Category: Uncategorized

Let’s talk about jobs for a minute. Not the iPod selling, Pixar-owning kind, but the working for a living kind. I’m going to keep this really basic. Jobs make people money. People use money to buy things. One thing that people buy is houses. Therefore, in my opinion, one good indicator of what the housing…

This is rich. A little blurb in the Seattle Times on Saturday pointed out that the cable network HGTV is adding three (or maybe four) new shows focusing on—you guessed it—real estate. Check out the sidebar: A new HGTV show called "My House is Worth What?" is coming to Seattle to find folks who’d like…

There’s an interesting pair of stories in today’s Seattle Times Real Estate section. The first article sings the praises of buying dumpy houses in crime-ridden neighborhoods. (Okay maybe that’s an exaggeration.) Many first-time buyers swiftly learn that if they want to get into a home they’ll have to make accommodations. Although there are several types…

Here’s a topic that we haven’t discussed much here: Growth Management. Some people argue that aggressive growth management policies are responsible for much of King County’s ridiculous run-up in prices. A reader pointed me toward a 2001 article published by a group called the Washington Research Council, in which they argued that King County’s growth…

Google just released an interesting new feature yesterday: Google Trends. One of the interesting features of Google Trends is that it gives you a list of the top ten cities that have searched the most for whatever terms you put in. Obviously, I decided to try it out with the search term "housing bubble." Here…