Friday Flashback: “No Slides, Good Condition to Build On”

Posted on by The Tim

Here’s an amusing pair of photos from the Seattle Municipal Archives, spotted by Vintage Seattle.

At left, a real estate for sale sign posted on Perkins Lane in Magnolia in 1938. At right, a home on the very same Perkins Lane in 1954.

BEST BUY, BEST VIEW ON PERKINS LANE
1938: Perkins Lane is slide-proof! The ground here is healthy and analysts feel certain it will stay that way.
Landslide at 2445 Perkins Lane, 1954
1954: It looks like the foundation has kind of taken a deep breath and just corrected itself a little bit.

For more crystal clear reminders of why it’s never a good idea to trust a real estate salesperson’s predictions about the future (although the seller in this case may or may not have been a legally-defined “salesperson”), hit the full Friday Flashback archive.

(P.S. – I highly recommend taking some time to head over to Vintage Seattle and browse their archives. They’re always turning up fascinating stuff over there, like this fun series of photos of the Space Needle being built.)

[Note: Edited to make the intention of the paragraph after the photos more clear.]

The purpose of our Friday Flashback series is to remind people why it’s never a good idea to base your home purchase decisions on the word of someone with a vested financial interest in selling as many homes as possible for as much as possible, no matter what. If you’ve got a good example of local home salespeople or other industry shills on record making fools of themselves in the years before the bubble burst, shoot me an email.