Homebuyers are taking on monthly payments 59% higher than at the 2007 peak of the previous housing bubble.
Seattle Bubble
by The Tim
1y ago
As of February, the monthly payment for the median-price single-family home sold in King County at current mortgage rates was $3,945. The good news: This is down from an eye-watering $4,758 in October. The bad news: This is up dramatically from just a year prior, and 59% higher than what we saw at the peak of the previous housing bubble. Even if you adjust the July 2007 peak payment for inflation, it only comes out to about $3,586 in 2023 dollars, meaning that the October 2022 peak was 34% higher, and as of February homebuyers are still looking at payments 10% above the highest level recorded ..read more
Visit website
Home prices are finally falling around Seattle—more than most places in the nation
Seattle Bubble
by The Tim
1y ago
Let’s check up on what’s happening with the Seattle-area housing market in early 2023, shall we? Here’s a look at the median home sale price for King County: As you can see, not only are home prices down year over year (7%), but they’re also down 20% from the May peak, and with another month of flat prices, will be down from 2021 levels, as well. This is great news, of course it is entirely offset by the surge in mortgage rates that had been held artificially low for over a decade back to a more typical level over 6%. Here’s how the Seattle area stacks up to the rest of the nation, according ..read more
Visit website
Time for the housing market to detox from low mortgage rates
Seattle Bubble
by The Tim
1y ago
Remember way back in 2010, when the Associated Press declared that “the era of record-low mortgage rates is over”? Or a few years later in 2013 when 4% mortgage rates were widely described as “soaring”? Pepperidge Farm remembers. Mortgage rates have been a frequent topic of discussion on these pages over the years since they have such a large impact on the housing market. Here are a few of our headlines over the years… April 2012: Will Higher Interest Rates Kill the Housing Market? September 2015: Affordability Will Be Destroyed if Interest Rates Increase September 2020: Plunging mortgage rate ..read more
Visit website
So… what the heck is going on with the Seattle housing market?
Seattle Bubble
by The Tim
2y ago
Since we’ve been gone for so long, I thought I’d start back up with somewhat of an overview post. Let’s just take a look at what’s going on in the Seattle-area (King County) housing market recently. One of the biggest topics on everybody’s mind lately is home prices, so let’s start there. The median price of single-family homes sold in King County in February was $857,750, up 14% from a year earlier. As you can see, prices are down slightly from the all-time high of $871,000 back in July, but over the past few years they have really shot up at a ridiculously fast pace. That said, home afforda ..read more
Visit website
Eliminating single-family zoning is a good idea, and Christopher Kirk’s Seattle Times editorial is a steaming pile of garbage
Seattle Bubble
by The Tim
2y ago
An editorial by Christopher Kirk in the Seattle Times yesterday was so stupid I had no choice but to finally come back here and respond. Here’s the link: Statewide rezoning of single-family neighborhoods is a terrible idea Now, before we start it’s worth noting that this piece is described as a “Special to The Times” and the author is not a journalist. He’s not an economist, either. He’s also not an urban planner, and as you’ll see he’s obviously not a historian. He’s an architect whose primary accomplishments listed on his bio attached to the piece are having “served on public historic preser ..read more
Visit website
Cleaning House, Working on Updates
Seattle Bubble
by The Tim
2y ago
Hey, just a quick note to let you know that I’m working on cleaning house here. This includes completely disabling and hiding comments, which have gotten totally out of control and frankly do not add value to the site. It’s possible I may come up with some solution to add comments again in the future, but for now, they’re completely disabled. If you want to share some thoughts with me, feel free to drop me a line directly via the contact form. I’m also working on updating my data, and will work on posting new updates here at least once a week. The market is still pretty crappy for homebuyers ..read more
Visit website
Around the Sound: Still a dismal market for buyers everywhere
Seattle Bubble
by The Tim
3y ago
Get access to the full spreadsheets used to make the charts in this and other posts, and support the ongoing work on this site by becoming a member of Seattle Bubble. Let’s take a look at our stats for the local regions outside of the King/Snohomish core. Here’s your October update to our “Around the Sound” statistics for Pierce, Kitsap, Thurston, Island, Skagit, and Whatcom counties. Things are looking pretty similar all around the Puget Sound region—extremely low supply, high demand, and skyrocketing prices. The one tiny bright spot for buyers is that new listings are higher than they were a ..read more
Visit website
NWMLS: Strongest October ever for closed sales
Seattle Bubble
by The Tim
3y ago
Get access to the full spreadsheets used to make the charts in this and other posts, as well as a variety of additional insider benefits by becoming a member of Seattle Bubble. October market data from the NWMLS is available. Here’s what happened last month in the Seattle-area housing market: Home prices and pending sales fell slightly, but closed sales rose to the highest level ever seen during an October—over 3,000 sales. The previous record for closed sales during an October was 2,922 sales in 2003. October this year saw 20% more sales than the highest October level in the last ten years (2 ..read more
Visit website
“Affordable” home price shot up 33% in less than two years
Seattle Bubble
by The Tim
3y ago
Reminder: Subscribers have access to the members-only spreadsheets folder, which is updated with the charts in this post. As promised last week, here’s an updated look at the “affordable home” price chart. In this graph I flip the variables in the affordability index calculation around to other sides of the equation to calculate what price home the a family earning the median household income could “afford” to buy at today’s mortgage rates, if they spent 30% of their monthly gross income on their home payment. Don’t forget that this math includes the (giant) assumption that the home buyers are ..read more
Visit website
Plunging mortgage rates held off a Seattle home price crash
Seattle Bubble
by The Tim
3y ago
Seattle Bubble spreadsheets are updated even when content isn’t frequently posted. You can get access to the spreadsheets by becoming a member of Seattle Bubble. It’s been quite a while since we’ve had a look at our affordability index charts for the counties around Puget Sound, so let’s have a look at those charts. As of August, the affordability index currently sits at 95.1, which is somewhat lower than the 1993-2002 average of 107.6, but not ridiculously lower. For context, 69 percent of the 331 months on record back through 1993 have had a higher affordability index than what we had in Aug ..read more
Visit website

Follow Seattle Bubble on FeedSpot

Continue with Google
Continue with Apple
OR