Comments on: Seattle Bubble Says Seattle Markets Going UP!

By: Bob Martin

Bob Martin — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 06:39:41 +0000

I think Seattle Bubble is right.Because With so many exchange traded funds available now, it has become possible to maximize investment return by creating a strategy that rotates assets between exchange traded funds such a technique can permit a trader to find sectors that are increasing in price no matter what the current market climate is. Visit AT:houston condo

By: Kary L. Krismer

Kary L. Krismer — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 00:29:13 +0000

Matthew, rest assured I’d ridicule (or at least challenge) someone bullish on the real estate market too. I don’t believe in these silly predictions. It dates back to the late 90s and seeing people in Internet sites make predictions on stock, and people on CNBC doing the same thing. Competely worthless information, IMHO. And determining where a single company’s stock is headed should be a lot easier task than predicting where real estate prices are headed.

By: Rhonda Porter

Rhonda Porter — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 22:27:46 +0000

Thanks, Matthew. I just wanted to make sure.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 22:05:10 +0000

Rhonda,

Only the first part of my post was addressed to you, the rest was to Kary, sorry for the lack of clarity in the post.

By: Kary L. Krismer

Kary L. Krismer — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 00:20:16 +0000

Case-Shiller doesn’t better suit me at all. The NWMLS data is available within about a week of the close of a month. And as you noted, I can limit it to certain types of properties and certain areas (although I’ve never figured out how the papers break out the Seattle numbers since the areas don’t track the city line perfectly). King County is about as big of an area as I would ever use.

The NWMLS data only excludes basically the FSBOs, and quite frankly I’d rather exclude them (they can be low or high for any number of reasons).

BTW, you can access a portion of the current data here (with additional data for King and Snohomish).

http://www.nwrealestate.com/nwrpub/common/mktg.cfm

By: deeplennon

deeplennon — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 23:30:56 +0000

Yes Kary, I’m aware you said annualized and that you were referring to median #s, and now that you’ve posted them I know you were referring specifically to median SFH only for King County specifically.

The Case-Shiller index, as you should already be aware, is considered the most accurate gauge of home prices that there is. You’ve in fact pointed out how, as a local realtor, preferring C-S may suit you well better the October Case-Shiller index YOY was higher than the October Median SFH K.C. price YOY, (+3.3% vs +0.9%). All that said, I don’t see how 3% (annualized to 7.2%, which is less than 03, 04, 05 or 06) is a big run up in prices, and between you and me regarding your L.A. vs Seattle comments, 47.1% in 32 months -is- a significant run up in prices.

Oh and Case-Shiller is similar to HPI in that they track the sales of individual houses, though they don’t include refi’s like the main HPI index does.

Side trivia: annualized between July and November there was 28.7% decrease in ‘median’ house prices.

and to play the guessing game with biliruben, I think the February C-S #’s will be the first to go negative. For those waiting they come out the last Tuesday of every month for the month two months prior.

By: Alan

Alan — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 23:29:09 +0000

Case-Shiller compares sales on the same property. It is also always three months stale. Median YOY was still positive in October. It shouldn’t surprise that C-S is also showing positive from back then. The March-April report will give data for December-January.

By: biliruben

biliruben — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 21:21:59 +0000

The latest C-S data is back from October, but you are right, Kary. My guess is It won’t get negative YOY until March-April.

By: Kary L. Krismer

Kary L. Krismer — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 20:57:49 +0000

Also, I said 20% annualized, not 20% in over those months.

By: Kary L. Krismer

Kary L. Krismer — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 20:50:09 +0000

BTW, I think Case-Shiller is still showing us up year to year. I don’t recall exactly how they do their numbers, but it’s not just looking at mean or median of sales.