First quarter data has been released by the WCRER. There’s not much new information about King County that isn’t already in the Seattle Bubble spreadsheet, but it’s worth noting anyway since their audience is somewhat broader than Seattle Bubble’s.
Here are a few quotes from the fluffy, feel-good AP report:
Washington’s housing market remains a pricey bright spot, but that means renters are seeing fewer opportunities to become home owners, a study finds.
There were 26,720 homes sold statewide during the first three months of 2007, a 9.2 percent drop from the same quarter in 2006, according to statistics released Tuesday by the Washington Center for Real Estate Research at Washington State University in Pullman.
But the median price of $300,800 in Washington was 7.4 percent higher than a year ago. That compares to a 1.8 percent decline in the national median price for a single-family home during the first quarter.
…
Dennis Rose, 2007 President of Washington Realtors, said Washington’s economy is helping keep home prices high.“Strong job growth, coupled with a commitment to quality of life issues, is helping Washington avoid much of the pain of declining home prices observed in other areas,” Rose said.
The Housing Affordability Index uses median home prices, mortgage interest rates and family incomes to measure the ability of a middle-income family to afford mortgage payments on a typical home.
In Washington, the affordability index climbed for the second consecutive quarter, mostly because the mortgage interest rate declined slightly during the first quarter, the WSU center said.
Is anyone else getting tired of the state Realtors’ It’s A Priority campaign and their endless disingenuous quotes about “quality of life”?
To give you some context on that quote that the Affordability Index “climbed for the second consecutive quarter,” check out this graph (found in the Seattle Bubble spreadsheet):
In King County, after plummeting from 121.3 in the second quarter of 2003 to a low of 69.2 in the third quarter of 2006 (a 52.1 point drop), the index has “climbed” a whopping 1.5 points in the past six months.
Let’s throw a party.
(John K. Wiley, Associated Press, 05.15.2007)