Seattle Bubble Forum Archive

I don't think this has been posted yet, but housing appreciation in Pierce Co has slowed to a crawl. The YOY increase in median price for SFH and condos in Pierce for the month of June was a mediocre 0.82%. This is a rapid, total collapse. For instance, YOY appreciation in Feb, only a few months ago, was 12.49%. See the figure here:



From what I understand, Pierce Co has some of the highest rates of subprime, Alt-A, and other exotic financing. Perhaps the meltdown of such financing has contributed to this collapse?

Anyway, I'll keep an eye on this market to see if this is either a temporary hiccup or a true bubble popping...

Yowsers!!!

The obvious explanation why we haven't heard about this is that 0.82 is still strong appreciation. No reason to talk about continuation of the norm AKA every appreciating housing prices. Bo-Ya

Besides, it's Tacoma. There aren't any pink ponies in Tacoma.

The wave of price reductions and foreclosures may roll across the Northwest, but it will be stopped, as if by a magic force field, two miles from the Microsoft campus.

Tim's pointer to the recap from Jun 06 inspired me to go through all the old recaps to see just how the market in Pierce Co has changed over the last couple of years. Let's just say it's not pretty:



These are YOY % change in median price for SFH+Condos in Pierce County.

And here are the data with SFH and Condos separate:




The condo data are all over the place because there are only a few dozen condos sold in Pierce County per month, and so there is a lot more jitter in the median value.

Anyway, these Figs show that the party is over in Pierce Co. In fact, Pierce had a higher YOY % change in one month (May 05:23.4%) than was seen in King Co (Oct 05: 20.3%) over the last 5 years. Moral of the story is that the higher you fly the farther you have to fall...