Not as catastrophic as your hyperbole.

Meh. Seattle real estate has always been boom/bust. I remember in 1988, when everyone was wringing their hands about the housing market. And again in 1992, 2001, and 2007.

My hope is that we'll have one of our busts, and it will come back just in time for my retirement, at which time we can unload Chez Vel-DuRay and get the heck out of Dodge.

The housing market is cooling in Denver too. No idea why. In Atlanta it's getting positively cold. Also no idea why.

"overvalued"? Charles, I'm not sure you understand that word.

What people are willing to pay for a product, be it housing, a can or soda or a copy of The Stranger literally defines its value, at least in an economic sense. People have been willing to pay the price of Seattle housing simply because demand has outstripped supply for going on three decades now, which pretty much indicates that housing values are pretty much where the market has them. We live in a very desirable place, and short of a disaster that isn't changing anytime soon - if anything, it's becoming more desirable over the foreseeable future.

Sure, there may be a minor cooling in prices as the overall economy slows, but it's pretty unlikely that housing prices will fall too much or for too long.

5 - missed the point much? When who's willing to pay for a product expands to include foreign capital investors, the value is no longer pegged to the domestic utility of the product. Which is precisely the problem.

No. Not even remotely. Seattle's market has always been so out of whack with the rest of the country it may as well not even exist on this planet. Things are cooling down in Seattle? It would have to be an ice age for it to mean anything with regard to the next economic catastrophe. Did Seattle even feel the housing collapse in 2008? Because I'm not sure it did (despite reports to the contrary). Housing valuation in Seattle is 97% above what it should be (as in everywhere else), so it's pretty ridiculous to be writing speculative articles about the sky falling. rolls eyes

@3- property taxes don't drive up housing prices. They might have some effect on rents if landlords are able to increase rents to cover higher property taxes, but they don't make a house sell for more. And I don't know about you but my house is still assessed by the County at about 20% below the estimated market value.

Personally, I have been expecting the next economic catastrophe since Double Agent Orange was elected.

Ugh, this nasty xenophobic garbage again.

At their peak around 10 years ago, Chinese buyers accounted for less than 2% of money spent on housing in Seattle. There is nearly as much CANADIAN money in the local market as Chinese, but for some reason it's always and only China that people will try to blame. It does not take a genius to figure out why this might be.

The numbers just don't support your bigotry, Charles. Your inability to think numerically is turning you into a very ugly kind of person on this issue. Please, please get a friend with a good head for figures to sit down and help you read an article that goes through the numbers. Here's a random search result to get you started:

https://www.citylab.com/life/2017/08/the-foreign-buyers-you-havent-heard-about/536490/

Only at the top end.

It’s a rumor that I wrote most of the Century 21 Canada software. Except that I did.

Relax, we still have shortages in most of the market, just not for overpriced properties that speculators were involved with.

wow, some good information there Charles. Thank you for paying attention.

A city founded on raw greed is always going to lurch between booms and busts. In a rational just world local governments would stash away revenues and spend them on stuff regular people need like public transit and low income housing. In a hick town at the end of the road like Seattle the city spends any bumps in revenue on consultants and process enrichment.

@6 You skipped over that time a few years ago when a hundred Seattle homeowners a week went into foreclosure and 30% of the homeowners that managed to hang onto their property went underwater.

Sorry folks. I left a few words out of @13.

A city founded on raw greed is always going to lurch between booms and busts. In a rational, just world local governments would stash away revenues when the economy is booming and spend them on stuff regular people need like public transit and low income housing when the economy crashes. In a hick town at the end of the road like Seattle the city squanders any bumps in revenue on permit review, and if anything is left over on consultant studies and process enrichment. Lots of people have short memories, and tens of thousands of Seattle residents didn't live here during the aftermath of the crash of 2008 so it will come as a surprise to them that people who get laid off from their jobs can easily go into foreclosure after just a few months of unemployment, and unemployed people or even people suddenly gripped by a feeling of precariousness aren't going to buy the shit Amazon is selling. It would be wise to batten down the hatches, but most people will undoubtedly think the party will go on forever, or that Seattle will be magically spared from the next crash. Jon Talton wrote nonsense like that in 2009 though I can't remember if it was before or after almost 4,000 WAMU employees lost their jobs in a single day.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/collapse-still-haunts-former-wamu-workers/

@15: The sanctimonious "I told you so" disposition is always popular, but intellectually weak.

Researched and insightful. Good 'un, Charles.

6: Nope, didn't miss the point. The foreign investors have never accounted for more then a small percentage of the market, and even then, only at the high end. Did they have an impact? Certainly - a small one. The vast majority of the housing value gains has been from the torrent of people moving to the area for well paying jobs in a beautiful setting, and who will continue to move here so long as we remain an attractive, appealing place to live and work.

I have no doubt that we've entered into a mild cooling phase. That happens; it's nothing unusual, and I think it's a good thing. Let prices plateau and maybe even drop a bit as we (finally) start to add a substantive amount of housing stock, and hopefully Seattle might again resemble something remotely affordable again. Let supply better resemble demand and we'll see more affordable units.

But everything...EVERYTHING that Charles posts is cast through his economic disaster porn colored lenses. When every little bump and tumble is portrayed as "proof of the coming meltdown of corporate capitalism! All hail our coming worker's paradise!", it gets kind of tragicomic.

This doesn't even approach tenuous theory and the comment section explodes with dorks falling over themselves to explain to Mudede that the crap they heard on CNBC is actually right.

@18 "proof of the coming meltdown of corporate capitalism"

given it had meltdowns every time free-marketeering zealotry has been dominant and that we are also facing ecosystem limits, it doesn't take much of a genius to see it happening again

The best way to tell someone has no idea how a free market economy works is when they freak out about every little up and down in the market claiming it is a prophecy of some sort.

@21:

Yeah, I'll wager there were a lot of free-marketeers saying exactly the same thing in December of 1919, September of 1929, January of 1945, and November of 2007 as well.

@22 of course they did. But they also said it a thousand other times and nothing happened. There will probably be another recession in the next couple of years, but I highly doubt it will be as severe as 2008 and the highly doubt it will be due to housing.

@23 my money is the next crash will be due to student loans: it's the huge elephant in the room that we've ignored

@16 you're just jealous because you've never been right about anything.

@22: I see you can count to four. Now count all the times people claimed the market was crashing, and that capitalism was dying and all the times they were wrong.

I bet it is higher than four. Get back to me when you finish counting, or when you realize how stupid the point you are failing to make is.

"...an Early Sign of the Source of the Next Economic Catastrophe?"
I'm never sure if I should be excited or worried about this sort of thing.

I mean, as long as we're still using "dollars", nothing substantive will change, and the rich will just keep screwing the rest of us, and deploying police-tech to quash the inevitable riots.

@25: Well now, supposing for the sake of your argument I was never right about anything. Now let's continue your scenario and I realize that I've never been right about anything, and become overwhelmed with jealousy of those whom are right about things.

But isn't the fact that since I ascertained that I'm never right about anything, correct in itself? Hence, that is being right about something and negates any premise or value of your vacuous comment.

Classic Will in Seattle post @10. Brings me back to Slog days of yore, circa 2010, when Fnarf was around, Paul Constant worked for the Stranger, Trump wasn't president, and all the threads were above average.

Charles, how come publicly available county excise tax records reflect recent purchases of real property by Chinese buyers?

We are a peninsula, of course.

I have two words for all the 'tech-money" newbies who just moved here w/in the last 3 years:

9.0 Cascadian Subduction Zone Fault Earlthquake

and

1 in 6 chance over the next 45 years.

@32

You do realize they're all coming from the Bay Area?

Go look at a map of San Mateo some time, one of your more expensive SF suburbs. Notice the dam the city is built beneath? Now consider: the reservoir behind that dam IS the San Andreas fault.

Compared to that, the occasional slumping of the last remnant of the Farallon plate must seem about as threatening as a golden retriever.

If you want to scare them off, tell them they're never going to see a celebrity in a supermarket, you can't find a REAL taco anywhere in the whole city, and people will laugh at you behind your back if you wear white pants.

Oh noes! We could have an earthquakes! You sound like the news alerts from King 5, treacle dear.

When that earthquake comes it will be the rich who will, by and large, fare the best. They have the homes and workplaces - when they work - that are made to withstand earthquakes. They have the resources to rebuild, if necessary. They have the resources to fend for themselves in the aftermath, and they have healthcare.

It will be the poor and middle class - like Mr. Vel-DuRay and I - who will be stuck with a house that has collapsed in a town where all the main roads in and out are inaccessible.

And it is the rich who will come in, buy the land at fire sale prices, and rebuild.

@33,34 -- Teehee! I am a news alert... :>)
However, they are definitely not "all" coming from the Bay Area. I just overheard to newbies (Amazonians, I think) chatting on the bus this morning.. one just arrive 2mo ago from Ohio, the other a year+ ago from Philadelphia. And two new hires at my non-profit are both from the East Coast. The draw is far and wide.

Also, oblige me to point out, the Bay Area has earthquakes all the time... consequently, they are prepared. It's a well-known fact that the PNW is woefully under-prepared for a major natural disaster. Which means those of us that are prepared will be fending off the starving hordes of east-coast newbs who have never heard the term "liquifaction" before.

The rich may or may not be able to simply buy their way out... helicopters aren't yet that common. And anyway, Broadmoor is a key point on my Post-Quake Looting & Pillaging Plan.
Take advantage of the moment, right?

:>)