{"id":182,"date":"2006-04-07T17:07:00","date_gmt":"2006-04-08T00:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/seattlebubble.com\/blog\/?p=182"},"modified":"2013-06-28T16:33:05","modified_gmt":"2013-06-28T23:33:05","slug":"perplexing-march-reporting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seattlebubble.com\/blog\/2006\/04\/07\/perplexing-march-reporting\/","title":{"rendered":"Perplexing March Reporting"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>.mlstable table {border-collapse: collapse;} .mlstable td {border: 1px solid #000000; padding: 0 1px;}<\/style>\n<p>Let&#8217;s take a look at our friend Elizabeth Rhodes&#8217; more lengthy article in today&#8217;s Seattle Times, where she paints a picture of a Seattle area real estate market that is still super-hot and <a href=\"http:\/\/seattletimes.nwsource.com\/html\/localnews\/2002916266_homesales07.html\">doesn&#8217;t know the meaning of slowdown<\/a>.  I usually try to limit article quotes to just a few paragraphs but this one has so many gems I&#8217;m going to have to break my usual rules.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Ann Dickhoff&#8217;s house purchase typifies a milestone in more ways than one.<\/p>\n<p>Like many other parents of adult children, Dickhoff was afraid her son would be priced out of homeownership in his hometown.<\/p>\n<p>So last month she helped him buy a North Seattle rambler, gulping as she paid $409,000 \u2014 or $89,000 more than she shelled out a year earlier for a nicer house half a block away.<\/p>\n<p>In doing so, Dickhoff helped fuel the buyer frenzy that&#8217;s pushed the median cost of King County single-family homes past $400,000 for the first time.<\/p>\n<p>Still, median prices in some neighborhoods are much higher than that, seriously undercutting affordability and turning the hunt for a moderately priced home into blood sport.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Where to start?  First off, for her &#8220;typical&#8221; example, she&#8217;s choosing someone who has no problem plunking down for a $400,000+ house that&#8217;s not even for them, but for their <em>kid<\/em>?  Maybe I&#8217;m just <em>really<\/em> out of touch with King County, but that doesn&#8217;t seem at all typical to me.  Secondly, is there really still a &#8220;buyer frenzy&#8221; in King County?  Again I direct you to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nwmls.com\/discover\/library\/statistics\/recaps\/Recap2006\/Mar06Recaps.pdf\">NWMLS March data<\/a>.  Here are the pertinent figures for <b>March<\/b> in <b>King County<\/b>:<\/p>\n<p><center class=\"mlstable\"><\/p>\n<table cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"1\" border=\"0\" style=\"font-size: .8em;\">\n<tr style=\"text-align: center; font-weight: bold;\">\n<td rowspan=\"2\" style=\"border-top: 0; border-left: 0;\">&nbsp;<\/td>\n<td colspan=\"3\">Listings<\/td>\n<td colspan=\"3\">Pending Sales<\/td>\n<td colspan=\"3\">Closed Sales<\/td>\n<td colspan=\"3\">Sale Price<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr style=\"text-align: center; font-weight: bold;\">\n<td>&#8217;06<\/td>\n<td>&#8217;05<\/td>\n<td>% chg<\/td>\n<td>&#8217;06<\/td>\n<td>&#8217;05<\/td>\n<td>% chg<\/td>\n<td>&#8217;06<\/td>\n<td>&#8217;05<\/td>\n<td>% chg<\/td>\n<td>&#8217;06<\/td>\n<td>&#8217;05<\/td>\n<td>% chg<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr align=\"center\">\n<td style=\"text-align: left; font-weight: bold;\">Comb:<\/td>\n<td>6,359<\/td>\n<td>6,731<\/td>\n<td>-5.53%<\/td>\n<td>4,106<\/td>\n<td>4,469<\/td>\n<td>-8.12%<\/td>\n<td>3,219<\/td>\n<td>3,791<\/td>\n<td>-15.09%<\/td>\n<td>$365,000<\/td>\n<td>$324,950<\/td>\n<td>12.32%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr align=\"center\">\n<td style=\"text-align: left; font-weight: bold;\">Res:<\/td>\n<td>5,100<\/td>\n<td>5,244<\/td>\n<td>-2.75%<\/td>\n<td>3,044<\/td>\n<td>3,405<\/td>\n<td>-10.60%<\/td>\n<td>2,386<\/td>\n<td>2,858<\/td>\n<td>-16.52%<\/td>\n<td>$405,000<\/td>\n<td>$362,000<\/td>\n<td>11.88%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr align=\"center\">\n<td style=\"text-align: left; font-weight: bold;\">Condo:<\/td>\n<td>1,259<\/td>\n<td>1,487<\/td>\n<td>-15.33%<\/td>\n<td>1,062<\/td>\n<td>1,064<\/td>\n<td>-.19%<\/td>\n<td>833<\/td>\n<td>933<\/td>\n<td>-10.72%<\/td>\n<td>$249,950<\/td>\n<td>$205,990<\/td>\n<td>21.34%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Ms. Rhodes seems to be talking only about the &#8220;Res.&#8221; figures in her article, so look at those figures in particular.  Specifically, check out the double-digit <em>negative<\/em> numbers in the &#8220;Pending Sales&#8221; and &#8220;Closed Sales&#8221; &#8220;% change&#8221; columns.  Despite the fact that the number of listings was down just 2.75%, the number of sales <em>decreased<\/em> by at least <b>four times that amount<\/b>.  That sure doesn&#8217;t look like a &#8220;buyer frenzy&#8221; to me.  Moving on.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Dickhoff and her husband, Walton, an administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, had to pay $320,000 last year to snag a small Greenwood-area bungalow for her mother. &#8220;That was our wake-up call,&#8221; she said, to climbing prices and the possibility that homeownership for her kids was in jeopardy.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed that&#8217;s a serious possibility for many residents, according to Washington State University&#8217;s Center for Real Estate Research. Average-wage workers, in particular, are susceptible to the double whammy of rising house prices and rising interest rates.<\/p>\n<p>In the past year, the average interest rate on a 30-year, fixed-rate loan has climbed half a percentage point to 6.5 percent.<\/p>\n<p>The WSU center&#8217;s latest affordability index reveals that King County buyers earning median wages have just 80 percent of the income needed to afford a median-priced house. First-time buyers have 45 percent.<\/p>\n<p>In January, Ann Dickhoff, a nurse at Swedish Medical Center, began hunting for a house to buy for son Paul, 21, a cheese maker at Pike Place Market, to live in with roommates. A real-estate agent warned her the first one she bid on would sell for more than its $400,000 list price.<\/p>\n<p>So the Dickhoffs bid $416,000 \u2014 and added a $30,000 escalator clause in case a bidding war broke out.<\/p>\n<p>It did, and they lost that house to a $450,000 all-cash offer.<\/p>\n<p>That made clear to her that &#8220;the market was taking off, and if we were ever going to buy something for the kids to live in, we&#8217;d better make a move.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>They quickly did, landing for $409,000 a newly refurbished 1950s three-bedroom with a spacious new garage.<\/p>\n<p>Still, if the market weren&#8217;t so hot, &#8220;we wouldn&#8217;t even have looked at it,&#8221; Dickhoff confided. The house is on busy Greenwood Avenue North, and the street noise is significant. Plus a newer townhouse development has consumed its entire backyard.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Did you notice in there how she barely made a passing mention to the fact that first-time buyers making median wages have <b>just 45% of the income necessary to afford a home?<\/b>  Do reporters like Ms. Rhodes not see that as a <b>huge problem?<\/b>  Granted my perspective may be a <em>bit<\/em> skewed being a potential first-time buyer and all, but doesn&#8217;t that deserve more than a half-sentence mention in an article like this?  Furthermore, did this example family, the Dickhoff&#8217;s, do <em>any<\/em> serious research into the current market before jumping in with both feet to buy their kid a house?  Seriously, &#8220;the market was taking off&#8221;?!?  Sweetheart, the market took off two years ago, and it&#8217;s been riding the appreciation wave since, but sooner or later (probably sooner) it <em>is<\/em> going to land.  Maybe it will be a soft landing, but if people like the Dickhoff&#8217;s truly &#8220;typify&#8221; the King County home buyer, I&#8217;m afraid it&#8217;ll be rough indeed.<\/p>\n<p>(<em>Elizabeth Rhodes, <a href=\"http:\/\/seattletimes.nwsource.com\/html\/localnews\/2002916266_homesales07.html\">Seattle Times<\/a>, 04.07.2006<\/em>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let&#8217;s take a look at our friend Elizabeth Rhodes&#8217; more lengthy article in today&#8217;s Seattle Times, where she paints a picture of a Seattle area real estate market that is still super-hot and doesn&#8217;t know the meaning of slowdown. I usually try to limit article quotes to just a few paragraphs but this one has&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[612,198],"tags":[3],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local","category-news","tag-rhodes"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Perplexing March Reporting \u2022 Seattle Bubble<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/seattlebubble.com\/blog\/2006\/04\/07\/perplexing-march-reporting\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Perplexing March Reporting \u2022 Seattle Bubble\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"Let&#8217;s take a look at our friend Elizabeth Rhodes&#8217; more lengthy article in today&#8217;s Seattle Times, where she paints a picture of a Seattle area real estate market that is still super-hot and doesn&#8217;t know the meaning of slowdown. 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