There’s an amusing article over at Seattlest on the strange proclivity that Seattle P-I reporter Aubrey Cohen has for quoting the marketing firm Williams Marketing:
Did you know that there’s only one credible real-estate industry voice in Seattle? It’s a marketing firm in town that works with real estate developers. We’ve learned this from reading Aubrey Cohen’s real estate reporting in the Seattle P-I. Here’s a search on articles containing the exact phrase “Williams Marketing” — they’re quoted in at least one article per month since last November. (Who are the schmoes paying the P-I for ads when there’s so much free ink available?)
A “Seattle marketing firm that works with condo developers” seems to be the autotext descriptor. We get all of our most trusted information from marketing sources, so we understand Cohen’s willingness to dive into that well for quotes so many times.
Speaking of Williams marketing, Matt at Urbnlivn calls them (and Aubrey Cohen) out yet again on the “we aren’t lowering our prices” lie:
Well today Williams Marketing priced reduced Mosler Lofts unit #TH2 $20,000 to $655,000.
Seattle reporters, please do your homework. You’re paid to report; this is my hobby.
And as long as we’re on the subject, here’s the latest piece of condo marketing reporting from the P-I:
The national real estate hangover spooked some Seattle buyers and the national lenders who fund condo projects, leading developers to shelve building plans. Others, however, insist the Seattle market will hold up.
For example 83 percent of the more than 1,200 new downtown condo units that came on line in 2007 sold. All of the more than 1,400 downtown units built from 2000 through 2006 have sold, according to market research firm Realogics.
And the amount of building pales in comparison with cities like Miami, which had 60,000 condos in the development process at the peak of its boom and where people bought condos site-unseen with no intention of living in them, said Bryon Ziegler, developer representative for Williams Marketing, a Seattle company that works with developers. “We never even remotely had that kind of market in this area,” he said. “We’ve got real jobs here supporting our growth.”
But there was some evidence of a speculative frenzy in downtown Seattle in the past year, when investors in the newly completed 2200 Westlake and Cosmopolitan condo projects bought about one-third of the units in those two buildings, then immediately put them up for sale, said Dean Jones, president and chief executive of Realogics, another Seattle condo marketing firm.
But don’t worry everybody. Now there’s a “cap” on the amount of units that they’ll sell to “investors.” Wait, why would a developer care whether the person buying their condo is an “investor” or not? Isn’t it money on their books either way?
Unless a huge amount of these projects in the pipeline fail to break ground, I don’t see any compelling reason to believe that we won’t have an extreme glut of condo inventory in a few years. But hey what do I know. I’m not a “condo marketer” after all.
Here’s Matt Goyer’s take on the piece.
(Michael van Baker, Seattlest, 10.22.2007)
(Matt Goyer, Urbnlivn, 10.21.2007)
(Aubrey Cohen, Seattle P-I, 10.21.2007)