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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bentway who wrote (293156)	7/8/2006 6:06:04 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573980

Yeah, we've been laughing about those "soft landing" predictions over on the Residential RE crash thread for a while now. It's the hope of every overextended schlub that's already sucked every bit of equity out of their house for a boat, Escalade, big flat TV - or just to make their up-racheting ARM mortgage payments. Not to mention Realtors and the entire homebuilding industry. Which, in America right now, is a whole LOT of schlubs! Just trying to get past your CAcentric view of the world! ;-) Local homes: Investments that just keep getting hotter By Elizabeth Rhodes Seattle Times staff reporter Forget your home being your castle. Thanks to surging local home prices, your home is now your portfolio. How so? After giving thanks that you bit the bullet and bought, consider this: The median prices of King County's detached homes and condominiums have climbed 16 percent since the first of this year — despite a growing number of homes listed for sale — leaving both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq in the dust. The S&P has grown a paltry 0.1 percent since January, while the Nasdaq has declined 3 percent. Price gains in nearby counties, where sales are overwhelmingly single-family houses, also have been double-digit impressive. Snohomish County's detached-home prices are up 17.8 percent since Jan. 1, while Pierce County's prices have increased 16.6 percent, and Kitsap's 14 percent, newly released numbers from the Northwest Multiple Listing Service reveal. That puts Puget Sound-area sellers firmly in control — a situation that's increasingly more memory than reality for sellers in other parts of the country, where the housing market is cooling. Because the Puget Sound area's economy is strong, we're adding buyers who can absorb higher interest rates, said O.B. Jacobi, owner and broker of Windermere Real Estate's Wedgwood office. Rates have climbed from an average 5.62 percent a year ago to 6.79 percent this week for 30-year fixed-rate loans, according to mortgage-money provider Freddie Mac. "You would think with the interest rate climbing that people's buying power would have gone down a little bit, but we still haven't seen it," Jacobi said. "There are still tons of buyers in the market, more than sellers, and we're still seeing open houses with 50-60 people going through them. Well-priced, cute homes are selling quickly with multiple offers." continued.............. seattletimes.nwsource.com