Over at the P-I’s Seattle Real Estate Professionals blog, Gregory Wharton (identified as an architect and developer) is in the middle of a very detailed series of posts tackling the subject of—you guessed it—a real estate bubble in Seattle.
In the next series of posts on the subject, I’ll investigate Seattle housing prices and associated economic conditions. Some of the answers I’ll discuss may surprise you, no matter which side you’re on. It turns out that Seattle real estate prices are unsustainably high in many cases, maybe even ripe for a serious correction, but outside of the condo-flipper market there is no bubble…yet. The situation presents a very real problem for our city, and we need to start thinking about remedies.
He’s about a third of the way through, and so far I’m relatively impressed with the balanced view he is presenting. It’s certainly a lot better than the fingers-in-ears, “la la la, I can’t hear you” approach we’ve seen on other local real estate blogs. I may not agree with all of the conclusions he comes to, but at least he is giving the subject a genuinely thoughtful analysis.
I’ll probably post about this again as he gets further along in the series.
(Gregory Wharton, Seattle Real Estate Professionals, 06.12.2006)