Here it comes… with the housing market in Olympia beginning to experience more signs of a slowdown than anywhere else in the Puget Sound, it’s time to bring out the excuses. The order of the day? Gas prices.
Thurston County’s real estate market has been one of the state’s hottest because median prices here are lower than in Pierce and King counties. This has lured many buyers to South Sound, but it increases their commutes to jobs in Pierce and King counties.
David Schaffert, chief executive of the Thurston County Chamber of Commerce, worries that rising gasoline prices could slow South Sound home sales if buyers decide the higher commuting costs might wipe out potential savings on the cost of a Thurston County home.
“This used to be less of an issue when gas was $1.50,” Schaffert said.
“With higher prices, you have to wonder how it will affect our home development.”
Maybe gas prices will be the breaking point, but the little detail that they just love to ignore is that despite the fact that "median prices here are lower than in Pierce and King counties," they’re still too high to be sustained once the easy money dries up. If people are so stretched that an extra $50-$100 in gas each month is going to break them, maybe they didn’t have any business spending so much on a house in the first place.
(Jim Szymanski, The Olympian, 04.16.2006)