In March I wrote a post calling out people who blame investors for rising rents and unaffordable housing. Today I’d like to highlight some reporting that gets it right. This story by KUOW’s Joshua McNichols is a couple weeks old, but he hits the nail on the head, and I wanted to make sure it…
April Stats Preview: Surging Sales Edition
With April 2015 now in the rear view mirror, let’s have a look at our monthly stats preview. First up, here’s the snapshot of all the data as far back as my historical information goes, with the latest, high, and low values highlighted for each series: First, a tiny ray of good news… Listing inventory…
Case-Shiller Tiers: Low Tier Back to Double-Digit Gains
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. Note that the tiers are determined by sale volume. In other words, 1/3 of all sales fall into each tier. For more details…
Case-Shiller: Seattle Home Prices Boosted in February
Let’s have a look at the latest data from the Case-Shiller Home Price Index. According to February data, Seattle-area home prices were: Up 0.9% January to February Up 7.1% YOY. Down 11.4% from the July 2007 peak Last year at this time prices rose 0.6% month-over-month and year-over-year prices were up 12.8%. Year-over-year price gains…
Kiss Single-Family Homes Goodbye if Seattle Keeps Growing
We usually talk about the whole Seattle metro area on these pages, but I’d like to take a little while to discuss an issue that is most relevant to Seattle proper: Density. There’s no denying that Seattle has been booming lately, thanks largely to serious growth in the local tech economy—unbridled growth at Amazon, the…