Yesterday I compared King County to San Diego County in order to address some of the reasons we commonly hear that the Seattle housing market will remain strong. The focus of this post is slightly different than Part 1, where I used San Diego as an example to show that certain positive local attributes will…
Tag: “Seattle is special”
A California Comparison
Since Mr. Kelly did such a poor job of actually comparing the Northwest to California, I’d like to get my own idea of how the two compare. For the illustrative purpose of this post, I’m going to be comparing the regions of Seattle and San Diego. Here in King County, the median home price (condos…
Mapping Housing Market Health
A pair of maps containing interesting statistics surfaced in the past few weeks that are worth sharing here. First is the “Map of Misery” from BusinessWeek, showing “the percentage of new and refinanced mortgages into loans with payment options.” This is important to note, because as BusinessWeek explains: The option adjustable rate mortgage (ARM) might…
Seattle Times: We Are Immune, So Says History
With all the press that Shiller’s Home Price Index got last week, I suppose it was inevitable that our region’s #1 real estate cheerleader would feel compelled to mount a stirring defense of Seattle’s real estate downturn immunity. Amusingly, Elizabeth Rhodes’ apparent comeback to Mr. Shiller’s frightening graph of home prices since 1890 is to…