Our local real estate blog Rain City Real Estate Guide — by realtors, for realtors (my subtitle, not theirs) tackled the topic of a Seattle bubble today. “Eastside Specialist” Chuck Reiling places himself firmly in the “Microsoft will protect us” camp with his post:
The second kind of bubble, let’s call it Type II, seems to occur when there is a limited supply of homes relative to demand, and people start bidding up the prices, i.e. being willing to pay more, in order to get the home they want in the place they want. Jobs and commute times and schools seem to be the big drivers in this. These forces are at work in San Francisco and Los Angeles and San Diego, and they are at work here. In our greater Seattle and east side area, we are blessed with a very strong economy, and continue to enjoy relatively low mortgage interest rates. But we have very restrictive state and local growth management laws and land use ordinances, and building is not keeping up with demand.
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So what should we expect now? First, prices will probably go quite a bit higher. The competition for good houses is intense, and the good economy is feeding good incomes – people are willing to stretch to get the home they want. Second, this ‘bubble’ will probably not burst. Type I speculative bubbles do seem to burst, and they make great news stories. Type II demand-driven bubbles don’t seem to burst, they just seem to pause while the world catches up. Ours doesn’t seem ready to pause yet.
There’s really nothing new there that we haven’t gone over again and again, but it still amazes me that some people really truly believe that Seattle’s current prices are actually justified and sustainable in the long term. The claim that “prices will probably go quite a bit higher” was especially flabbergasting to me. Even with the suicidal financing options out there right now, people are still stretching themselves to the max to afford current prices. What could possibly drive them “quite a bit higher”?
I encourage you to share your thoughts with Chuck in the comments section on his post—just try to be nice, okay?
In other news, I have archived the delightfully witty blog There is no housing bubble!, since the original site vanished from the Internet without explanation a few weeks ago. I miss it already.
Update: RCG contributor Galen Ward chimes in with a post outlining his opinion on the bubble:
I think both sides are taking a foolish black-and-white approach to the bubble question; clearly there are some indicators that there is a real estate bubble, but the consensus seems to be that the risk of home prices plummeting is low. Home prices will probably be flat until inflation prices back to “normal” levels. My concern is that if house prices do pop precipitously, there are going to be serious consequences for home owners and non-homeowners alike.
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…The one argument I do not buy is that our land use laws are making property more expensive; builders are cranking out hundreds units and making loads of money on each unit, meaning they could continue profiting even at lower price levels.
Again I’d like to reiterate my request that my readers exercise civility and friendliness when commenting on these posts.
(Chuck Reiling, Rain City Real Estate Guide, 04.28.2006)
(Galen Ward, Rain City Real Estate Guide, 04.29.2006)