Off to see K.D. Lang in Tacoma!
First a quick trip to The Museum of Glass in Tacoma.
It’s Tacoma night 🙂
Sunday Night Stats – not
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Category Archives: Seattle Real Estate Stats
Seattle Sounders and the Space Needle
When I first saw the pictures below taken by Damon Cortesi who I know as @dacort on Twitter, it was St. Patrick’s Day. I thought the green “hat” on the space needle was a Lepruchan’s hat 🙂 I didn’t know why it wasn’t all green.
Kim told me that the blue and green colors on the Space Needle are for the Seattle Sounders Football Club. Tickets for their inaugural game were sold out well ahead of time, and they WON!
But this is a post about the fabulous night shots taken by Damon, and I appreciate his permission to post them here for everyone’s enjoyment. Thanks @dacort !
A Little Beauty
Savannah Jane
This one was a born thinker 🙂 My Grandaughter. I had the privelege of holding her minutes after she was born, and I could see the wheels turning. Wouldn’t you love to know what she’s thinking about?
ING Bank suing under RICO statutes to recover losses by alleged local real estate fraud ring.
Here is the article from the Seattle Times.
Excerpt:
In one deal, the bank loaned a borrower $935,000 to buy a Tacoma house for $1.35 million — a house that, according to the real-estate Web site Zillow, is valued higher than 99 percent of homes in its ZIP code. Nationwide Home Lending was paid nearly $30,000 in fees on that loan.
I’ve just dropped an entire commentary I wrote within this post regarding the fantasy idea some people believe that our local area is somewhat insulated from the garbage and degenerates destroying our markets and economy due to greed and fraud.
In essence, my post can be wrapped up in these questions:
- Ethically, is this industry too far gone to recover any resemblance of credibility, trust and moral foundation?
- How will the real estate brokers weed out the bad actors? We know DFI is going after loan officers and others.
Fortunately, I know and work with quite a few agents and loan officers who genuinely try to do their very best for their customers. Unfortunately, many of them and others who work in real estate are caught in the enormous wake of the problems the fraudsters have created.
Sunday Night Stats – Prices Improving?
We all know that prices can’t go up in large leaps the same way that they can drop significantly in a short time. It takes a lot longer to go up than down, due to appraisal issues.
It will take many weeks to build up enough data post Obama $8,000 Stimulus Credit to form any conclusions. But you have to start somewhere 🙂 Stats prior to the credit are somewhat irrelevant at the moment except to later see if in hindsight pre-credit was “bottom”. We won’t know that until next 4th Quarter and January of 2010. Until then, we’ll track week to week until we build up enough data to do larger market segments.
I am using MPPSF Pending Inspection King County SFH, as these are the most recent “went under contract” homes. The green columns are properties that went under contract pending inspection Monday March 2nd through Sunday the 8th. The purple columns went under contract pending inspection Monday the 9th through Sunday the 15th.
I broke the stats down into under $500,000 (2 columns on the left) and $500,000 to $1M (2 columns on the right). The lower priced segment is doing better, but both show slight improvements. These are asking prices, so all this is telling us at the moment is that buyers seem to be making offers on houses that are not priced quite as low on a median price per square foot basis, as they were pre-homebuyer credit. We won’t know if actual prices close higher until we get at least 45 to 60 days in front of the credit passing.
Data is not compiled or posted by NWMLS (required disclosure)
King County Home Prices inching Upward?
The “White Trim Syndrome”all over Rain City- There’s a whole lot more to designing homes
Mercer Island and a lot of other nice places are being overrun by “Spec Builders” madly producing these oversize boxes with their wide white trim. Other tell-tale touches of their indifferent computer-driven drafting (don’t call it “design”) are the tapered posts with pasted on faux river rock.
While fronts are abundantly and ineptly adorned, both sides and the back are usually left plain- except for perhaps some lumber yard non-wood wide white trim. Here are some examples:
DFI Interpretive Letter on Loan Modifications
DFI has released a first draft of an interpretive letter on loan modifications for Washington State.
DATE: March 10, 2009
FROM: Deborah Bortner, Director, Division of Consumer Services
RE: Loan Modification Services – License Required under the MBPA or CLA
QUESTION PRESENTED: Must loan modification service providers be licensed to offer services to Washington residents?
BRIEF ANSWER: Yes, under the Mortgage Broker Practices Act (MBPA), chapter 19.146 RCW, or Consumer Loan Act (CLA), chapter 31.04 RCW.
DISCUSSION: The Division has received many inquiries regarding the applicability of the MBPA or CLA to loan modification services. According to callers, individuals are communicating directly with borrowers and lenders in order to negotiate loan modifications. In most of the calls, the caller inquires as to what restrictions are applicable to loan modification services.
For purposes of this Interpretive Statement, “loan modification
What a difference a day makes
It was a gorgeous, sunny, blue sky day today! The forecast looks like three days of sunshine and 50 plus degrees on Thursday.
Yesterday…taken at Sixty-01 in Redmond, WA. did someone say only 10 days until Spring? We almost put the Christmas Tree back up for the day.
Taken March 9, 2009 at Sixty-01 in Redmond, WA
When will we reach the bottom?
Ardell called “We’re at the bottom…” in her post February 7th, 2009. We each have our idea of what the bottom is and in her area maybe we are at the bottom. From a macro stand point, I feel we are far from the bottom. As I said in my comment to Ardell, I believe the bottom will be reached when an investor could come in and buy a home and receive about a 7% return on investment from rents.
I am not claiming THIS will be a great time to become an investor, I am saying when someone can come in, buy a house at a price and then rent out that same house and receive a 7%(ish) return the bottom will be in sight. As Ardell said, maybe that is in 2016, mayb not ever.
An EXTREME example of the bottom is being reached in Detroit as seen with investors coming in and buying up 1000s of houses at once. No matter what the economy is doing, everyone needs a place to stay.
Sunday Night Stats – Housing Market is “Stimulated”
As you can see from the graphs below, there has been a 50% increase in the number of properties going pending in the last 7 days, compared to the week of 2/7 to 2/14 before the $8,000 “first time” homebuyer credit passed.
427 sales went pending in the first week in March. That’s a 50% increase over the 286 that went pending in the 2nd week in February.
The second graph shows the increase in the number of homes that are selling in 30 days or less. Not sure if that increase is “normal” for January through the first week in March though. Still, worth reporting the positive trend upward.
I combined condos with single family homes in King County. I think it’s fair to say that the credit stimulated home sales. It’s also fair to say that people waiting for the credit, depressed home sales in the previous period. So the real stimulus may lie somewhere in between.
On a side note, I am hearing of a few pending sales falling out, because the owner/seller is now eligible for the new assistance that came out on 3/4, and may not “have to” sell after all.
King County Condo and Home Sales Improved by 50%
% of homes and condos sold in 30 days or less improving
Statistics are not compiled or posted by NWMLS