Next Housing Market to Crash? Seattle

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I lived in Texas in the 86 crash and in Los Angeles and Maui in the last 20 years I have been here since 1994 and I bought a house in West Seattle for $95,000 1/4 acre 2200 sq ft... 1941 great condition... now it went to $409,000 last year .. I know a city very well I will tell you when the Irag war is over and the people start to cancel all the Boeing plane orders around the world and the price of homes and land and all ...alone with the motto of Boeing employees (strike strike strike ) those who have their head up there ass are the ones living in Seattle for over 20 years etc... they have never had to look for other work if they got a great job and have savings etc bought homes in the 80's 90's etc.. are going to see the pain soon ... Weyerhauser is folding .. Bill Gates is retired and can not make something else up ... outsourcing is abound in net work IT jobs .. people can not get jobs ...rents are way too high and homes are a joke .. I sold my home for the original price I paid plus half again not wanting to burn in hell making a mint on the poor sucker buying it ...looking to leave this wet area and all the smug people that have not a clue and leave for the south... I left 20 years ago and I will retire in the warmth... cheap home etc.. I left a year before texas crashed and left a year before Los Angeles crashed and left a year before Maui crashed .. also left San Francisco too.. so now is my time to leave here next year.. so good luck when your all left holding the bad with the rip off artist here and the over jealous people with the duh look on their face they all have told me far too many times here and on tv what great things there are to do here like what .. if you do not shop or ski ... then better take a nap.. alone with that crap of the alaska viaduct and the light rail oh my g-o-d what a bunch of loosers// do me a favor do not come down to the south we do not need you there either.. treat your rude california house owners like your neighbor they most likely are.. get a clue oh better yet keep the way you are now... maybe I will send some food aide here in a year or two. later...heard it all before// ab

allen brown of WA 4:04PM December 27, 2008

We don't have enough land here like in Holland. Most of King county is locked up in watershed and nationa forest forever. Only a small strip if land between the mountains and the sound is available for development. the makes the lots that do exist and the homes on them rare and valuable in a special way like in holland.
this is why we are behind the rest of the country in our correction. But when the local job market goes south and especially when boeing leaves town, this palce will fold up like a card table. It rains here 8 months of the year and most people realize sooner or later that it actually sucks to live in Seattle

Greg Fillman of WA 1:57PM November 11, 2008

The experts are the ones that got the general public into this situation. Why would I listen to a real estate broker in the middle of a housing crash? After all real estate agents sell houses, a housing crash means you lose money. You would have no reason to pay attention to the facts as they wouldn't suit you. Facts are prices in Seattle are falling and will continue to. The Northwest is about a year behind the rest of the country as far as the Case Shiller index is concerned it has been that way for years. If you want to see what the future for Seattle looks like look at the chart.
http://bp2.blogger.com/_1J3jBnbSjmU/SJDRf1ydPBI/AAAAAAAAAJE/0JqaC4b9ksI/s1600-h/CSHomePrice_20_May08.jpg
And follow the Trends of the past 7 years of data.
Trends won't be broken by wishful thinking.

Housing watcher of OR 4:54PM September 13, 2008

Well,...how does Seattle home prices compare to other comprehible cities? Is a 2 bedroom apartment cheaper now in San Francisco, Chicago, NYC? I mean it's rough when you compare Seattle to Phoenix or Las Vegas,....
Personally,...I hope the prices drop,...but I don't think it'll drop more than 10% in King County,...maybe on higher end homes,....but not the bottom of the barrel homes that most of this forum seem to want to get into.

gluv of 8:37PM July 16, 2008

It is too bad that ALL Realtors are looked at in such a poor light by some people. I am an agent and I dont prey on people who cannot afford to buy a house or push people into homes they cannot afford. Its simply not good long term business. I need to sell to survive this is true but I work really hard for my money. Also, I dont make 6% . I split 6% with the other agent involved in the deal and some of us then give part of that 3% to our brokers leaving us with even less. It can take me months to earn that 3% . Some agents make a lot of money but the majority make average incomes. I have only closed 2 deals so far this year and have earned less then when I used to wait tables.
Right now it is hard to find buyers that can get a loan , this is making times very hard for agents as our incomes have dropped 30% or more this year. plus its always feast or famine in real estate. I hope that prices drop so my friends and family can afford to buy homes in Seattle and I think they will to a degree. If the national economy continues to fall then Seattle will eventually feel the effects.
The main problem right now is that even if someone wants to buy the lenders are making it very hard. One escrow agent told me that 80% of her clients were waiting on their loans to go through so they could close on their new home. They were all past the original close date and many of them will not go through at all.
A few bad apples .... I will always be the ethical person that I was before I become a realtor and its too bad that some really unethical people have given us all a bad name.

BK of WA 5:09PM July 16, 2008

Consider these facts:
1) 95% of all the republican and democratic presidential candidates are members of the pro-war and pro-North American Union (NAU) Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a private thinktank aligned with the central banker's dream for a world government under the United Nations (a mouthpiece for private wealth). What's even more interesting is that the majority of Americans aren't aware of this, or if they are aware, they get stupid and sweep this under the rug as a bunch of garbage.
2) The fact that the election has already been stolen by private interests that desire war with Iran means much greater inflation of the US dollar and a worsening economy as a greater division of wealth continues.
3) Inflation of our currency is the biggest problem facing us. Markets can bounce, housing prices can go up, but it's all completely meaningless in the face of runaway, long-term inflation of our currency. Nobody gets to retire when their home equity is worthless due to extreme inflation.
4) The average baby boomer will retire with $180K plus home equity. That's not enough to pay for medical costs in retirement. Guess who will pay the rest? U.S. TAX PAYERS. The bill will be upwards of $60 trillion for social security and Medicare, alone. This will drive the US dollar straight into the ground as the government "prints" money to pay that debt.
5) Rising fuel prices also mean rising food costs. Most Americans are already in deep debt. Cut off their credit and you kill them as consumers, and you kill the US economy.
6) Goodbye housing market and also your retirement. The US economy has NOTHING to stand on. It does not exist in a vacuum.

Tim McGuire of WA 2:52PM June 24, 2008

The homes I have seen within the Seattle core that have been sitting on the market are the homes which are near busy streets, have funky floor plans, or not updated. Those homes which are in desirable neighborhoods with decent floorplans and no obvious negatives are still selling well.
I think our market downturn will result in a 5% to 15% downward adjustment in prices within the Seattle city limits, bringing it in line with past average growth. I don't see the sky falling, and if I had to live in my Million dollar condo a few more years before selling, I'd be comfortable with that. I don't have any problem getting loans even in today's climate, and I suspect most normal home buyers wouldn't either....

anon of WA 12:16PM June 22, 2008

If Seattle is doing so well why the don't they put some money into the roads. Some of the worst in the northwest! The bridges? The ferries? Seattle is a beautiful setting with a lot of entertaining things to do. But it's looking trashy. For everyone who thinks it's the best, look around, take some pride.
Seattle may handle the downfall better than some cities with the housing, it's yet to be seen, from all of the reading I have done on the world economy and the ugly surprises yet to come, I will be surprised if it doesn't hit Seattle just like everywhere else. We are not in typical down times. This is far worse than the 70's or the 80's or the 90's. Read some of the articles by the richest, smartes investors, they aren't so positive about the future of the economy. If they are right, than how is that this one city will not have it's down turn as well. Especially when so many of it's population are already suffering from financial woes?

Joe of WA 6:52PM June 15, 2008

Yet despite all this, we still have the whole credit fiasco going on. Regardless of "basic supply & demand", we've seen banks begin to tighten standards for mortgages... just like they should have years ago (and thus avoiding this subprime mess).
Now we're beginning to see some problems moving into other areas of lending, including cars, credit cards, student loans, home equity and commercial real estate. Any financial player or product that has been involved with securitization will be hit hard as this credit panic deepens. With tightening up in those fields, we're going to have even less people who can even qualify for a home loan... especially since people's budgets and credit are taking huge hits in light of increasing food, energy and housing costs. And that reduction of creditworthy customers reduces the pool of "eligible" buyers further still, increasing the supply relative to the actual number of folks who can buy.
And as I mentioned above, the energy bubble going on now. Gas is nearly $4.40/gal and oil hit $140/barrel last week. People can't afford the gas to commute from North Bend to Seattle as it is, it'll be far worse as it passes the $5 mark. And in light of the issues starting to sprout in other loans, it is getting harder to buy a new, more efficient car.
What we'll ultimately see is something like a 20% drop in the major urban centers (Sea, Tac, Bel, Eve) but bigger drops the farther you go out. If fuel prices stay above$4.50 for good, we'll see the burbs collapse and a mass exodus back to the urban cores. And thus prices will rebound... we're witnessing the opposite of suburbanization. It won't happen overnight, but it is happening.
Anyone who says they've seen it all before is not noticing that this current financial panic is not like anything anyone has seen before.

Thorax O'Tool of WA 12:22AM June 10, 2008

I've been invested in th Seattle Real Estate Market for over 25 years. Nobody said "The Market always goes up." Seattle has averaged about 8-9% per year when averaged over the past 25 years.
The market will always met basic economic prinicples in that if buyers start competing for sellers, prices will drop and vice versa. In the past, and in general, there have been more buyers than sellers in Seattle and that's why continue building occurs and the outside perimeter now goes out to North Bend. (It didn'teven used to reach Issaquah 25 years ago.) The reality is, people will continue moving to Seattle. The fallacy is the belief that the market will crash. People predicted that around 1989,and sure enough prices did drop to a point when supply outweighed demand, but, then people stop selling. Contrary to the belief above, not everybody who has a house for sale has to sell it. (Most smart investors didn't by the crazy loans, and most people in general didn't) Seattle is full of smart investors, and they're beginning to look for the buys. They aren't selling right now, and they're sure not going to give their houses away. I bought a house by Greenlake for $53,000 22 years ago. Just because it'll now sell for $415,000 instead of $480,000 as predicted doesn't mean I have to sell it. I believe most of the people predicting a huge drop are those who are not in the market or haven't been in it very long, don't own homes and are hoping the market will crash so they can have a chance to get in. Most of us don't really care if it goes down 10-20%, we've seen that all before. Don't forget that the population of the world doubles every 50 years and is now going from 4 to 8 billion. Seattle is a Pacific Rim City. The sky isn't falling, the market is just correcting.

Dale of WA 10:41PM June 09, 2008