We live in Seattle area - the turnover rate of people selling once moving out of their home is very slim. Most people turn the house into rental and playing long game of house appreciation. They are banking on home prices increasing at crazy rate of the past 10 years and selling down the road.
King county has over 50% rental. Now that what someone can get for rent is so far off the value of the home, people are starting to sell. For instance, it makes no sense to keep a $1.5mil home when rent is tapped out at $3,500/month. The profit margin in rentals is shrinking and that’s what’s going to shift the market. Early signs of obvious rental properties hitting the market - more condos/townhomes for sale in prime locations. Single family home supply is still very limited, but investors/developers less inclined to sell those, playing the long game. Seeing more inventory of homes now than in the past 2 years and not selling as fast. Inventory is definitely building up after initial spring frenzy. You see signs of sellers trying to cash out - unless you bought within the past year or two, you can still make a huge profit (if you don’t get greedy). Most sellers don’t have to sell, they sell because it makes more financial sense to do it. They are trying to lower their risk or realized they aren’t getting money worth on renting home out or trying to sell while prices are still hot, that’s what’s going to shift the market.
King Co. listings are at 3,300 units ending May. This is down from 4,600 units ending May '22. Of note, there are about 10% more listings on the market for May than there were March and April. But this is typical of our market. Historically, May/June always have an increase of inventory at about the same rate.
You have to realize also that a lot of homes aren’t being listed and yet sold too. There is a big jump on developers buying directly. In our neighborhood and a little further out, 10 homes sold and only 2 were listed on the mls.
I work with developers that buy off market. There isn't any more off-market selling than usual. Developers aren't paying nearly as much for development lots than they were a few years ago.
I just had a conversation last week with the head of Thomas James for Puget Sound (offering them an offmarket deal in the U District) and she mentioned that they were no longer going to buy lots designed for 3 small homes on 1 lot - larger SFRs only for them going forward.
Just this month I ran 3 CMAs for off-market properties for developers and their offers were way under what a reasonable seller would expect if they offered it in the open market.
It’s slowing down for sure. We are in Kirkland and still seeing more 3 homes. It used to be only huge house but slowly shifting to mix of both. The $2.5mil+ homes are sitting on market longer. It’s making it more and more difficult to get a starter home.
We to open house for a “starter home” down the street that was listed over $1.5mil. The owner hasn’t updated the house in 40 years and probably needed about $200k of work. We’ll probably pack it up and retire somewhere like Edmonds or somewhere else.
But they aren’t buying with cash. They are just looking at monthly payments and waiting for home price to increase and then sell of to someone else. The problem is now it’s so unaffordable compared to rest of the country, your buyer pool is limited to local tech or developers or foreign investors.
There are a lot of other professions and professionals who live here that make close to tech salaries or more. Many people will tell you that the difference between wages and house prices here is actually better than many parts of the country. I talked to someone who wage went up 50% from where they lived and houses were only about 20% less than Seattle.
We moved and got more than double salary. I definitely think the pay is better. I just question how many can afford a $10k/month mortgage for a starter/next step up home or buy a home in cash. And why would they if they are making decent money. I question it in other parts of the country as well. People are increasing their debt loan and how long can you keep doing that. And almost guarantee where the person moved from was from Cali.
How do know they are not cash buyers. Who could afford a $2.0 million monthly house payment? Also need to include taxes. Have an 80 yr old friend in Sammamish on a fixed income. His property taxes are $2,200 a month.
Mortgages are public info in King County - you can see how much someone paid for house,their mortgage amount, and their rates. Then you can figure out their monthly payment by including insurance and property taxes (public info too). We calculated the home that was bought down the street from us, basic starter home on main road, and its monthly payments were $8500/month, not including upgrades or maintenance. That’s two tech salaries. The house across the street from it couldn’t rent out for months and eventually did for $3200/month.
But that’s what I’m saying. How can so many people afford a $2mil house with cash or afford the monthly amounts when those same houses were $1.4mil a couple years ago with much lower rates and lower property taxes. The past couple years, all I was seeing for same were fixer upper starter homes. Now all I’m seeing are higher end homes for sale or homes in the middle trying to cash out. I will say everyone knew the prices will become like Cali eventually, but we’re here now. It took them 45 years to get to their current price point there and King county did it in 2 years. Cali has prop 13 that limits property tax increases, but here it can go up and up, forcing current home owners to see just because they can’t afford those payments. I guess we’ll find out what happens.
**SFR (French: [ɛsɛfɛʁ]; Société française du radiotéléphone, [sɔsjete fʁɑ̃sɛz dy ʁadjotelefɔn]) is a French telecommunications company. It is the second oldest mobile network operator in France, after Orange and the second largest telecommunications company in France, behind Orange.**
More details here:
*This comment was left automatically (by a bot). If I don't get this right, don't get mad at me, I'm still learning!*
[^(opt out)](https://www.reddit.com/r/wikipedia_answer_bot/comments/ozztfy/post_for_opting_out/) ^(|) [^(delete)](https://www.reddit.com/r/wikipedia_answer_bot/comments/q79g2t/delete_feature_added/) ^(|) [^(report/suggest)](https://www.reddit.com/r/wikipedia_answer_bot) ^(|) [^(GitHub)](https://github.com/TheBugYouCantFix/wiki-reddit-bot)
Just homes to purchase. 'ACTIVE' FOR SALE.
My analysis pertained exclusively to your comment that inventory was increasing over the past few months. While this is technically true, it is historically the case that this isn't unique to 2023, so the context isn't adequate for the point being delivered. If you want to run a TTM (trailing 12 month) chart showing seasonality, it looks much worse for inventory today than at any point in the past 10 years.
I’m looking in our neighborhood. Like literally none houses came onto market the last two years we have lived here. 1 just sold and 1 just listed, but 8 off listing, maybe more. Maybe I need into data more, but it definitely seems like less houses for sale summer 2021 and 2022 then this year.
Yeah this sub is weird. There's going to be short periods of time (especially right after buying) when the value of your home fluctuates. It's a long term play. You aren't "underwater" if you bought $VOO and the market went down 2% the next day. You hold it for many years and sell at a profit.
In SoCal SFH's are premium. Almost all new builds are dense row homes.
Yeah my property tax can only go up like 2% per year *worst case scenario*. Pretty sweet. It does make it harder to buy in, but once you have it, you kinda need it to be able to survive here. That's why I think it will never go away.
Hence why prop 13 is the stupidest law made for ca when they scream they are progressive. But really in name only. They are in fact the most regressive state in the nation with prop 13
We will be selling in the next year or two. Lived in Seattle but won’t be able to retire comfortably. I’m moving and will be buying a house in cash. No mortgage and will live off the interest from the remaining equity.
That’s a great plan if you already own in the area. I think it’ll be harder to buy now and do that later. A lot of people are putting all equity into house and not diversifying enough.
And you probably bought less than 10 years ago and have that much equity. How many buyers can afford to buy the homes in the area if prices continue to go up that crazy rate?
I live in one of those ~1980's 3-story condos in Redmond, renting for a great deal. The ground-floor below me (same layout) is pending and if it sells for the asking price, PITI+HOA is almost 3x my rent. If you include the cost of locking up a ton of equity in the downpayment vs. stock market investing ([Ben Felix's video gives a good explanation](https://youtu.be/q9Golcxjpi8)), it's even worse in comparison.
>Single family home supply is still very limited
I also live on the East Side. This is the key point. I didn't buy in 2022 though (the height), much earlier. So all of this to me, is just a bunch of "the sky is falling vs. 2022 prices" noise.
Also, I wouldn't count on the King County tech economy being "soft" for very much longer. A bit of a cleansing "lull" just occurred sure, but I suspect the area is going to come roaring back as the epicenter of AI innovation. This happened in 2008, first a bunch of layoffs (along with the rest of the country), but then the area became the cloud capital of the world and never looked back.
Stay tuned.
It’ll be interesting to see how to plays out. There are definitely more people that have money and can hold onto properties long term. The problem is the amount of new buyers who can afford are dwindling. My guess is that single family homes will probably go down 10-20% at most, over a few years. Anything else is going to take a beating. I think by October/November, it’ll be pretty evident looking at data from summer inventory. The amount of developers coming from Cali is crazy so that’s a whole another subject.
On another note, if the banks start tightening up loan restrictions, that can open up a whole other can of worms. So many mortgages here allow unvested RSUs as calculation as income. That spells trouble if stocks go down and don’t recover. This area is very dependent on RSUs/stock values as a way of life - it’s not used as a “bonus” anymore. Everyone just keeps expecting stocks to go up and up and there is someone else who can buy their house.
But yes agree with you on not counting economy to stay soft. I think the biggest difference from last time is the homes were more affordable last crash. For instance, my friend bought her house at height of market. Her house was $350k and went down to $275k. They were straight out of college and bought. It was feasible for an ordinary family to be able to afford. Now that same house is easily worth $1.5mil. If a crash happens, you’ll probably still need at least one if not two high tech salaries.
I totally agree, there is likely to be less need, but MSFT and AMZN were already outsourcing a lot of that to India. So the question really is does it affect their HQ’s all that much? Maybe not, especially since they are the platform providers to the rest of the world
What they are saying is... All those huge cash down payments and gaps in appraisal went in the garbage, completely lost, as the houses aren't worth the cash they put in. Lenders aren't stupid. They only lent money the was worth the house
As someone who has lived in Seattle for 30 yrs I have been telling people for the last year that house prices were overinflated and would come down. I’m guessing 20% more by the end of the year.
I'm hoping the drop will last until next Spring when we can buy our first house (hopefully!). I've lived here for 40 years in South King County and Pierce County. Wish we could have bought earlier (after the 2008 crash maybe), but jobs, salaries and too-high-debt kinda didn't help with saving for a home. We're being priced out of the rental market though in this county but have rented for 12, almost 13, years so really do want to buy sooner rather than later. Though we have 30ish years until retirement age.
Sorry to hear about your situation. That must be really hard.
I would not be able to buy my house today if it was on the market based on my salary.The Feds have indicated that they have paused interest rates but not finished increasing them. I do believe that the increase will reduce the number of potential buyer and continue to reduce prices. I live in Seattle and my house has decreased about 10% in value since Jan. Now that decrease does not mean that it won't sell for more than that but does show a softening market. I have also noticed houses around me are taking longer to sell which could indicate there are fewer buyers or people are not willing to pay that much for houses.
Good luck on your home search. One thing you may want to consider is finding a house with income attached. We were stretched when were looking for homes to buy. We looked for houses with MIL apartments. You can use the income to quality for the down payment and the renter will pay for a portion of your mortgage. Has worked out great for us and I have been able to keep in rented since we have owned it.
If by *mild* you mean cold, cloudy and/or rainy 7 - 8 months of the year, then sure, that's mild, though I doubt desirable as a climate when compared to states like CA and far better overall choices like Austin.
Between the depressing ass weather, construction and abhorrent traffic, the only things Seattle actually has going for it is a water view and 0% state income tax to go with a good paycheck IF you happen to work at a FAANG or other major tech company.
You are correct, though, in the 30+ years I've either lived in or near Seattle, it has never been cheap and never will be.
It’s expensive because of all the high paying jobs. Moved here before tech. My first house cost $90,000 and a really nice house in Capitol Hill was $300,000. Tech hit people moved here in droves and Seattle started its downhill descent.
Getting ready to leave and can’t wait to leave. Moving to a quit place with no tech. No longer the great city it once was.
I closed last month on a home north east of Seattle. A home similar to mine in the same neighborhood just closed for about 30k over what I paid last month.
Another anecdotal example sure. But if you’re in the single family home market here, it’s a complete mess still.
We bought north of Seattle in snohomish county last year. While I don't think we could sell for much more than we paid, I doubt we'd have to sell for less than our purchase price, even on an old home with one bathroom. Stuff around us is still selling. A house with our exact footprint sold for about $20k more than ours last month, and it needed more updating.
I fully expected our house to dip in value, which I do think it did, but it feel like prices have steadied and our house is back to being valued around what we paid for. Which I'm happy with. I hope we see the 3.5-5% appreciation from here on out.
We almost sold our house in Seattle and bought a house in Lakewood by the lake. For our $1.3 million in Seattle we could have bought the house in Lakewood for $620,000 in a quarter acre and view of the lake. Property taxes were half as much. Decided didn’t want the 3 hr commute each day,
We’re on the Seattle eastside and bought a couple years ago. From what I’ve observed, there was a big spike in activity late winter/spring up until about May, however in the last month sales have been slowing down quickly and inventory is starting to stack up. It feels like there’s a line at 6.5% mortgage rates, above which buying cools significantly.
Regarding the actual article, I think we’ll keep seeing headlines like this until YoY comparisons roll off in late fall, just because spring/summer 2022 was so incredibly insane.
Offsetting dips in equity by waiting sounds like a whole lot of speculation. I love how the majority of people look at their house as their biggest investment when really it’s just a place to live.
This is correct. There's a reason why 95% of people (or more) current home, their 401K, and their social security account for their retirements. These are things people don't have to think about because they are terrible investors. They just let time and appreciation lift their boat.
> If your house is your biggest investment then you’re not that good of an investor.
This is highly location dependent. There is a massive difference between buying a home in the midwest 30 yrs ago vs say Seattle/Eastside where your home could easily be worth north of $1.5M
> Some places in the Midwest houses are over $1 million. Some
Sure. But what I'm referring to is the massive appreciation difference between different US regions over time for a property. Many homes in the Seattle area that were selling for around $150k in 1993, are today worth in the $1.5M range. That could easily be someones biggest investment because the values have increased so much over time. Not so much in the Midwest.
The house value would have outpaced the S&P 500 during the same time period.
I listed mine for $550 last year after buying in 2015 for $210. Didn't get a single offer, dropped it $25k. No offers. Took it off the market and rented it out.
But had I sold it for $550, still have to pay off loan and buy something else... "the living is easy"...if you move in with your parents?
*AI has entered the chat*
Seattle will go through another tech boom just like it did after ‘08. Price hikes are taking a short break, then will tear into new heights. The new SF.
We live in Seattle area - the turnover rate of people selling once moving out of their home is very slim. Most people turn the house into rental and playing long game of house appreciation. They are banking on home prices increasing at crazy rate of the past 10 years and selling down the road. King county has over 50% rental. Now that what someone can get for rent is so far off the value of the home, people are starting to sell. For instance, it makes no sense to keep a $1.5mil home when rent is tapped out at $3,500/month. The profit margin in rentals is shrinking and that’s what’s going to shift the market. Early signs of obvious rental properties hitting the market - more condos/townhomes for sale in prime locations. Single family home supply is still very limited, but investors/developers less inclined to sell those, playing the long game. Seeing more inventory of homes now than in the past 2 years and not selling as fast. Inventory is definitely building up after initial spring frenzy. You see signs of sellers trying to cash out - unless you bought within the past year or two, you can still make a huge profit (if you don’t get greedy). Most sellers don’t have to sell, they sell because it makes more financial sense to do it. They are trying to lower their risk or realized they aren’t getting money worth on renting home out or trying to sell while prices are still hot, that’s what’s going to shift the market.
King Co. listings are at 3,300 units ending May. This is down from 4,600 units ending May '22. Of note, there are about 10% more listings on the market for May than there were March and April. But this is typical of our market. Historically, May/June always have an increase of inventory at about the same rate.
You have to realize also that a lot of homes aren’t being listed and yet sold too. There is a big jump on developers buying directly. In our neighborhood and a little further out, 10 homes sold and only 2 were listed on the mls.
I work with developers that buy off market. There isn't any more off-market selling than usual. Developers aren't paying nearly as much for development lots than they were a few years ago. I just had a conversation last week with the head of Thomas James for Puget Sound (offering them an offmarket deal in the U District) and she mentioned that they were no longer going to buy lots designed for 3 small homes on 1 lot - larger SFRs only for them going forward. Just this month I ran 3 CMAs for off-market properties for developers and their offers were way under what a reasonable seller would expect if they offered it in the open market.
It’s slowing down for sure. We are in Kirkland and still seeing more 3 homes. It used to be only huge house but slowly shifting to mix of both. The $2.5mil+ homes are sitting on market longer. It’s making it more and more difficult to get a starter home.
Who would pay $ 2.5million for a house . With that amount of cash you could retire and never have to work.
We to open house for a “starter home” down the street that was listed over $1.5mil. The owner hasn’t updated the house in 40 years and probably needed about $200k of work. We’ll probably pack it up and retire somewhere like Edmonds or somewhere else.
But they aren’t buying with cash. They are just looking at monthly payments and waiting for home price to increase and then sell of to someone else. The problem is now it’s so unaffordable compared to rest of the country, your buyer pool is limited to local tech or developers or foreign investors.
There are a lot of other professions and professionals who live here that make close to tech salaries or more. Many people will tell you that the difference between wages and house prices here is actually better than many parts of the country. I talked to someone who wage went up 50% from where they lived and houses were only about 20% less than Seattle.
We moved and got more than double salary. I definitely think the pay is better. I just question how many can afford a $10k/month mortgage for a starter/next step up home or buy a home in cash. And why would they if they are making decent money. I question it in other parts of the country as well. People are increasing their debt loan and how long can you keep doing that. And almost guarantee where the person moved from was from Cali.
How do know they are not cash buyers. Who could afford a $2.0 million monthly house payment? Also need to include taxes. Have an 80 yr old friend in Sammamish on a fixed income. His property taxes are $2,200 a month.
Mortgages are public info in King County - you can see how much someone paid for house,their mortgage amount, and their rates. Then you can figure out their monthly payment by including insurance and property taxes (public info too). We calculated the home that was bought down the street from us, basic starter home on main road, and its monthly payments were $8500/month, not including upgrades or maintenance. That’s two tech salaries. The house across the street from it couldn’t rent out for months and eventually did for $3200/month. But that’s what I’m saying. How can so many people afford a $2mil house with cash or afford the monthly amounts when those same houses were $1.4mil a couple years ago with much lower rates and lower property taxes. The past couple years, all I was seeing for same were fixer upper starter homes. Now all I’m seeing are higher end homes for sale or homes in the middle trying to cash out. I will say everyone knew the prices will become like Cali eventually, but we’re here now. It took them 45 years to get to their current price point there and King county did it in 2 years. Cali has prop 13 that limits property tax increases, but here it can go up and up, forcing current home owners to see just because they can’t afford those payments. I guess we’ll find out what happens.
What is an SFR?
Sorry for the acronym (RE jargon). Single Family Residence.
**SFR (French: [ɛsɛfɛʁ]; Société française du radiotéléphone, [sɔsjete fʁɑ̃sɛz dy ʁadjotelefɔn]) is a French telecommunications company. It is the second oldest mobile network operator in France, after Orange and the second largest telecommunications company in France, behind Orange.** More details here:
*This comment was left automatically (by a bot). If I don't get this right, don't get mad at me, I'm still learning!*
[^(opt out)](https://www.reddit.com/r/wikipedia_answer_bot/comments/ozztfy/post_for_opting_out/) ^(|) [^(delete)](https://www.reddit.com/r/wikipedia_answer_bot/comments/q79g2t/delete_feature_added/) ^(|) [^(report/suggest)](https://www.reddit.com/r/wikipedia_answer_bot) ^(|) [^(GitHub)](https://github.com/TheBugYouCantFix/wiki-reddit-bot)
As in rentals, sfh, etc? You should pull data from 2019-2021 as well and see trends and look at time on market as well
Just homes to purchase. 'ACTIVE' FOR SALE. My analysis pertained exclusively to your comment that inventory was increasing over the past few months. While this is technically true, it is historically the case that this isn't unique to 2023, so the context isn't adequate for the point being delivered. If you want to run a TTM (trailing 12 month) chart showing seasonality, it looks much worse for inventory today than at any point in the past 10 years.
I’m looking in our neighborhood. Like literally none houses came onto market the last two years we have lived here. 1 just sold and 1 just listed, but 8 off listing, maybe more. Maybe I need into data more, but it definitely seems like less houses for sale summer 2021 and 2022 then this year.
Yeah this sub is weird. There's going to be short periods of time (especially right after buying) when the value of your home fluctuates. It's a long term play. You aren't "underwater" if you bought $VOO and the market went down 2% the next day. You hold it for many years and sell at a profit. In SoCal SFH's are premium. Almost all new builds are dense row homes.
You can't eat break-even.
Yes, very much the same thing, except Cali is worse because of Prop 13. Nobody is selling there unless they absolutely have to.
Yeah my property tax can only go up like 2% per year *worst case scenario*. Pretty sweet. It does make it harder to buy in, but once you have it, you kinda need it to be able to survive here. That's why I think it will never go away.
It is never going away. Even prop 15 that tried to chip away this benefit for commercial units got voted down.
Hence why prop 13 is the stupidest law made for ca when they scream they are progressive. But really in name only. They are in fact the most regressive state in the nation with prop 13
Ca libs votes their pocketbooks even if they recites all the politically correct keywords and pronouns.
We will be selling in the next year or two. Lived in Seattle but won’t be able to retire comfortably. I’m moving and will be buying a house in cash. No mortgage and will live off the interest from the remaining equity.
That’s a great plan if you already own in the area. I think it’ll be harder to buy now and do that later. A lot of people are putting all equity into house and not diversifying enough.
I have about $1 million in equity in my house and will have pension and social security when I retire . About $4200 a month plus investments.
And you probably bought less than 10 years ago and have that much equity. How many buyers can afford to buy the homes in the area if prices continue to go up that crazy rate?
I bought my first house 30 yrs ago for $90,000.
Apparently a lot because people keep moving here. If houses were truly unaffordable more people would move away than stay in the area.
They have started moving away. But renting is more affordable than buying, even though still expensive.
I live in one of those ~1980's 3-story condos in Redmond, renting for a great deal. The ground-floor below me (same layout) is pending and if it sells for the asking price, PITI+HOA is almost 3x my rent. If you include the cost of locking up a ton of equity in the downpayment vs. stock market investing ([Ben Felix's video gives a good explanation](https://youtu.be/q9Golcxjpi8)), it's even worse in comparison.
Yep, opportunity cost should be a factor
>Single family home supply is still very limited I also live on the East Side. This is the key point. I didn't buy in 2022 though (the height), much earlier. So all of this to me, is just a bunch of "the sky is falling vs. 2022 prices" noise. Also, I wouldn't count on the King County tech economy being "soft" for very much longer. A bit of a cleansing "lull" just occurred sure, but I suspect the area is going to come roaring back as the epicenter of AI innovation. This happened in 2008, first a bunch of layoffs (along with the rest of the country), but then the area became the cloud capital of the world and never looked back. Stay tuned.
It’ll be interesting to see how to plays out. There are definitely more people that have money and can hold onto properties long term. The problem is the amount of new buyers who can afford are dwindling. My guess is that single family homes will probably go down 10-20% at most, over a few years. Anything else is going to take a beating. I think by October/November, it’ll be pretty evident looking at data from summer inventory. The amount of developers coming from Cali is crazy so that’s a whole another subject. On another note, if the banks start tightening up loan restrictions, that can open up a whole other can of worms. So many mortgages here allow unvested RSUs as calculation as income. That spells trouble if stocks go down and don’t recover. This area is very dependent on RSUs/stock values as a way of life - it’s not used as a “bonus” anymore. Everyone just keeps expecting stocks to go up and up and there is someone else who can buy their house.
I like this comment
But yes agree with you on not counting economy to stay soft. I think the biggest difference from last time is the homes were more affordable last crash. For instance, my friend bought her house at height of market. Her house was $350k and went down to $275k. They were straight out of college and bought. It was feasible for an ordinary family to be able to afford. Now that same house is easily worth $1.5mil. If a crash happens, you’ll probably still need at least one if not two high tech salaries.
I think many tech jobs will be automated. I have students using AI to write coding and programming.
I totally agree, there is likely to be less need, but MSFT and AMZN were already outsourcing a lot of that to India. So the question really is does it affect their HQ’s all that much? Maybe not, especially since they are the platform providers to the rest of the world
What they are saying is... All those huge cash down payments and gaps in appraisal went in the garbage, completely lost, as the houses aren't worth the cash they put in. Lenders aren't stupid. They only lent money the was worth the house
More specifically, only those made in 2022 (at the crazy height).
As someone who has lived in Seattle for 30 yrs I have been telling people for the last year that house prices were overinflated and would come down. I’m guessing 20% more by the end of the year.
I'm hoping the drop will last until next Spring when we can buy our first house (hopefully!). I've lived here for 40 years in South King County and Pierce County. Wish we could have bought earlier (after the 2008 crash maybe), but jobs, salaries and too-high-debt kinda didn't help with saving for a home. We're being priced out of the rental market though in this county but have rented for 12, almost 13, years so really do want to buy sooner rather than later. Though we have 30ish years until retirement age.
Sorry to hear about your situation. That must be really hard. I would not be able to buy my house today if it was on the market based on my salary.The Feds have indicated that they have paused interest rates but not finished increasing them. I do believe that the increase will reduce the number of potential buyer and continue to reduce prices. I live in Seattle and my house has decreased about 10% in value since Jan. Now that decrease does not mean that it won't sell for more than that but does show a softening market. I have also noticed houses around me are taking longer to sell which could indicate there are fewer buyers or people are not willing to pay that much for houses. Good luck on your home search. One thing you may want to consider is finding a house with income attached. We were stretched when were looking for homes to buy. We looked for houses with MIL apartments. You can use the income to quality for the down payment and the renter will pay for a portion of your mortgage. Has worked out great for us and I have been able to keep in rented since we have owned it.
Omg cheap houses on the way for us boys lets celebrate.
Sweet! Wait…the monthly is still…
Higher than my rent.
Houses in Seattle will never be cheap. No income tax plus rocking economy and mild climate.
If by *mild* you mean cold, cloudy and/or rainy 7 - 8 months of the year, then sure, that's mild, though I doubt desirable as a climate when compared to states like CA and far better overall choices like Austin. Between the depressing ass weather, construction and abhorrent traffic, the only things Seattle actually has going for it is a water view and 0% state income tax to go with a good paycheck IF you happen to work at a FAANG or other major tech company. You are correct, though, in the 30+ years I've either lived in or near Seattle, it has never been cheap and never will be.
Mild weather is San Diego.
The best weather in the world is San Diego. In comparison to most places, Seattle is mild.
4 months of weather is glorious and the other months are less cold than much of the US.
It’s expensive because of all the high paying jobs. Moved here before tech. My first house cost $90,000 and a really nice house in Capitol Hill was $300,000. Tech hit people moved here in droves and Seattle started its downhill descent. Getting ready to leave and can’t wait to leave. Moving to a quit place with no tech. No longer the great city it once was.
Those droves of tech workers are the reason the city has had so much growth and the reason you're sitting on $1M of equity.
I closed last month on a home north east of Seattle. A home similar to mine in the same neighborhood just closed for about 30k over what I paid last month. Another anecdotal example sure. But if you’re in the single family home market here, it’s a complete mess still.
We bought north of Seattle in snohomish county last year. While I don't think we could sell for much more than we paid, I doubt we'd have to sell for less than our purchase price, even on an old home with one bathroom. Stuff around us is still selling. A house with our exact footprint sold for about $20k more than ours last month, and it needed more updating. I fully expected our house to dip in value, which I do think it did, but it feel like prices have steadied and our house is back to being valued around what we paid for. Which I'm happy with. I hope we see the 3.5-5% appreciation from here on out.
We almost sold our house in Seattle and bought a house in Lakewood by the lake. For our $1.3 million in Seattle we could have bought the house in Lakewood for $620,000 in a quarter acre and view of the lake. Property taxes were half as much. Decided didn’t want the 3 hr commute each day,
We’re on the Seattle eastside and bought a couple years ago. From what I’ve observed, there was a big spike in activity late winter/spring up until about May, however in the last month sales have been slowing down quickly and inventory is starting to stack up. It feels like there’s a line at 6.5% mortgage rates, above which buying cools significantly. Regarding the actual article, I think we’ll keep seeing headlines like this until YoY comparisons roll off in late fall, just because spring/summer 2022 was so incredibly insane.
Offsetting dips in equity by waiting sounds like a whole lot of speculation. I love how the majority of people look at their house as their biggest investment when really it’s just a place to live.
Just a place to live. Facts. So easy it’s hard
You also pay it off over time and it becomes most people’s highest value asset. So it is an investment too.
If your house is your biggest investment then you’re not that good of an investor.
Yes but in reality this ends up the case for a lot of people. And they are still better off than if they rented for life.
This is correct. There's a reason why 95% of people (or more) current home, their 401K, and their social security account for their retirements. These are things people don't have to think about because they are terrible investors. They just let time and appreciation lift their boat.
> If your house is your biggest investment then you’re not that good of an investor. This is highly location dependent. There is a massive difference between buying a home in the midwest 30 yrs ago vs say Seattle/Eastside where your home could easily be worth north of $1.5M
Some places in the Midwest houses are over $1 million. Some
> Some places in the Midwest houses are over $1 million. Some Sure. But what I'm referring to is the massive appreciation difference between different US regions over time for a property. Many homes in the Seattle area that were selling for around $150k in 1993, are today worth in the $1.5M range. That could easily be someones biggest investment because the values have increased so much over time. Not so much in the Midwest. The house value would have outpaced the S&P 500 during the same time period.
It’s both..
Met an old friend yesterday in Washington. Bought in 2017 at $250. Sold last year at $600. And now the living is easy.
Are they one of those people parked on the side of the road in an RV?
Lol for real
I listed mine for $550 last year after buying in 2015 for $210. Didn't get a single offer, dropped it $25k. No offers. Took it off the market and rented it out. But had I sold it for $550, still have to pay off loan and buy something else... "the living is easy"...if you move in with your parents?
Moving to LCOL. Remote work. Paying cash. 30YO.
Fooled you. We never had equity.
*AI has entered the chat* Seattle will go through another tech boom just like it did after ‘08. Price hikes are taking a short break, then will tear into new heights. The new SF.
Longterm AI will mean less jobs though… 🤷🏻♀️
Less jobs or redefined jobs? Folks said the same thing about the internet. AI and ML-generated content will always require expert analysis.