Author Archives: Galen

An Improving Seattle Real Estate Market in Three Charts

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We dug into the numbers on the Estately blog to see if we could make sense of the Seattle real estate crunch we’ve been hearing so much about. The summary: the market looks healthier this year than in the previous two and, in the first week of March, a whopping 1 in 3 homes sold for above the original listing price. We are looking at homes (not condos or townhomes) in Seattle and King County (excluding Seattle).

The numbers paint the picture of a recovering market:

1. Increasing numbers of homes sold, year-over-year…

Homes Sold

2. … And less homes for sale…

Active Listings

3. … means dramatically lower inventory:

Months of Inventory

More on the Estately blog

These stats not compiled, verified or published by The Northwest Multiple Listing Service

Remember When There Was No Bubble?

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It’s been 4 years – let’s reminisce for a moment, shall we?

I remember. I also remember incurring the wrath of the bubble blogger set with a slightly too subtle dig at the no bubble stance. For the record I said that saying there is no bubble was a “crazy statement.”

But my predictions (which I’m having trouble finding) were imperfect. I predicted a 10-25% decline in home values at the worst and thought the likely bursting of the bubble (which I fully acknowledged!) would actually be a persistent leak – that we would have flat prices for 10-15 years while inflation ate away values.

I thought the government would be so averse to home prices dropping that they would do everything to keep them stable – even at the expense of the economy. Apparently I underestimated the size of the problem. Or I overestimated the powers of the government. By a lot.

And we aren’t out of it yet. This crazy prediction is already true for parts of California (from this post):

>How much do you expect the $400,000 to $500,000 market to drop?

If we have a “soft landing

It Never Rains in Seattle

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At least it never rains on the Google StreetView car.


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As you virtually walk the neighborhoods of Seattle with StreetView (It’s New! Yesterday!), you’ll see some cloudy days:


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But no rainy days.

When I was growing up, my dad’s favorite description of Seattle came from a “give us a slogan contest” on the radio: Living in Seattle is like being married to a beautiful woman who is always sick.

Thankfully, Google StreetView is only showing us Seattle on her better days. Here is some virtual sight-seeing for ya:

Troll:


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Lenin:


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A disappointingly unfunny Lusty Lady:


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The always-imposing Rainier Cold Storage:


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Metal beasts on the waterfront:


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And finally, the infernal Duck truck (don’t ride the ducks!):


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Photo Synth will change real estate

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Remember how we were once blown away by the amount of information on the web? The number of facts, rumors, discussions, and, well, the shear number of words that were generated daily?

The textual web is fascinating, but it’s yesterday’s news. The innovation now is the visual web. It’s already begun with Google Street View – you can look out the window of a virtual car on nearly every street in a metropolitan area now. Next up? PhotoSynth. We saw previews of it two years ago, but (holy smokes!) it will be real in 24 hours.

Photosynth takes overlapping photos and constructs a pseudo 3D scene out of them. More images: better scene. An agent could take 400 photos in a house and instead of virtual tours (or annoying video tours), users could walk themselves through the house.

I can only imagine it will get more powerful. Add some more horsepower and they could create scenes from video. Add some more horsepower and they could let you travel through time in a square – through all of the previous users “synths.” You’ll be able to wander off of Google’s Street View and into someone’s yard and, if they’ve uploaded photos, into their home. Creepy, but cool.

I will be very excited to use it. Once they’re “cool enough” to support my operating system. What is this, 1999?

nope.

no, you aren't

Avoid Seattle's nasty traffic jams

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Google is now predicting traffic in the future to help you avoid nasty Seattle traffic on freeways, but that is nothing compared to…

Microsoft’s Clear Flow doesn’t just tell you that traffic usually sucks on Thursdays at 5:30 (because if you’ve driven on I5 twice at rush hour, you already know that). It tells you the best route to take and it includes side street speeds in it’s analysis. It doesn’t leave it to your wits to find the fastest route – it tells you the fastest route. It is one of the smartest real products the company has created in years. Now if it didn’t ask me to finesse the address when I type in a street address and a zip code, it would hands-down amazing.

$435,000 Ballard home: only $900 a month

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But only if you’ll send a check to Rev Robin Beaty in West Africa. I just put up a post on the Estately blog, but I thought I’d alert the RCG community to the more-humorous-than-dangerous side of real estate scamming (Reba keeps it real with the scary real estate scamster stories).

We received the following by someone clearly looking for a good deal on Seattle rents ($900 for a Ballard 2BR is tough to pass up).

JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW THAT THERE IS A DUDE SAYING THAT HE IS RENTING THIS HOUSE OUT! HE SAYS THAT HE IS REV ROBIN BEATY AND HE IS A MISSIONARY IN WEST AFRICA AND WILL SEND THE KEYS TO THE HOME AFTER RECIEVING $900 FOR TH E FIRST MONTH RENT.

Our hot tipper goes on to wish, as I do, that people had the common sense to avoid scams like this. Word to the unwise: don’t send the dude your money.

The first local information site to do it right

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Why can’t I wait for EveryBlock to hit Seattle? I’m nosy. I like knowing where houses are being built in my neighborhood, I love knowing when a local restaurant was shut down by the health department, and I’m a sucker for truly local – like my neighborhood – news and sometimes the Capitol Hill blog is just slightly behind the times or just slightly east of 15th. I also want to know about crimes more minor than the Tully’s hold up.