Wednesday Open Thread
This is your open thread for today. Please post random links and off-topic discussions here.
Off-topic comment? Interesting link?
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11 comments:
Susan Ryan's response is a scream. I especially like the way that she portrays herself as an unbiased observer of the local real estate market....what a load!
I'm glad that you called bullshit on her I-make-money-in-any-market line, but I think that you also missed one very important point: even if Susan Ryan is the most ethical, hard-working agent on the planet, and even if there are just as many sales in a down market as in a hot market (not a chance), her comission is always going to be based on a percentage of the home prices that she negotiates.
Susan Ryan's bottom line is inextricably linked to the sales prices of the properties that she represents. If home prices go up, she makes more money per sale. Period.
That Ryan tries to paint herself as impartial would strike me as dishonest, if she hadn't already repeatedly demonstrated that she's a simpleton.
How did you get your hands on the actual report, Kaleetan? All I can find is an option to purchase the report for $4,000(!)
Heh. Points for the witty reply.
From the snippets provided on the preview page, it looks like Washington was left out of the report entirely. I'm sure if it had said anything even remotely positive about the Seattle market it would have been plastered all over the Seattle Times yesterday.
Excuse me if this was already posted:
The Good Fight
Eager to find new sources of growth, the company that Bill Gates built is financing efforts to break into half a dozen major new markets. To staff those ventures, the software giant is expanding like crazy, bursting from its Redmond campus boundaries and spilling prosperity across the region. The result is more jobs, more research, higher salaries and perhaps even better working conditions. What is bad for Microsoft, it seems, is especially good for Seattle.
More important for the Seattle region, Microsoft’s spending spree means more jobs – lots of them. In the past year, the company added 10,000 employees worldwide, including nearly 4,000 in the Puget Sound area – twice as many as expected. “These are high-wage employees,” explains Chang Mook Sohn, Washington state’s chief economist. “The whole economy benefits from Microsoft’s expansion here.” And that growth is turbocharged, because for every new hire at Microsoft, another 2.5 full-time jobs are created in the larger economy, according to Seattle economist Dick Conway, who is conducting his third study of the impact of Microsoft on the local economy. That means more than 116,000 jobs in the Seattle area depend directly or indirectly on Microsoft.
These new hires are buying houses, luxury cars and appliances, fueling the local retail and residential real estate markets. “You know the joke: If you want to know how to get to Microsoft, follow a BMW,” says Jan Teague, president of the Washington Retail Association. “Microsoft builds millionaires. They spend a lot of their money in the state.” The median price for a single-family home in King County jumped nearly 16 percent in July 2006, to $435,000. Million-dollar houses have become commonplace in Bellevue and Sammamish. And the hot housing market buzzes with tales of multiple offers on homes that then sell far above their list price. Brokers credit the big hiring push at Microsoft, and at the many companies launched by former Microsoft employees for many of these gains.
Underscoring its plans for aggressive growth, Google is expected to lease an estimated 280,000 square feet of office space in Bellevue, enough to house as many as 1,000 employees. The move is “aimed directly at Microsoft,” says Bohman.
Money made at Microsoft has rippled far and wide through the Seattle economy. Many Microsoft alumni have created start-up companies, most notably the Internet media giant RealNetworks. The largest information technology fund in the state is a $1 billion fund managed by Ignition Partners, a venture capital firm founded by former execs from Microsoft and McCaw Cellular. The $29 billion Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has changed the face of philanthropy with its funding of global health and education, and also contributes locally through its Pacific Northwest program, which focuses on early learning, supportive housing and community grants. Lesser-known Microsoft employees and alumni have invested in golf courses, renovated the Paramount Theater, spearheaded environmental causes, volunteered in local schools, and donated to art museums, the performing arts and many other regional causes.
I love Susan's initial comment, "There is no real estate bubble and never will be." Sorry, deary, I've been through three big bubbles in three locations, one in Seattle. Apparently she's too young to remember 1970-71. If that wasn't a bubble, Seattle must have gotten into the brown acid.
Bernanke: housing to take 1% off GDP growth-
Fed is closely watching for "spillover" of slowdown to other areas of economy.
To add to Matthew's post.
``There is currently a substantial correction going on in the housing market,'' Bernanke said. The decline residential housing construction is one of the ``major drags that is causing the economy to slow.''
http://tinyurl.com/zdyuy
Love the gravel yard too. No mowing needed!
Whenever I see these flipper's houses with "all new" this and that, I immediately wonder about worksmanship and quality. I've seen too many scenes from those flipper TV shows where they had absolutely no idea what they were doing. They basically did the cheapest thing possible, including their own unskilled/unknowledgeable labor. Screw that noise.
"Stainless steal appliances" just about sums it up, doesn't it?
"Washington CEO" magazine?? You're scraping the bottom of the bubble barrel, Meshugy!
Your article, as is usual for pom-pom pieces, cites a lot of big numbers, most of which are irrelevant to the discussion -- "116,000 jobs" (how many of those are janitors?), Google's (anticipated) office space lease, the size of a venture fund, and the endowment of the B&MG foundation.
Save the first statistic (which is dubious at best), none of these data points do more than instill a vague feeling of frothy goodness in the reader. They say nothing direct about the buying power of Seattle residents...a population that we already know is significantly overextended!
Typically, I would agree that Meshugy's post of an 8-month-old article about an MS hiring binge is a load of crap, but it does help to explain why Seattle RE prices are flatlining during this hiring binge, instead of plummetting like the rest of the country.
Basically, I read this article as explaining what has sustained the RE market locally up until this point. Now that the MS hiring binge is over, expect to hear a loud popping noise.
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