. Median prices are up 9 percent from a year ago.

Will demand continue? Studies indicate that the Seattle area should expect a surge in population of 1.2 million residents in the next 10 to 20 years!

Shug, is that projected population surge really such good news? Come down to LA for a visit and check out the traffic, which has become increasinly unbearable. It took me 2 hours to get from the Palisades to Beverly Hills last week, not during rush hour. When I was a kid, this trip would've taken 15-20 minutes.

Industry website "reports" that unnamed local experts say urban condo demand > inventory, plus unspecified studies show big pop. growth. Both facts unsupported by website, and contradict hard data. Another helpful post.

Oh, but this can't be good:

Some of the markets ZipRealty covers suffered far bigger inventory expansions than the total jump. Los Angeles reported a 39.7 percent leap since April of 2006, Miami climbed 53.9 percent and Seattle soared 63.2 percent.

Soared? How'd that happen? I thought this market was bulletproof.

Just wondering if anyone has checked the buliding/construction permit issuance/applications lately. I was prompted partly by the recent PI article that mentioned the increased number of new apartment buildings coming online in the next 18 months. The other part was my building in Greenwood was just sold, and you guessed it, I will be a condo conversion casualty by September.

My analysis of the DPD permit applications/approvals from 4/1/05 to the present don't bear out the optimism. I saw two applications for MR, or HR zoned permits on the North End (Queen Anne - Magnolia). In fact, at least 80 percent of the permits were L1 to L4 (townhouses).

NO WAY I will pay (or can afford) what will likely be a asking price of 300K + for my 1 bedroom, 500 sf. I saw the writing on the wall when the less attractive building across the street got converted on the cheap a few months ago, but the prices were around that mark. I looked at the Fini Condos at their "VIP" pre-sale, and was shocked at the investor feeding frenzy, and the 100K price rise across the board in the month between the listing in Seattle Metropolitan, and their published. All the "prime" units were sold in the first hour! We are talking $375-425K folks, in Phinney Ridge!

Needless to say, I am being gentrified-out, again. Last time was in 2000 in Loyal Hights.

So were are all the supposed apartments being built? A few in West Seattle, and some on the South End. Even so, I don't see the numbers quoted in the PI being borne out by the permit data. Did I miss something?

Who is going to move to Phinney Ridge? Downtown only supports so many high 5-figure or higher jobs, and the commute across 520 from the Eastside is possible but pretty un-appetizing. Mass transit options to/from that neighborhood are fairly limited.