Posted by Mack McCoy at 5/7/08 3:26 p.m.

I voted for Kucinich.

The thing is, with any big problem, a whole lot of people "get blamed" for it. Homosexuals were blamed for 9/11.

What's important is the truth. As grownups, we'll survive good and bad real estate markets (and yes, there are winners and losers in both kinds of markets). What we need to do is to figure out how to prevent the capital markets from freezing whenever somebody dumps worthless bonds on a bunch of big companies.

Posted by unregistered user at 5/7/08 3:33 p.m.

As someone looking to buy a house after being out of the market for about 8 years, I'm one of those winners Mack mentioned.

Yes, I feel badly for the people who are losing their homes. I've been there! It's an investment, and there are risks with all investments.

Posted by unregistered user at 5/7/08 5:00 p.m.

Well, I have to agree that I don't think there is anywhere near enough publicity about the GOOD we have done in Iraq. My military friends feel the same way, all that is shown is the UGLY, never the good.

Posted by unregistered user at 5/7/08 5:19 p.m.

Nothing good has happened during our occupation in Iraq, and nothing good will happen. We will be mired there for ever, if McCain is elected. If we pull out, things will get even uglier there for a while, but that's unavoidable.

We should never have messed with that hornet's nest in the first place. WMD? Yeah, right... . I believe the correct spelling is O-I-L.

Posted by Green Party at 5/7/08 5:57 p.m.

Spurious.

VoteNader.org/index.html

Posted by William M at 5/7/08 11:12 p.m.

Bomb 20 schools- build 1 school

How good is that?

Iraqi civilians 4 times more likely to be tortured/murdered after Saddam.

How good is that?

Posted by DesertKayaker at 5/8/08 7:47 a.m.

Greed spurred both the real estate downturn and the war. However, comparing whining REs who may have participated in getting people over their heads with questionable loans with the Bush Administration...well, that just lacks compassion and awarenes. I hope it was just an off-the-wall comment.

Posted by Kary L. Krismer at 5/8/08 8:26 a.m.

Bad press reporting helped lead to the run up in prices, and also contributed to the decline. On the upside, you don't get people running out to buy yet to be built condos they never intend to live in based just on word of mouth. Something creates panic buying, and that's the press reporting.

The reporting has actually been much more balanced the past 2-3 months. Aubrey's headline writer (not Aubrey) still has a negative bias (e.g. Seattle Down was the headline for the last NWMLS release), but the pieces are much more balanced if someone reads more than the headline. My main complaint now would be reporting Case-Shiller as major news, when it's really just stale data. It should just be a small story unless it somehow conflicts with what the NWMLS reported months earlier, but instead it gets full coverage.

As to contributing to the downfall, I think you need to look no further than financing. The average person thinks financing is very difficult to get now, and that's because of poor press coverage. That keeps people out of the market, because they incorrectly think they can't participate.

Posted by biliruben at 5/8/08 8:50 a.m.

Regarding CS data, It's much higher quality, more accurate data. Yes it comes out a month late, but if anything the median (which I believe you, yourself have rightly pilloried, Kary) is skewed during a changing market where the mix of properties changes.

What would you rather have, accurate data that compares apples to apples a month late, or inaccurate data that's misleading and potentially meaningless, right now.

If anything, the press should ignore MLS data as inaccurate, unverifiable and potentially biased, and only report Case-Shiller.

Posted by Kary L. Krismer at 5/8/08 9:28 a.m.

biliruben--have you noticed any significant difference between the NWMLS data and the C-S data? And by difference, I'm saying difference in trend and change. I've not actually tracked that, but when I see the news reports it seems like the percentage changes for the periods, compared to the prior year, are very similar for NWMLS and C-S. E.g. if we're 3% down over the prior year on NWMLS, that C-S will come out pretty close to that when they get around to reporting. Again, not something I've tracked myself, but something worth looking into.

Posted by Mack McCoy at 5/8/08 9:46 a.m.

I'm not fond of either, frankly. As a homeowner myself, I'm only secondarily interested in how the market's doing compared to last year anyway; mostly, I'm interested in what properties close to me are doing. And as a practical matter, the monthly mailers I get from fellow agents are much more useful to me than any aggregate area tally (NWMLS) or highly-refined technical abstraction (C-S).

It's not that those tools don't serve a purpose. But I am not convinced that they are the proper tool for helping prospective homebuyers and homesellers evalute the marketplace.

Posted by Kary L. Krismer at 5/8/08 9:46 a.m.

Okay, I just did some limited checking.

If you look at February 2007 to February 2008, C-S is showing Seattle off 3%, while the NWMLS median shows flat and the mean shows up.

But if you look at the peaks, C-S peaked in July, while the NWMLS peaked in August, but the difference for each was minor. From the July, 2007 to February, 2008, C-S shows us at 93.6%, while the median for NWMLS is 91.5% and the mean is 89%.

So, YOY for February, C-S is more pesimistic, while from the peak the NWMLS is more pesimistic.

BTW, one thing that can make these numbers different is area. I'm not certain what area C-S uses for their Seattle number. To the extent it's more or less than all of King county, you'd expect a different result.

Posted by Kary L. Krismer at 5/8/08 9:58 a.m.

I think Mack makes a good point (as is his practice). Median, mean and C-S all have their issues, but the biggest one is that for any given owner they're irrelevant because they cover too large of an area. Even the stats for the so-called "Seattle" NWMLS area is too large--it doesn't mean much if you live in Seattle. I'd even go so far to say that the NWMLS areas areas are too large (there are about 30 NWMLS areas in King county and 7 in Snohomish).

Posted by Leanne Finlay at 5/8/08 10:12 a.m.

Most people are truly only interested in their own areas. Why would someone living in Shoreline care what median prices are doing in Puyallup? Or Puyallup care about what Bellevue is doing?

Somehow the media does need to get behind the financing issues. There is quite a lot of decent financing out there, the plain-jane-old-fashioned FHA loans are a great loan product for buyers who don't have 20% down payment. A 3% down payment is all FHA requires.

So far, all of my buyers are easily getting qualified to buy their homes, with no real surprises, or big disappointments.

Posted by Kary L. Krismer at 5/8/08 10:27 a.m.

Another "problem" is that the NWMLS numbers bounce around a lot, and the monthly numbers are really just a snapshot. On any given month they could easily be 1% higher or lower if the month just ended a day earlier or later. I put the term problem in quotes because I'm not really sure that's a problem as just a fact of life.

But connecting it up to the area thing, if someone wants to know what their house is worth, they aren't going to look at data from just one month. They'll look at a relatively small area, but perhaps a period of 4-6 months.

Posted by Kary L. Krismer at 5/8/08 10:29 a.m.

Responding to Aubrey's original point, I guess Rumsfeld is to Iraq like Yun is to real estate? ;-)

Posted by biliruben at 5/8/08 11:41 a.m.

To some extent you agents are right; local trends will differ. But to give an extreme example for purposes of my point, if Matthew's Beach went up 40%, and North Beach dropped 30%, where would I currently be looking for a house?

Let me give you a hint: that salt air would suddenly begin to be a lot more appealing.

This means that demand would drop in MB, and the prices would eventually fall in line with what's happening elsewhere.

Also, if you just look at your local neighborhood sales (which I just did last night a local agent's litter on my porch) there were 6 sales in the last month - 2 under $600K, 2 between $700K and a million, and 2 over a million. How on earth could anyone deduce anything from that data? If you claim you can, you are a fool.

My point is you need to look at both regional and local trends to get at least a vaguely accurate picture. Both data have flaws that complement eachother.

CS is King, Pierce, SnoHo, iirc Kary.

Posted by Mack McCoy at 5/8/08 12:40 p.m.

No, br, you wouldn't. You're smarter than that. You'd look to see what the actual houses were that sold, rather than look at a line item of data. Six new houses on MB can really skew the stats, and so could six warboxes technically in the NB area.

Besides which - you might decide that NB was undervalued, or that MB was just starting to begin its march to tripling in value.

That sort of data leads to the sort of thinking that invites a whole host of problems to follow. Then, I personally get blamed for it all!

Posted by biliruben at 5/8/08 12:48 p.m.

Yeah, in my example, I was assuming we could determine the "true", underlying price trends, which we obviously cannot do. See my next paragraph.

And double-yeah, I personally blame you, and only you, for all the housing market problems. It's a mighty weight on your shoulders, Mack!

Posted by Mack McCoy at 5/8/08 1:24 p.m.

Omfff! Ummmph! Mmmffhh!

Posted by Kary L. Krismer at 5/8/08 4:16 p.m.

I think the county wide stuff is mainly good for looking at the overall health of the market. It would be sort of like a doctor taking your temperature, pulse and blood pressure. But for more specific things you need more specific tests--such as say a blood test for liver values.

Large changes in the median, mean or C-S are newsworthy, but really I think those numbers for the last four months or so have been not all that exciting (more so for the most recent).

Posted by unregistered user at 5/12/08 5:50 p.m.

Hi Mack - you voted for Kucinich?

This former "boy mayor" of Cleveland ran the city in to the ground and needed to wear protective armor under his suit when he threw the first pitch at the Indians' openers. (I lived 16 years in Cleveland.)

Posted by Mack McCoy at 5/14/08 12:22 a.m.

Sure you did.

Posted by unregistered user at 5/14/08 2:20 p.m.

As an active real estate agent in Seattle for over 20 years, I would agree that the media is hurting the entire economy and not just the real estate market. Why? Because every single article (OK, so sometimes it is just the headlines... too bad if that is all the buying public reads...) I have read, have been negative. Buyers are so scared to buy. They are waiting for the bottom to fall out. Forget that this is the best market we have seen for buyers in years. Why no focus on the perfect trifeca; great inventory, great interest rates and many sellers that are willing to deal. Get off the fence and buy now. The only way way you ever know where the bottom is, is once we have risen.