When I started Seattle Bubble just over four years ago in August 2005, there were many sources for local real estate news—The Seattle Times, The Seattle P-I, Rain City Guide, etc… I started this site not due to a lack of news sources, but due to what I felt was a lack of consumer-oriented local real estate news. All of the existing sources were heavy on the industry cheerleading and light on actual investigation and digging into the numbers.
Lately the local real estate news scene has been changing quite a bit…
Back in November of last year the Seattle Times’ dedicated real estate reporter Elizabeth Rhodes was voluntarily downsized. Yesterday SeattlePI.com real estate reporter Aubrey Cohen announced that he is moving to the aerospace beat, with no mention of anyone moving into the dedicated real estate position.
Over at the Times, business reporter Eric Pryne has been doing a good job with the occasional real estate story, and Aubrey says that he will “continue to help guide” the real estate reporting at the P-I. I don’t doubt that both news outlets will continue to cover real estate issues, but neither seems to have a dedicated reporter for the subject.
Meanwhile, the P-I “reader blog” Seattle Real Estate Professionals is all but dead, averaging about one post every other week. Rain City Guide has evolved itself into some sort of real estate search / general industry discussion site with Seattle-specific stories having become quite rare.
It would seem that after four years, Seattle Bubble is now Seattle’s only source for dedicated local real estate reporting.
With that in mind, I’d like to open up a conversation with you, the readers, about what you would like to get out of the local real estate reporting provided here at Seattle Bubble. Rather than kicking back and using the lack of competition as an excuse to be lazy, I’d prefer to take this opportunity to improve the site even more.
So what would you like to get out of Seattle Bubble? More personal interest stories? More interactive maps and interactive charts? Additional community-driven features? Coverage of specific neighborhood issues? Let’s hear your ideas.