Ever since I started (so long ago, I know) this blog I’ve been wondering—what does it take to get “mainstream” reporters in Seattle to sit up and realize that housing has gotten out of control around here? Well it looks like I finally got my answer. For Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat, it takes a big round number like $400,000 to finally get his attention.
THOMAS JAMES HURST / THE SEATTLE TIMESMy first house, which I bought in Seattle back in 1995, seemed impossibly expensive at the time.
…
The price? $98,000.This month, the median Seattle home price passed $400,000. It got me wondering: What does that number mean? What if I were 30 today, and just setting out to tap my roots into Seattle? Would I be able to?
Adjusted for inflation, $98,000 in 1995 is about $130,000 today. So I began a search for the $130,000 Seattle house — the same house I barely afforded eleven years ago.
I found it. There was only one. It’s shown in the photograph above.
It’s no charming bungalow, that’s for sure. The city has barred anyone from entering the property.
What’s left of the burned-out shell sits on a car-strewn lot in one of the Seattle area’s most crime-ridden neighborhoods, near Roxbury in White Center.
It sold recently for $125,500, making it the cheapest house with a Seattle address in at least a year.
“We had six or seven offers,” recalls Ken Knoke, the agent who sold it for Prudential Northwest Realty. “They were buying it for the dirt. You can’t usually get dirt around here for that price.”
He added that my search for anything resembling 1995 Seattle, even adjusted for inflation, was futile. No way I’d find even a mobile home parked on a postage-stamp patch for $130,000.
He was right. A dingy, single-wide manufactured home in Boulevard Park with no street frontage goes for $160,000. A double-wide near the charred house is $177,000.
There is a three-bedroom for $125,000 on the plateau east of Renton. But it comes with a warning: “Please stay out! This home is unsafe to enter. Call agent for help.”
Welcome to reality, Mr. Westneat. For once we are on the same page. First time buyers have been priced out for a while now. Of course the problem is, many of them don’t realize that they’re priced out, and happily take on “exotic,” “creative,” or as I like to call it, “suicidal” financing. How someone making $50,000 is able to convince themselves that a “starter house” is worth $300,000 I’ll never understand.
(Danny Westneat, Seattle Times, 04.16.2006)