Let’s have a little economic review, shall we? Early 2006 — We were told by “economists” that all is well in the housing market, and we were just headed for a soft landing. Definitely zero risk to the economy. January 27, 2006“All the hype about the housing market falling apart is exaggerated,” Tim Rogers, Boston-based…
Author: The Tim
More Local Stories of the Slowdown
You know that the local housing slowdown is essentially undeniable when even the local TV news starts to pick up the story… It’s not exactly a slump, but some of the wind has left the sails of the local real estate market. What used to sell in two weeks is now taking as long as…
Introducing the Seattle Distressed Sellers Index
I’d like to introduce a new statistic to Seattle Bubble: the Distressed Sellers Index (DSI). This is a metric I have been recording since May, and while I don’t have enough data to do year-over-year comparisons yet, given the recent action, I thought it was a good time to bring it in. The DSI uses…
Prices in Seattle “Not Unthinkable Yet”
Hot on the heels of an unusually balanced report on the latest NWMLS home sales data, Aubrey Cohen comes back with another piece on the local market, this one full of non-sensical rationalizations for continued price gains. Ken Kam, of Honolulu, scoped out second-home possibilities during a Seattle visit last month. “It seems like it’s…
Homebuying Platitudes vs. Reality
This is a post that I originally wrote for the highly-recommended personal finance blog Get Rich Slowly. As such, the style of writing is more geared toward the audience of that site. However, I felt that the post would be of interest to the readers here as well, so I am re-posting it in its…