The P-I just posted a pretty good rundown of the latest stats, cheerily buoyant if you really believe the realtor “now is the time to buy!” malarkey that the story’s author does little to countermand, grimmer if you check out the better-informed Soundoff section. The reality, as we’ve noted before, is that our trailing-edge market is just catching up with other meltdowns, notably the Bay Area. Subprime numbers are not as relevant here because a lot of the boom was fueled by actual wealth. Example: A townhouse on the market for nearly three months here is owned by a guy living in Arizona who bought it two years ago with no intention of ever living in it. Purchase price then: $420,000. Selling price now: $590,000.
Sure, he’s dreaming. He may unload the thing, but if I was negotiating, my pitch would be, Hey, I can only go $450k. I know that’s low, but I’m taking it off your hands and you’re gonna take a bath if you don’t flip it now. Etc etc. Would such a sale translate into housing values going down? Not really. But from a perception standpoint, oh yeah. And that cycle is just as potent downward as the boom cycle was upward.
Fasten your safety belts, we’re in for a ride. Still to be addressed: Now that the crash has begun, why is so much building still going on???? Might be a story there…
There won’t be a price crash unless local foreclosures skyrocket. Neither investors nor recent homebuyers will voluntarily sell at a loss, unless they’re moving for job reasons and the employer is providing a generous relocation allowance. They’ll sit on it until prices move back up, even if it takes 10 years. That’s part of the reason why Seattle has always had a stairstep housing market that seems to run in a 10-to-15 year cycle: Prices stay flat for years, then zoom upward, then flatten again, etc.
If you ask long-time Seattle homeowners about what the recent housing boom has done to the value of their property, they’ll probably tell you they’re about even with inflation.
In my view, Seattle pricing is not out of line with historical pricing patterns for this city. Seattle has always been expensive. Those who owned before the latest price rises paid high inflation-adjusted prices when they bought, and so did the people they bought from. Most of what you see in today’s pricing represents monetary inflation, i.e., the continuing devaluation of the dollar.
Not very many homeowners are getting rich off this. For most, it merely translates into higher property taxes.
I have zero sympathy for flippers. One flipper who made out well, though, is the guy who bought a house near my hole in Green Lake Park for $360,000 and resold it a few months later for $859,000 to a sucker named Stefan Sharansky. More power to him. We worship capitalism in this country and if an entrepreneur can part a fool from his wife’s earnings, well, that’s what gigolos are for — throwing away affluent women’s money. I hope she’s getting some good sex in exchange.
I suppose now we’re going to see the wingnuts who post over at Sucky Politics gnash their teeth and decry the absence of social graces on the competing liberal blog. All I’ll say in response to that is people who support warmongers, torturers, and dictators don’t have much in the way of social graces either.
Roger Rabbit has posted 100% of the comments in this thread. If you don’t like it, suck my rabbit dick! How d’ya like them social graces?! Hey, everybody knows
REPUBLICANS SUCK!
Larry Craig sucks, and if you’re a Republican, you can suck too! To suck a rabbit, call 1-900-SUCK-ROG. This is a toll call. All proceeds go to the Help Roger Rabbit Live Like A Republican Fund.
I remember in high school gym class one of the kids caught a dog that was running loose on the soccer field and beat it off. It squirted all over the bleachers. Boy was the gym teacher pissed! He marched that kid straight into the principal’s office. I don’t remember if they kicked him out of school, but they probably did. A couple years later he got killed in Vietnam.
Back in the ’60s, the old folks got upset about stuff like that. They didn’t like Hitler either, because he was a warmonger and a torturer. And they voted Republican because they believed in fiscal responsibility and limited government. Things sure have changed in 40 years.
Nowadays, it’s hard to tell the difference between a Republican and ol’ Adolf.
Getting back on subject — I’m not really off topic here, because the topic of this blog is
REPUBLICANS SUCK!
and all of my comments are relevant to that topic — Paul, you need to realize that newspapers always talk about the real estate market because such a large chunk of their advertising revenue comes from real estate.
If you look at newspaper stocks, they’ve all nosedived recently, especially stocks in companies like Gannett and McClatchey with holdings in Florida, Texas, California, and other distressed real estate markets. Their ad revenues have plunged because of the moribund real estate markets in those areas.
Real estate ads are so important to newspapers that you’ll never see objectivity in their real estate coverage. Real estate sections in newspapers are nothing but propaganda trying to get people to buy, buy, buy. What keeps developers, builders, and real estate agents going is the same thing that keeps newspapers going: People buying real estate at inflated prices.
Move along, there’s no journalism to see here, only dead bodies.
BTW, did I forget to mention that
REPUBLICANS SUCK!
REPUBLICANS SUCK
erratum
“always talk up the real estate market”
Over half the population of Seattle currently rents. The rental market is tightening and rents are rising much faster than inflation. Housing priced affordable to people earning around 130% of median income and below is still in demand, and selling fairly easily. What’s not selling so fast is housing priced over $500K, or low priced housing that’s in substandard condition. The profit margin on high priced homes is much better than on lower priced homes. But given the weakness at the high end of the market, expect developers to start trying to meet the demand at the middle and lower end of the market. Overall, that won’t be a bad thing.
So Pelletizer (TM) , since you claim Republicans suck, is the United States in recession?
@12 How the hell would I know? You can’t tell until after it happens. I read the same economic statistics you do. When I know, you’ll know.
Let’s review GOP accomplishments:
2,800 dead in 9/11
3,700 dead in Iraq
America is as popular as Nazi Germany
Trillions added to national debt
Dollar down 40%
Oil prices up from $25 to $90
Enron, Worldcom, and other corporate scandals
Dangerous toys
Poisoned food and drinking water
Subprime meltdown
Falling real wages
Soaring consumer debt
Nursing home bed taxes
Medical usury and soaring medical bankruptcies
More Americans in poverty
More uninsured and underinsured
Less policing and soaring crime rates
Flight delays, lost and stolen baggage, passengers stranded on tarmacs, rampant aircraft “near misses”
Crumbling highways, leaking levees, and collapsing bridges
Runaway political corruption
Unregulated predatory lending and soaring consumer debt
Rampant scams and consumer frauds
Rancorous, divisive partisan politics
Late tax refunds and no AMT tax relief for middle class
Military hospital scandals
Officially sanctioned kidnappings, torture, and murders
Illegal wiretapping
False arrests and civil rights violations
Uncontrolled illegal immigration
CIA outing scandal
Federal prosecutors scandal
Vote rigging, voter suppression, stolen elections
Fiscal irresponsibility
Runaway growth in federal spending
Dysfunctional federal agencies
Collapse of domestic manufacturing base
Anemic job market and weak job creation
Plunging savings rate
Private pension bankruptcies
Growing concentration of media ownership
Endless lies, deceptions, and coverups
Waytagowingfucks! You FUBARS took a great nation and turned it into a third world country in 6 short years! You should all be hanged for treason.*
* Just kidding! Joke courtesy of Ann Coulter Humor, LLP, no royalties paid — if she doesn’t like it, she can sue me!
Way back at #1 RR said, “There won’t be a price crash unless local foreclosures skyrocket.” Then he discusses how people will sit on their homes until things get better.
Which is true enough as far as it goes. Those who can afford to sit out the downturn will almost certainly do so; it’s the ones whose ARMs are being adjusted upward to the point they can’t afford the price anymore who are going to push up the foreclosure rate.
I don’t see any reason to believe there are fewer of those kinds of people here than anywhere else in the country and so I expect to see the forclosures increase as we go along.
That could indeed cause a serious short(ish) market downturn.
Me, I’m gonna do what I’ve done for the last 12 years…live in my comfy little place and do whatever I can to hold onto my yob. Hunker down, in other words, like a rabbit in a thunderstorm.
I am a Republican and I SUCK DICK! LARRY CRAIG’S DICK and I WOULD BE WILLING TO TRY A LITTLE OF RABBIT TOO!
RR: brevity is the soul of wit, no?
As to the subject of this thread, if someone buys for 430K and sells at 450K, this is a profit. It is not a lossand certainly not a “crash.”
Building continues because of demand based on a strong economy, relative attractiveness of Seattle versus many other cities in the region, the USA and the world, and the fact that the Seattle area is actually not very developed. It is only about 3 million people. It is foreseeable this will rise to 4 or 5 million relatively soon; it is not at “peak” development for a time.
A townhouse on the market for nearly three months here is owned by a guy living in Arizona who bought it two years ago with no intention of ever living in it. Purchase price then: $420,000. Selling price now: $590,000.
Sure, he’s dreaming. He may unload the thing, but if I was negotiating, my pitch would be, Hey, I can only go $450k. I know that’s low, but I’m taking it off your hands and you’re gonna take a bath if you don’t flip it now. Etc etc. Would such a sale translate into housing values going down? Not really. But from a perception standpoint, oh yeah. And that cycle is just as potent downward as the boom cycle was upward.
Isn’t this precisely the way a downward run gets momentum?
In your scenario, if you were to somehow make that deal, a “comparable” has just been put into the mix and agents for buyers will use that as leverage to broker a better sell price for their clients, looking at similar properties….
I think it translates to a more drastic scenario when you start having this occur in individual housing devopments where multiple homes may be for sale, with similar specs.
AWESOME!!!!
I hope all those subprime motherfuckers go bankrupt and get foreclosed on so I can get some TASTY MOTHERFUCKIN DEALS on property!!! Woohoo! And then I’ll get to turn right around and rent to these gullible fucks.
Mmmmm…I smell…MONEY!!!!
14
It makes you wonder what are next republican president will do in 2009-2017. Wait…. you don’t actually think the American people will elect a commie donk… hehehehehehehe
hahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhaa
hoohohohohohhahahahahahahahhahahhehehehehehehehehehehohhoohhohhoohehehehehheeehhehahahahahahahahahahaha
A donk hasn’t been voted into office with 50% of the popular vote since the mid 70’s. Who will be the third party spoiler this year??? Ron Paul????? A donk elected to office of POTUS…hehehahahahahahahhahahahahehehehe
hahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhaa
hoohohohohohhahahahahahahahhahahhehehehehehehehehehehohhoohhohhoohehehehehheeehhehahahahahahahahahahaha
DR you bring nothing to the conversation.
The reason the building keeps on going is inertia. It takes a long time to wind up to build a property and once the digging starts it takes a whole lot to bring it to a stop. I’m sure things would have to get pretty bad before it penciled out to stop working on a property already under construction.
What might be more interesting is the trend in permit applications by developers.
Pelletizer (TM) @13: You don’t know if the country is in recession? Well you were inferring it in #8.
You claim to know just about everything else. Tell me how millionaires pay AMT again?
@22 I don’t see the word “recession” in #8. Could you tell me JCH is a Nazi where it is?
@17 But no one has bought it for 450K, no? And I didn’t say there was a price crash in the Seattle market, no? Mon bleu monsier! How do you say “full of shit” in French?
You Frogs were all right at Verdun, though.
@22 I assume by check or EFT.
@22 Although I wouldn’t put it past JCH to send in pennies.
#26&27: Millionaires don’t pay AMT. I supplied the link.
Wow, you know JCH is a millionaire? Amazing insight Pelletizer (TM).
JACKASS!
1. RR: only the first comment was directed at you. Brevity is the soul of wit. As you seem to have ignored this, and you have deliberately provided an insult, let me lower my standards to your level and dumb it down for you:
You post too much. Your posts are too long. They are boring. Please try to be more concise. You might want to limit yourself to oh, 3 or 4 posts at a time before someone replies.
2. As the remainder of my comment was not directed at you, obviously, your crude, knee jerk, and emotional “full of shit” retort “frogs” etc. and even the Verdun comment to compensate are all irrelevant, and misdirected. Like attacking Iraq for 9-11. But most of all they are simply BORING.
The remainder of my comment was directed at the original post in which the writer thereof did say he made an offer at 450 and apparently did not even realize this meant the seller would make a profit thus there was no logical basis for talking about a crash. Amazing, yes, this it was not about you.
#3 Roger Rabbit says:
What the url for the liberal blog that competes with sound politics? Maybe I’ll troll over there, if they compete with sound politics they must be better off than the collection of idiots here.
#29 Marcel says:
Posting on this site is the only thing the rabbit has to look forward to. After posting he will come up with another 4 words of wisdom and have to post again a minute later. At times I believe the rabbit is a bot, it’s hard to believe a living person really would spend so much time posting about how much he hates.