local real estate news, statistics, and commentary without the sales spin.
Since we’ve been gone for so long, I thought I’d start back up with somewhat of an overview post. Let’s just take a look at what’s going on in the Seattle-area (King County) housing market recently.
One of the biggest topics on everybody’s mind lately is home prices, so let’s start there…
An editorial by Christopher Kirk in the Seattle Times yesterday was so stupid I had no choice but to finally come back here and respond.
Here’s the link: Statewide rezoning of single-family neighborhoods is a terrible idea
Now, before we start it’s worth noting that this piece is described as a “Special to The Times” and the author is not a journalist. He’s not an economist, either. He’s also not an urban planner, and as you’ll see he’s obviously not a historian. He’s an architect whose primary accomplishments listed on his bio attached to the piece are having “served on public historic preservation and design review boards.”
So with that context, let’s get into it…
Just a quick note to let you know that I’m working on cleaning house here…
Let’s take a look at our stats for the local regions outside of the King/Snohomish core. Here’s your October update to our “Around the Sound” statistics for Pierce, Kitsap, Thurston, Island, Skagit, and Whatcom counties…
October market data from the NWMLS is available. Here’s what happened last month in the Seattle-area housing market: Home prices and pending sales fell slightly, but closed sales rose to the highest level ever seen during an October—over 3,000 sales.