The real estate craze in Seattle apparently isn’t limited to just the housing market. Even downtown buildings are being bought for far more than it seems they should be worth. The thunderstorm of investment in Seattle real estate kept rumbling as a Texas real-estate investment firm paid $23.6 million yesterday for the 12-story First &…
Year: 2005
Seattle Bubbles Over, All the Way to Olympia
It would seem that Seattle’s red-hot bubble-market is bleeding over into the less-populous portions of the Puget Sound region, even as far down as Olympia. Every month, the median sales price of Thurston County homes sets a record. The record set in June was $228,500 Far lower than the insane average in King County, but…
Seattle Times’ Silly "Logic" Mocked Further
It would seem that there’s at least one person out there that agrees with my analysis of the recent Seattle Times article, “Housing market sizzles, shows no sign of bubble.” That person would be Bill Fleckenstein, who writes: That oxymoronic headline sets the tone for what follows — a very creative, though completely false, bit…
Seattle Not in a Bubble?
An article in the Seattle Times titled Housing market sizzles, shows no sign of bubble would perhaps have more appropriately been titled “Housing bubble sizzles, shows no sign of popping,” in my opinion. Despite conjecture that the local housing market is a high-priced bubble ready to burst, key signs of weakening are nowhere to be…
Seattle Rides High on Interest-Only Loans
It seems that in the Seattle area, a lot of people are confident that there’s not a bubble, as evidenced by the ridiculous loans that they’re taking out: …38 percent of recent home mortgages in the Seattle-Bellevue- Everett market…were interest-only loans. 38 percent for the first three months of 2005, up from 37 percent for…