December 2009

Let India help Afghanistan | Shashank Joshi

By SeattleMan on December 26, 2009

India’s close ties with Afghanistan mean it is well placed to step in when the west has flown its last soldier out of Kabul
In the 19th century, Indian armies twice crossed the Hindu Kush, hoping to stitch together the patchwork political authority of the territory in the service of their British masters. Over a century [...]

Merry Christmas!

By SeattleMan on December 26, 2009

Go to Source

Checking Up on That 2010 Downtown Condo Dream

By SeattleMan on December 26, 2009

Here’s an interesting comparison. First, this graphic, posted here in June 2006, from a Seattle P-I article titled Booming development set to change Seattle’s look:

Then, a similar graphic from the most recent Seattle Business Magazine. The red rectangle on the first graphic shows the area that the second graphic covers.

I guess Seattle wasn’t [...]

Puget Sound Counties November Update

By SeattleMan on December 26, 2009

Let’s take a look at November NWMLS statistics from around the sound. Unfortunately, I’m a bit behind in updating the cool interactive charts, so a few static snapshots will have to do for this month. You can of course still download the spreadsheets in Excel 2007 and Excel 2003 format.
Here’s our usual table [...]

Short Sales Make Up Nearly 10% of Closed Sales in King Co.

By SeattleMan on December 26, 2009

As many of you probably know, Redfin has a great feature that allows you do download the results of any search to an Excel file. One aspect of this feature that you may not be aware of is that one of the fields that is populated on the resulting spreadsheet indicates whether or not [...]

Poll: Vote for your favorite new name for Seattle Bubble

By SeattleMan on December 26, 2009

A decent number of commenters on Thursday’s post were critical of the chosen new name for Seattle Bubble, lambasting it as “boring,” “bland,” and “insipid.” So, here’s your one last chance to suggest something better. I’ve come up with five additional alternatives, and if you don’t like those, drop your best suggestion in [...]

Weekly Twitter Digest (Link Roundup) for 2009-12-19

By SeattleMan on December 26, 2009

"Landlords are facing the worst market they've seen in three decades." http://is.gd/5lfe2 #
Jay Leno made the same "drinking your way out of alcoholism" analogy that we posted on Wed. http://is.gd/5lfyO #
You've been BoingBoing'ed, @KirstenGrind http://www.boingboing.net/2009/12/12/fdic-sends-a-big-f-u.html #
RT @mattgoyer: New blog post: Olive 8 Gets Loan Renewed http://bit.ly/5xVGBK #
RT @KirstenGrind: New internal JPMorgan documents help shed light [...]

Personal Incomes Up Slightly, Homes Still Overpriced

By SeattleMan on December 26, 2009

The latest (third quarter) personal income stats from the Bureau of Economic Analysis came out today. Washington State showed a 0.6% increase from the second quarter to the third, but a record 1.5% year-over-year drop from the third quarter 2008.
I thought it would be interesting to compare this measure to home prices. Keep [...]

Changes on the horizon at Seattle Bubble…

By SeattleMan on December 26, 2009

As 2009 winds down and the real estate market enters winter hibernation, now seems like a good time to talk about some of the changes on the horizon here at Seattle Bubble.
First up, a subject that we’ve discussed a few times here in the past: name change. “Seattle Bubble” is a name that made [...]

Still Searching for the Home Price Bottom Around Seattle

By SeattleMan on December 26, 2009

A few people have asked for another checkup on our bottom-calling series from February, in which we explored six different methods of forecasting the bottom for Seattle-area home prices.
Not much has changed since our most recent checkup in July, when prices as measured by the Case-Shiller Index were 22.5% off the peak (May data), and [...]

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