Today we’re going to kick off a new feature here that will (hopefully) provide another, more “down to earth” way to track the Seattle-area housing market. Charts and graphs are great, but I think we can also get a picture of what’s going on in the market by looking at what your money can actually…
Seattle Homes Still 10-20% Overpriced Compared to Rents and Incomes
Inspired by this post from Rich Toscano down in San Diego showing that home prices there have reached historically reasonable levels when compared to rents and incomes, I thought I would put together some similar charts for Seattle to see how close we are to reasonable home prices. Here’s the chart for home prices to…
HUD pushes for principal reduction up to 30%
(I didn’t want this story to get lost in the midst of all the headlines the past few days.) From the National Mortgage News headlines: “The Department of Housing and Urban Development is seeking expanded loss mitigation authority allowing the principal amount of an FHA-insured mortgage to be reduced by up to 30% to help…
Case-Shiller Tiers: Year-over-year Declines Rapidly Approach 20%
Let’s check out the three price tiers for the Seattle area, as measured by Case-Shiller. Remember, Case-Shiller’s “Seattle” data is based on single-family home repeat sales in King, Pierce, and Snohomish counties. First up is the straight graph of the index from January 2000 through January 2009. All three tiers continued their steep declines in…
Case-Shiller: Seattle Home Prices Just Shy of 20% off Peak
[Special Announcement] On Monday April 27th at 1:00pm, Robert Shiller (the Shiller in Case-Shiller) will be giving a lecture at Seattle Pacific University. The event is free and open to the public. More information on the SPU website. For those unable to attend, I will be taking notes and will most likely make a post…