bellwether | (no subject)

Whew.

morganlf and I just got back from three days of house/apartment hunting and being tourists in Seattle. The more time I spend there, the more excited I get about moving.

We decided that West Seattle seems most appropriate in terms of price and location, plus we absolutely loved the downtown area along California. We've applied for a smallish (1000 sq ft/2BR) mother-in-law unit that looks like it will be more than big enough for now. We'd ideally like to buy a house in 6-8 months, assuming the market continues to act like it has been.

The big pluses of Seattle for me seem to be: a tangible environmental/green focus, a strong presence of a foodie culture, lots of available outdoor activities, and lots of used book stores. Taken together, these are huge. The downside is going to be two-fold--I will definitely miss the sun, and in terms of friends, we're leaving behind a large and established social base. That's pretty scary, but I am definitely looking forward to reconnecting with folks I've not seen in a long time.

My major annoyance of the weekend: having to watch the BSG premiere streamed over "borrowed" WiFi in our hotel room for scifi.com. The stream kept sputtering.... however, it was still worth it. :) The song that

morganlf wrote/translated the lyrics for seems to be Baltar's new theme music. How cool is that?????

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I actually read that article this weekend. Definitely interesting. It seems like though, what's more important than month-to-month median price trends, is the Year over Year trend. There's a normal curve to prices over the course of a year, so considering month-to-month prices kind of obfuscates the real price trends. Year-over-year is a slightly clearer indicator of the market, or so I've been told. That could be misinformation though, so take it with a grain of salt.

With that in mind, http://seattlebubble.com/ has a *lot* of interesting data. Seattle's YoY index for March is down 3.3% vs 2007.

Oh, in particular:

http://seattlebubble.com/blog/2008/04/04/nwmls-anybody-seen-my-spring-mojo-i-cant-find-it/#more-1774