The Seattle Bubble site gets a lot of hits for its real estate posts and I’ve found myself as the topic or at least an ancillary target of some of the commentary from the writers regarding local real estate. I thought it might be interesting to show a different side of the coin to our readers since I believe that providing different views is important to helping people understand or at least open up conversation about the market place with respect to real estate. With respect to the Seattle Bubble blog site my guess is that like a broken clock you can be right at least 2x a day. This blog has been saying for a very long time that our marketplace would implode and perhaps, depending on what your definition of that is, then maybe you’ll agree with his perspective. Personally, I like to look at all the factors and to try not to limit my view although I will admit that in the blogging world because you only write on subjects in short prose for limited periods of time each day (or week) that it’s difficult to get into full, well-rounded discussions about subject matter so there is a risk of leaving out applicable data here and there – or you have to try and catalogue all the topics to get to within a reasonable time line to make a full argument one way or the other over a subject/topic.
While I frequently don’t agree with the nay-sayers about some of the market expectations I will never say that I lean only one direction and that the market will continue to run up forever here. That, for one, would be absurd – and, two, would be economically impossible to sustain.
What I have been saying for a long time is that the Seattle marketplace would not experience the same downturn that many areas of the country have experienced recently. Now, that doesn’t mean that we wouldn’t soften from an appreciation standpoint – and we have had that happen – but it also doesn’t mean that I fit into a “it’s always sunny” attitude and that my head is in the sand about what is happening in my industry despite what some of these guys will try to make you believe.
I’m too tied into a lot of what goes on to not see it, and even better than that, I feel that I’ve got a pretty good grasp of how the market affects the consumer because of my daily involvement in this line of work – and I’m not blogging about real estate as a sideline to my “regular job”. My “real” job is to be aware of real estate market conditions and the factors that impact it on a daily basis.
One of the things I like about the practice we have developed here at Team Reba is our mix of residential and commercial business. With it we are able to see a broader perspective of what’s happening in the marketplace and we are in touch with many other professionals who are dealing regularly with the business people that help run and fund the Washington State economy. We also tend to research reports from very credible sources such as the Washington Center for Real Estate Research run out of Washington State University. Access here for an interesting executive summary for the Fall of 2007. We also use resources such as Dupre + Scott, who are the premier researchers and data compilers of apartment data for the state. Besides this we research many other trade organizations, research firms, real estate organizations, and more.
For those people that have already chosen to work with us as our clients, you know that we do our homework. If you haven’t yet given us a try then you might want to consider it – you won’t be disappointed, and I promise not to “burst your bubble”. 🙂
