Pssst...wanna buy part of my yard?

Comments

• thepull

  February 2009

  Yeah..good luck to those people with that. :shock:
• Mama

  February 2009

  LOL, I wonder if they'll put restrictions on the use of land. I was always joking with my spouse that we should buy 3000sq feet with a view and a good school system and plop a cheapo trailer. Total price would probably equal that of a small-med house in bad areas of the city..Seattle probably doesn't even get hot enough for the toxic fumes to kill us.
  
  But I do wonder if these folks would have "criteria" for the buyers since someone will be practically moving in their back yard
• Angie

  February 2009

  Um, where have you guys been for the last, oh, 90 years? This is nothing new.
  
  Go for a drive in any established in-city neighborhood, look carefully at the pattern of houses' ages, and it's usually pretty easy to pick up the decade when infill development put houses in what had previously been big yards.
  
  Last night I was in Madrona picking up Girl Scout cookies (you all support your local Girl Scouts--they'll be selling in front of grocery stores, etc, for the next few weekends) and on our friends' block there was a clear pattern of big '20s vintage houses next to smaller, midcentury houses.
  
  Same thing all over the place here in Columbia City and it seems like almost every big yard that was left got "infilled" in the last ten years. I watched probably a dozen infill houses go up within half a mile of my house in the last decade.
• EconE

  February 2009

  I think that Seattle's "infill" kills off neighborhoods. The zoning here is a bit odd also where you'll have a large house next to a small house behind a condo with townhomes across the street.
• kfhoz

  February 2009

  Here is a Kennydale lot also being split, and an outbuilding has to be demolished to do it. The old existing house has a bit of a view, but that will be history if the split-off lot gets a big fill-to-lot-line "cracker box" built next to it.
  http://www.redfin.com/search#lat=47.520 ... omLevel=15
  
  I wonder how the Case-Schiller numbers handle these, as the previous sales price included a yard. Maybe it is infrequent enough so they can statistically ignore it?
• The_Tim

  February 2009

  kfhoz wrote:

  I wonder how the Case-Schiller numbers handle these, as the previous sales price included a yard. Maybe it is infrequent enough so they can statistically ignore it?

  The reason the Case-Shiller stats take so long to be released is that they go in and verify that there have not been any material changes to the property between the sale pairs. So when a lot is split like this, it would be excluded from the CS HPI.
• rose-colored-coolaid

  February 2009

  The Tim wrote:

  kfhoz wrote:

  I wonder how the Case-Schiller numbers handle these, as the previous sales price included a yard. Maybe it is infrequent enough so they can statistically ignore it?

  The reason the Case-Shiller stats take so long to be released is that they go in and verify that there have not been any material changes to the property between the sale pairs. So when a lot is split like this, it would be excluded from the CS HPI.

  
  Shhh, don't let Kary know CS adds value to the original numbers. He seems convinced the CS index is calculated in something like the following manner -
  
  1) Take NAR numbers.
  2) Run through computer to scramble them.
  3) Sit on them for 3 months until your new corrupt values are entirely irrelevant.
  4) ???
  5) Profit!