Seattle Bubble Forum Archive

Been tracking properties on the East side (been tracking mainly redmond) since mid 2007. What a tremendous change. There have been some tricks on the part of sellers to make price reductions magically reappear as new listings on redfin... but here are a few examples:

A listing was at 549K now down to 499K
Have seen 3-4 listings in the same area dropping from 600s to 570s
And there are so many examples in the Redmond Ridge development its just a joke.

One thing is sure, at these prices (all these sellers are still looking at around 100K increases from 2006) no one is going to buy. Its been a long time but finally price declines have hit the "impregnable" east side.

With all these news about bailouts...I personally would try to hold on for as long as I can. Eastside is rough, but still holding on.

A large fancy Kirkland house was bought in 2005 for $725K. Listed in February or so of this year for $810K. Sold in about two weeks, so I figured some profit was made, or at least not a loss. Nope, it sold for $685K.

I think a large chunk of the money--hundreds of billions--is just plain wasted, like for buildings that are so shoddily constructed (even with huge cost overruns) that they are unusable. The part that benefits soldiers & companies & their employees does give a short-term boost to the economy, but in the long run borrowing a lot of money, and giving it to people who return back goods & services having no value, is disastrous. (If any country could prosper in the long run by simply borrowing money & spending it willy nilly, we'd all have yachts.) A prudent investor would not buy into that situation by buying US debt. Instead the investor would sell their US holdings to a greater fool, which is what seems to be happening en masse.

China got a short-term boost to their economy too when Chairman Mao exhorted all citizens to melt their steel utensils to increase the country's metal production. But people were so busy melting their pots & pans that they had no time to plant & harvest crops, and millions died in the ensuing famine.

I like how Ted Turner called the Iraqi insurgents "patriots" and said the war is nothing more than a US invasion. History shows that it is very difficult to subjugate a people. As Turner pointed out, the US spends more on its military than 190 other countries combined, yet we're getting our butts kicked by ordinary Iraqis spending a few hundred dollars per roadside bomb. We couldn't enslave the Vietnamese either, even though back then we had no qualms about intentionally killing civilians by the thousands daily. Iraq may well be the straw that breaks our nation.

To get back on topic, it would be good for me if a US financial collapse caused or helped Eastside house prices to plummet, as long I can manage to hold onto my cash. I was encouraged by my visit to the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park in Pioneer Square, where it is noted that the 1893 nationwide financial panic caused Seattle land values to drop 90%. (But banks folded too, and therein lies the dilemma. Can't trust the FDIC.)