Yesterday a reader emailed me asking how to look up public foreclosure documents. Since it’s been over a year since I covered the topic of researching public records, I thought this would be a good time to review the process. In this post we’ll be discussing the process and providing links for King County. For…
Category: Features
Do Rising Interest Rates Lead to Falling Home Prices?
Yesterday a reader asked: I was wondering if you could write a post sometime on the relationship between interest rates and home prices (or direct me to a previous post if you’ve already done this). My husband is feeling pressured to buy a home within the next couple of months b/c he thinks interest rates…
Predictions: Looking Into the Crystal Ball for 2010
It is time once again for our annual predictions post, where your host goes on record with crazy shots in the dark about what might happen in the Seattle real estate market over the next calendar year. For those of you following along with this game at home, here are the predictions of record for…
Still Searching for the Home Price Bottom Around Seattle
A few people have asked for another checkup on our bottom-calling series from February, in which we explored six different methods of forecasting the bottom for Seattle-area home prices. Not much has changed since our most recent checkup in July, when prices as measured by the Case-Shiller Index were 22.5% off the peak (May data),…
Quantifying Cumulative Government Kickbacks for Homebuyers
I thought it might be useful to visualize just how much the government is involved in the housing market. Let’s look at how much a homebuyer receives via capital gains tax excemption for home sales, mortgage interest deduction, deductability of points paid on mortgage, and first-time buyers tax credit over 5 years, 15 years, and…