Question for discussion: In Washington State, can Loan Officers operate within the framework of a Fiduciary duty to their clients when the lending industry is structured with incentives that may be in conflict with the new standard? Jane Kim of the Wall Street Journal wrote an excellent article in this past weekend’s issue regarding Wall…
Category: Opinion
Opinion, commentary, etc.
Federal Government Shifting Focus to Rentals
Sorry, this isn’t a Seattle-specific story, but it caught my attention this weekend as it seems like a major policy shift on the national level: President shifts focus to renting, not owning The Obama administration, in a major shift on housing policy, is abandoning George W. Bush’s vision of creating an “ownership society” and instead…
Are Home Price Drops Around Seattle Mostly Over?
I was thinking recently about the claim that we’ve been hearing lately from some sources that Seattle home price declines are over. The primary evidence they seem to provide for this hypothesis seems to be the slight bump in some Seattle-area median prices, and the uptick in sales. I’m not convinced, but rather than just…
Boo-Hoo: Tighter Standards Help Kill Chances of Bubble Returning
I’m starting to sense something of a theme in some recent news pieces about the housing market. Consider the following quotes from two recent articles (emphasis mine). Reuters, June 22: Two U.S. Democratic lawmakers want Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to relax recently tightened standards for mortgages on new condominiums, saying they could threaten the…
Economic and Real Estate Truth One-Liners
I saw this on BoingBoing the other day, and thought it was interesting… Debt is not a good product I just had a great hour-long phone conversation with an old friend, Will Dana (now editor of Rolling Stone), who has strongly encouraged me to come up with one-liners that tell the truth about the economic/banking…