by sniglet » Wed Apr 02, 2008 8:19 am
I am hearing more and more tales of woe from friends and acquaintances in the Bellevue area these days. One of my wife's friends was just lamenting how her husband is really struggling as a car/home insurance salesman since business has fallen off like a rock (fewer new cars, or home sales, to drive insurance business). Her hair-dresser, who started working part-time as a mortgage broker a year and a half ago, has now become gloomy, predicting that local housing is going to be bad for at last a year (and this lady was on top of the world as early as fall 2007).
My wife has even over-heard women at community center play time talk about how they are going to rent for a while because prices are falling. Even more of a shock, some of my wife's friends are now telling her that we are "smart" to be renting.
This is such a sea change from just a few months ago. My wife has felt SO much peer pressure to buy a house, with her friends bragging about their equity gains, etc, that it was really becoming difficult to even hang out with them anymore.
By the way, our home-owner friend who was going to deliver pizza to supplement his day job (to keep up with debt and rising living expenses) wound up getting his second job at Starbucks and now has barely any time to see the family anymore. Boy, it's great we have so many jobs in the Seattle area: everyone needs two.
Has anyone else noticed a change in local attitudes?