Earlie,
A little report from the field.
Had lunch with a broker friend (residential, commercial & property management). Sales are on the books for a max 2 weeks only. he's even getting calls on some of his personal properties that are not for sale. People building or buying $300K-$400K 2nd homes on the Hood Canal.
However, this has to be tempered by the demographics of my area which is the east side of the Olympic Peninsula, a mixture of; bedroom community for Seattle, Navy shipyard workers, Naval personal, benign services, and low income (whew!).
As Ben Henwood said (he's on the mainland), anyone who moves here and has to work in the city would be better off living over here and taking the ferries to the city avoiding the traffic and having to live far out and deal with the traffic.
I'm finding that the low to middle income area strip malls are slowly loosing tenets but the high income area business areas (Bainbridge Is.) are doing quite well.
I can't help but think that much of the high end stuff is from insiders and "business people in the know" from the city, taking their "coin" and getting ready to "bail". Much like the "big boys" moving all their assets to my old hometown of Palm Bch County, however in that case it was to take advantage of FL's homestead exemptions laws.
Small point. I retired my construction company 3 years ago but all of a sudden I'm getting calls from roofing companies, labor companies, etc. looking for work.
I often reflect back to my friends up in the Yukon and upper BC, and what they have to do to survive the winter up there. You know, get the yearly moose, make sure they're stocked with firewood and put out the trap lines...knowledge that might come in handy preparing for the nuc. winter here, however, we'd have to substitue bear meat for moose.<G>
Bill/WA |
