From an article in today’s Everett Herald Business Journal: It’s a seller’s market as Snohomish County home prices rebound
I don’t think we’re anywhere near in a position to worry about another bubble. The increase in appreciation has been pretty steady. It hasn’t gone up overnight.
– Deidre Haines, Broker with Coldwell Banker Bain
“Not anywhere near” definitely seems like a stretch to me. And here’s what “steady appreciation” apparently looks like to a home salesperson:
That spike is pretty much exactly what most people would call overnight. We went from prices falling by 18 percent year-over-year in late 2011 to prices up 18 percent year-over-year in early 2013.
I am also quoted in the article, so at least it’s got some balance.
They’re sort of mixing up the discussion of the Snohomish county market and the Seattle market a bit. They are not the same thing.
Also, although I’ve not run the numbers for that market, I’d be shocked if a large part of the median price increase in Snohomish isn’t due to declining short sales and REOs as a percentage of total sales.
This is why blind optimists do so well in sales, besides being fun to work with.
“Prices might go up or down,” isn’t going to get you on the leaderboard.
I Also Read Recently About Prices Surging Not Being a Bubble From Realtors Stating Why:
“sufficient safeguards in place to keep this from happening”….whatever that means.
Prices for homes in the greater Seattle metropolis will surpass prices for homes in the SF Bay Area in the future. There has never been a better time to get in on the action. Buy now, or be priced out forever!!!!!!!!
What no one has brought up is what market fundamentals should look like (in both Snohomish and King counties).
I would argue that real estate was undervalued in 2012.
The hiring market picked up, smart folks realized the undervaluation, and prices shot back up. Now we’re in a market that could be argued is either very hot (due to economic factors) or in a bubble.
RE: Blurtman @ 4 –
I really don’t think we will be in serious bubble trouble for another 9 years. If I’m wrong, we can just ride the backs of sweaty tax payers like we did last time.
Next bubble burst and I will snag some water front property in sammamish. How will you know which one is me? I will be the guy blasting music in the front yard working on his pickup.
RE: Erik @ 6 – Looking forward to mulletization. I’ll have a champagne of bottled beers or two with you then.
As they say in the hot dog industry “as pig lips become more expensive, that makes the other end more attractive. “
RE: Blurtman @ 7 –
Sounds good, but I only drink out of aluminum cans.
By John Wake @ 2:
I’ve never had a client walk away after telling them that.
I’ve said this before, but real estate agents typically have zero training at all in understanding market trends, and certainly have access to very little of the data they would need to make any predictions. You’re not going to learn where prices in Snohomish County are headed by looking at data and graphs of Snohomish County real estate sales.
Again, why is it that something is in a bubble just because it is appreciating? Prices have essentially now gone sideways for almost the past 10 years. The stock market is higher over that time period, our local economy has more high paying jobs (I agree there are concerns about “main street”), and we have a lot more people, including wealthy out of area buyers.
Someone once said that a bubble is something that is going up and you don’t own as much as you’d like of it. Must be a bubble then.
RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 10 –
Yes Kary
Remember when us Bubbleheads were predicting the Baby Boomers would all sell out at retirement and leave their listings to the Y generation to fight over? It never happened. It will happen eventually when they turn 80+, but I see another scenario possible….the Y generation stays with them until they die caregiving to protect the assets of the family, assuming the Washington State nursing care attorneys and prosecuting agencies [thirsty for money and could care less about the elderly] don’t charge the kids for man slaughter after the Boomers eventually die off…money is getting scarcer.
Perhaps the best plan for caregiving in the family is sell the Seattle McMansion and buy a luxury RV with all the bells and whistles….then keep changing post boxes and move from State to State so they can’t put the cross hairs on you. Hire Millenials to drive the RV if you’re too disabled to drive….
RE: GoHawks @ 11 –
Stocks are Moving Sideways Lately Too.
Low volume buyers can’t suck new Y Gens into the market making it shoot up, so they can sell….LOL
RE: softwarengineer @ 13 – so something can go sideways after tremendous price gains? Maybe real estate does the same thing instead of “pop” like so many on here are certain it will.
Price gains are not sustainable, but that does not mean prices will correct a lot either. Think how many buyers would love to step in if the market went sideways.
Especially when the IMF is now talking (asking) the Fed not to raise rates for another year.
RE: softwarengineer @ 13 – Low volume? What market? S&P 500 shows NO decline in volume over the past ten years. Higher than 05-07 and slightly lower than 08-10. Nice try.
RE: softwarengineer @ 12 – It would be interesting if economic realities were to cause a reversion to what was once a very common and some might say healthier family dynamic in the USA. There is also the advantage of the built in baby sitter. And folks will be living to 100, so one must always recalibrate when trying to make predictions.
RE: astelin @ 15 –
The Volume has Been Low Since 2008-2015
Ever since the Great Recession caused the huge sell-off. Especially the Y Gens fear it.
RE: Blurtman @ 16 –
Actually Blurtman
It depends on which study on longevity you believe. The CDC pushes we’re living longer and the Census Bureau has us with shortened lifespans decreasing to 60s levels…
The Census Bureau study was destroyed in 2003. It just disappeared….LOL…that’s why I have a web page to save documents.
RE: softwarengineer @ 18 –
I’d Go With the Old Omitted Census Bureau Study
Overpopulation and toxins in our food isn’t decreasing. Look at mercury and anti-biotic in our mostly farmed [tub fish] seafood…
RE: softwarengineer @ 17 –
Where’s your source? GIve me numbers. And don’t tell me “Gen Y” fears it. I personally am “Gen Y” and have most of my retirement in equities. I have a number of peers who are similar. Once again, your view of reality is disconnected from everyone else’s reality.
I find it really amusing that for a blog that provide so much useful data on the local market to have so many tin-foil hats in the comments.
And SpaceX is rolling into Redmond next.
RE: Weasel @ 21 – Which won’t have any net effect since they are so small. I drove by their new building the other day – it’s right next door to where I used to work in east Redmond.
The Redmond housing market is still white-hot right now, SpaceX or not . . . houses get listed on a Thursday and are pending by early the next week (unless really overpriced, which a few near me are).
RE: redmondjp @ 22 – Maybe not now, but they plan on growing (at least) to 1000 employees, I cant imagine people with engineering degrees and PhDs in rocket and computer science are cheap to employ. Not to mention all the other stuff that this company will attract around it.
By astelin @ 20:
Seems everyone knows stock trading volumes are down… but you!?
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-trading-volume-is-tumbling-explained-in-5-charts-2014-07-07
Chart: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/newsgraphics/2012/0507-trading/0507-biz-TRADINGweb.jpg
RE: Blake @ 23 –
Barry Ritholtz on some of the reasons why trading volume is down:
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-06-26/where-have-all-the-traders-gone-ritholtz-chart
And Josh Brown wrote about this two months ago: (hint – fewer stocks available… hmmmm… kinda like some housing markets we all know!?)
http://thereformedbroker.com/2015/04/28/ladies-and-gentlemen-the-stock-market-is-still-shrinking/
When I give talks to groups of investors or my fellow advisors, one of the concepts I tend to hit on is the fact that there is “a shortage of stocks” right now. This line always draws a good laugh, but then my shtick is that I don’t smile. Then I dazzle motherf***ers with my charts depicting buyback activity versus net flows or new IPO listings. And the laughter dies down a bit.
I first began talking about this in 2013 and the trend has gotten even more pronounced, see here.
We live in an age where people are making it into their 90’s – which means a thirty year retirement period* over which to incur living expenses. When your grandparents’ generation was the predominant force in the investment markets, people were dropping dead at 65, three days after their retirement party, and bonds actually earned interest. Now a large portion of the Boomer generation is hanging on for decades longer and bonds yield nothing. So there is a great deal of demand for quality stocks. At the same time, public companies are pulling more and more of their shares off of the markets, leading to a scarcity!
It’s a bizarre concept to wrap your head around, but it goes a great deal toward explaining what’s been going on in the post-crisis period.
Edward Luce writes the following about buybacks at Financial Times this week:
“In theory companies are meant to raise money from the stock market to invest in their future growth. Exactly the reverse is taking place. Last year, the volume of buybacks was $550bn, according to Bloomberg, while the amount of new money coming into the market, mostly into mutual and exchange traded funds, was just $85bn. During 2015 the trend has increased sharply. Not only have buybacks jumped: they hit a record $104bn in February. But investors have actually been withdrawing money from the market.”
With an assist from the Fed’s endless money spout and a boardroom fear of the near-Biblical powers of the activist hedge funds, we’ve basically repurposed the stock market away from its original intention. Won’t go on forever, but for now, it’s undeniable.
By Weasel @ 23:
You are regurgitating a ‘forward-looking statement’. Time will tell if it is true. Right now, their building will hold maybe 75 people, 100 if they cram them into small cubes. And hardware people, in general, are not compensated nearly as well as those in software.
Same deal with Boeing orders. They can have an order backlog all the way out to 2029, but those orders can evaporate literally overnight.
Is the volume of stock trades even important at all in a world with computer generated trading?
It’s been pretty steady for the past three years. Yes there was a bounce from the low. Three years ago.
Also, was it really necessary to post her picture?
RE: calzoneous @ 28 –
I like how Tim posts people’s pictures.
By calzoneous @ 28:
What is the problem with this? Many agents shamelessly post their own picture in the ads for every house they have for sale (and their pictures are usually as photoshopped as the listing pictures are). So it’s not like some violation of their privacy.
And I’ve yet to figure out what a glamourshots picture of the agent has to do with the house for sale . . .
By redmondjp @ 30:
Rather than Photoshop, I just crop the top of the picture. ;-)
Seriously, I do agree about the overuse of pictures by agents, but note some of that on websites is automatic. The one I always thought was strange was having your picture on your signboards. Hopefully potential sellers (the target of such agents) do a bit more to research the agent for their listing than look at pictures.
For cards it does serve somewhat of a purpose–to identify the agent who might be coming into your house, but a card should never be enough by itself to gain access.