Can we define “recovery?” What exactly do you mean by “recovery?” Home prices the same as 3 years ago? Or home prices that just don’t drop every month? Since the last few years were an anamoly of easy credit/bad loans/unsustainable house prices, what exactly are you looking at to say, “We’ve made it. We’re there. We’ve recovered.”

Incidently, I rent. My rent was $1460/w utilities for a 3 bedroom, 2 bath in Issaquah. I just signed another year lease. It just dropped to $1360. That’s the lowest it’s been since I moved to Seattle in 2006.

Weird.

You are right that this post is about a possible housing shortage – specifically in single family homes. And I am not at all sure the the encouraging signs is see are price rise or an uplift in the mis of prices – the latter may be then more likely. But the Months Supply numbers are giving us some interesting numbers to chew on. I did a little study last week on months Supply in King County and in a couple of specific neighborhoods:
Four months supply in the middle price ranges feels to me like it is getting pretty tight. Perhaps a sniff or rising prices will prompt more people to put their houses on the market and squash it, and maybe we’ll start seeing inventory building up again in the Fall. I’d just like us to be careful when we talk about oversupply or undersupply to specify whether we are talking about single family houses or condominiums – those seem to be increasingly two different worlds.

It’s apparent to me as a long-time custom home architect: with all the foreclosed houses available at discounted prices, realtors and architects’ customer/clients have no incentive to build new and/or remodel until said construction inventory is worked off. However buying off the bargain shelf is the smart thing to do using the savings to upgrade the perhaps fortunate purchase.

The post is about facing a housing shortage. There is a lot of chatter on the internet and in Real Estate offices that as construction stops we will eventually run out of new construction inventory. The theory is if we stop creating supply the demand will catch up.

What I was pointing out is that we have thousands of projects with multiple units in the pipe line. They may never be built at this point. Jobs are very questionable for the State of Washington and Seattle. We have had a holier than thou attitude here. That’s why I always point out the CAP Initiative. When most cities encourage large scale anchor development Seattle has shunned it.

Seattle has forsaken night life for keeping the quiet neighborhood feel in our down town core. Rents are rampant for commercial space while we have a police force figuring out how to boost parking meter fines. It’s no accident that the parking lot tycoon is building quality low rise office space on Elliot. He can certainly afford it.

I have a long list of stymied development plans for Seattle. We have spent more concern for the Monorail than having a world class destination to operate it in.

So in terms of supply we have yet to build the low and middle income housing units that are a prerequisite to the Comprehensive Plan. That will be thousands of units that are mandatory.

Yeah, yeah, yeah people tell me that we can just allow the housing units already built to revert to low income. Unfortunately too many people have already bought in at premium prices.