My coworker that is selling his Northgate-area house still hasn’t had any luck. In fact, the home that he originally listed at ~$475,000, then dropped to ~$450,000, has had the price reduced again to ~$425,000. Furthermore, it now shows up as a "new listing," listed in the past seven days. Hmm, interesting.
Also, I just had the pleasure to listen in on a conversation between a few coworkers regarding housing appreciation around Seattle. For reference, these are generally intelligent people (engineers) that do not have any particular "in" regarding real estate. Here are some of the quotes that I was quick enough to type:
"I think in some areas (around the country), the bubble is popping, but I don’t think you’re going to see a lot of it around here (Seattle area)."
"Microsoft is here forever."
"There’s nowhere else to build."
To coworker: "I could see your neighborhood leveling off…maybe. But probably not."
"I think we’re not going to see the kind of gains we’ve seen over the last two years… but I don’t think we’re going to go down in price. … I think mine (neighborhood) is going to continue to go up."
It is interesting to hear what average people think about whether there’s a bubble or not. Perhaps in the future I can "seed" some conversations to get a regular pulse on general real estate sentiment.