{"id":26284,"date":"2013-04-19T12:00:45","date_gmt":"2013-04-19T19:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/seattlebubble.com\/blog\/?p=26284"},"modified":"2013-04-19T15:25:23","modified_gmt":"2013-04-19T22:25:23","slug":"friday-flashback-prices-more-than-held-their-own","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seattlebubble.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/19\/friday-flashback-prices-more-than-held-their-own\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday Flashback: “Prices more than held their own.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Six months after home prices in the Seattle area began declining from their July 2007 peak, the annual report from the NWMLS led to a series of amusingly rosy stories in the local press in early 2008. Here’s a typical example from the Seattle Times<\/a>:<\/p>\n

’07 home prices not so bad after all<\/strong><\/p>\n

With all the dismal national news about home sales, wasn’t 2007 supposed to be the year the local real-estate market died?<\/p>\n

Well, surprise. Although home sales indeed were down 14.5 percent in King County and the number of for-sale homes was up almost 9 percent, prices more than held their own.<\/p>\n

Compared with 2006, the county\u2019s single-family home prices climbed 7.1 percent last year, according to the Northwest Multiple Listing Service\u2019s annual report released Tuesday.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Surprise. Prices continued to fall unabated for the next four years.<\/p>\n

Except it wasn’t a surprise if you actually bothered to look at the 2007 data with a critical eye, as I pointed out in my post at the time<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Anyone who has actually been paying attention to the market knows that something is fishy about that 7.1% figure. To figure out what’s behind that number, take a look at page 19 of the report<\/a>. Basically, they arrive at that figure by comparing the median price for all sales in 2007<\/em> with the same figure for 2006. In a market that is consistently and steadily headed in a single direction, that kind of comparison would make sense. However, in today’s volatile market, such a statistic is totally meaningless<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thankfully today’s real estate reporting Seattle Times is a thousand times better than the cheerleading, PR-rehashing junk that they published during the bubble, but it’s a good reminder to take everything you read (including posts here on Seattle Bubble) with a grain of salt. Look at the data yourself and draw your own conclusions.<\/p>\n

The purpose of our Friday Flashback series<\/a> is to remind people why it’s never a good idea to base your home purchase decisions on the word of someone with a vested financial interest in selling as many homes as possible for as much as possible, no matter what. If you’ve got a good example of local home salespeople or other industry shills on record making fools of themselves in the years before the bubble burst, shoot me an email<\/a>.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Six months after home prices in the Seattle area began declining from their July 2007 peak, the annual report from the NWMLS led to a series of amusingly rosy stories in the local press in early 2008. 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