Editor’s Note: I’d like to welcome new contributor Jonness to Seattle Bubble. He maintains the excellent set of tools at HousingCorrection.com and has provided an interesting analysis of housing data in his comments. – The Tim An article in the Seattle P-I indicates that our home sales slowed more than anywhere else in the nation….
Update: Boom and Bust Cycles Across Markets
Back in July I posted a comparison of the total percentage gain during the boom years to the total percentage drop from peak to date across a bunch of markets, to see if I could establish a clear relationship or correlation between the two. I wanted to give a quick update on this analysis. As…
Seattle Times: JPM to Cut ~70% of WaMu HQ Employees
Photo by Flickr user S x 2 According to today’s Seattle Times, JPMorgan Chase plans to cut around 70% of WaMu’s Seattle-area employees. JPMorgan is handing out layoff notices now and is expected to finish making decisions about all of WaMu’s 43,200 employees nationwide by Dec. 1. As many as 3,000 of WaMu’s 4,200 workers…
Washington Banks Hit With More Bad Loans
Kirsten Grind had an interesting piece about local banks in the Puget Sound Business Journal last Friday: Bad loans rising at Washington banks Bad loans are up dramatically at Washington state banks, surpassing the national average and reaching levels that local banking experts say are unprecedented. … Washington banks historically have seen lower levels of…
Are Reluctant Title Insurers Hampering the Market?
I received the following in an email from a reader: In August I found a brand new townhouse in a great location that is selling at about 5 or 10% below recent comps (and 15 to 25% off of what it would have gone for at peak). I still think I am going to end…