Hanging it up, for now

Back when I started this blog, Dustin remarked on the excellent Rain City Guide, "The problem with most real estate blogs is that after an initial flurry of activity, the bloggers quit making regular updates."

You can probably tell from the lack of posts that he was right in my case. Unfortunately, I'm not finding nearly the time that I had hoped to keep it going. I'll leave it online, for now, but I don't expect to be making any more posts for the time being.

At the very least, I hope this blog showed the value of reporting news about specific properties. Part of my inspiration for starting was that a lot of real estate blogs deal too heavily in big trends and news without also looking at how those developments play out on individual sites in their regions. While those broad issues are important, and I tried to explore them here, they can become too abstract unless you also show what's happening at the house across the street or the building downtown.

In my absence, be sure to check out the links to the right for a variety of real estate sites and blogs about Seattle and other cities.

Thanks for reading.

Big money for Harbor Steps

Back when the agreement was announced to sell the huge Harbor Steps apartment complex in downtown Seattle, the price wasn't disclosed. (See Seattle Times story at the time for background.) The deal was completed last week, according to county tax records, and the purchase price was a whopping $172 million, rounded up, or $171,788,831, to be more precise. Chicago-based real estate company Equity Residential Properties bought the complex from Seattle-based developer Harbor Properties.

Update: The Seattle P-I reports this morning that the total purchase price was more than $191 million. Looking at the tax records in more detail, that is, in fact, the gross sale price, before subtracting about $20 million in intangibles not included in the amount ($172 million) taxed by the county. Either way you look at it, it's a lot of money.

Home Tracker: Asking vs. Selling

OK, call me a real estate nerd, but I think this is pretty cool. One of the main reasons I started the Home Tracker feature on this site (see archives in right sidebar) was to follow up and see how much the homes end up selling for. This gets into what may be my only major complaint about the generally very good online property records in the Seattle area: By the time the sale of any given home is completed, making the selling price available for anyone to see by looking at the excise tax records, the original listing -- and therefore the original listing price -- is no longer available (or at least not easily accesible to a layperson like me) in the public version of the Northwest Multiple Listing Service listings.

With the Home Tracker feature, I figured it would be interesting to watch selected homes to see whether they end up selling for more or less than the asking price. Not a scientific sample, by any stretch of the imagination, but interesting, since one of the signs of the strength of a market is whether high demand is causing people to bid prices above the original amount the seller seeks.

The reason for this post: One of the first Home Tracker homes, in West Seattle, has now sold -- for $590,000, compared with the $619,000 asking price. See this updated chart for the details:



Maybe after several other Home Tracker homes are sold, we'll see a trend. Unfortunately, even then, all it will do is whet the appetite for an actual, comprehensive measure or index of list price vs. closing price in the region. Or maybe I'm missing something: Is anything like that already available to real estate agents or anyone else?

Update: In an admirable display of real estate geekiness, Dustin has a great post on the Rain City Guide that builds on this theme, including a graphic that shows list price vs. selling price in his neighborhood. See my thoughts in the comments section below his post.

Katrina and real estate

In this interesting story today, the New York Times looks at the wide range of effects -- positive and negative -- that Hurricane Katrina could have on real estate and home-building across the nation.

2200 Westlake filling up

Speaking of Whole Foods, one of the company's other new stores is slated for 2200 Westlake, the big mixed-use development that Paul Allen's company, Vulcan, is putting up in the Denny Triangle area, on the southern border of the South Lake Union neighborhood.

That development, in turn, is proving to be an interesting measure of demand for condos in that part of the city. And apparently the demand is high. This recent Seattle Times story, about Vulcan buying out its development partner, noted that sales agreements have been reached for more than 95 percent of the condos in the project.

Interbay Whole Foods proceeding

Developers of a retail project to be anchored by a Whole Foods store in the Interbay neighborhood have begun the process of seeking land-use permits from the city. It's one of three new Whole Foods stores planned in the region, according to this page on the company's Web site. At about 60,000 square feet, the proposed Interbay store looks to be a relatively typical size for Whole Foods. Plans for the store were originally unveiled in the spring, causing some understandable lament over the businesses that the project will replace.

At the same time, it's far from the only development envisioned in the neighborhood. See some of the planning documents on the Interbay Neighborhood Association site for more information about potential development in that area of the city. This recent Seattle P-I story reports on the group's efforts to turn the industrial neighborhood into more of a mixed-use community. Meanwhile, this Seattle Times story notes that the Whole Foods project doesn't depend on the monorail construction.

WaMu Center not as painful

On the subject of the new Washington Mutual Center (see previous post), the Puget Sound Business Journal reports:

Landlords in downtown Seattle won't be feeling anywhere near the pain they once anticipated when Washington Mutual moves into its huge new headquarters office tower late next year. A strengthening local economy, aggressive leasing to new tenants, and the thrift's own growth are combining to considerably soften the blow, local real estate executives said.

Most expensive homes in West

The Mercer Island mansion previously mentioned here has come in at number seven on Forbes magazine's annual list of the most expensive homes in the West. See the Forbes page about the home here. The magazine says it's "practically a palace." The Seattle P-I reported on the home's ranking earlier this week.

Another new Seattle site

The trend continues: Seattle Condos.

New Seattle real estate sites

This online real estate stuff is booming, apparently. Here are three new Seattle-focused real estate sites.

• Seattle Bubble: "News and discussion about the real estate/housing bubble, specifically as it pertains to the Seattle area." Lots of interesting links and commentary. (Via the Rain City Real Estate Guide and Seattle Real Estate Talk's links page.)
  
  
• MLS Maps Online: MLS search via aerial map. Dustin on the Rain City Guide has a good review here. As a Firefox user, I also ran into trouble, as Dustin did, and had to switch over to IE to see this site. (Via an e-mail tipster.)
  
  
• ShackPrices.com: Interactive maps showing regional home sales data. As someone who like to troll through the King County property records, which provide the basis for this site, I'm very intrigued by this concept. (See Seattle Real Estate Talk's assessment here.)
  

The last two lead to a funny question: Is there a regional bubble in online real estate sites?

I don't mean news and informational sites like mine and others. As far as I'm concerned, it's good to have as many people as possible monitoring developments and offering commentary. That's one of the core ideas behind online communities -- collaborating, linking to one another, and engaging in a broader conversation. And for most of us, this is a hobby, not a business in itself, so the more the merrier.

Instead, I'm thinking of these MLS and property data mapping sites. The emergence of things like Google Maps and MSN Virtual Earth is encouraging a proliferation of sites that apply data to maps in a useful way. It's great to see. But added to the existing Redfin, and basic search sites from residential agents themselves, it seems like there may be more services coming online than the demand will sustain in the long run -- at least if these services are aiming to operate as profitable businesses.

In the meantime, it's fun to see all the ideas everyone is turning out.

Watching the new WaMu building

The facade is taking shape on the lower portions of the new Washington Mutual Center/Seattle Art Museum expansion building in downtown Seattle, giving passersby a sense for what the 42-story tower will look like when it's finished. The Web site Emporis has a good summary of the project, including an illustration conceptualizing the completed building. Emporis also points to a very cool aerial web cam where you can track the progress on the building pretty much in real time.

Seattle rental rates rising

One of the unanswered questions in this earlier post was the average rental rate for housing in the Seattle region. This story in Friday's Seattle P-I clarified the picture, showing rental rates rising in the region but remaining below the national average. According to the story, which cites data from Global Real Analytics, the average rent for a high-quality, 1,000-square-foot apartment in the region is $1,043 per month, compared with the $1,121 average nationally.

New Washington beach town

When it comes to beach towns, Washington's coast has traditionally paled in comparison to the Oregon coast. Could that change? If it does, is it a good thing? In Sunday's newspaper, the Seattle Times has an interesting look at a new beach town taking shape on the Washington coast, near Ocean Shores, and the young developer behind the project.