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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TH who wrote (173885)	12/27/2008 5:29:45 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 306849

Strange, my good buddy in Seattle told me that he and his wife went last Saturday and had the place to themselves. Maybe the snow was so bad on Saturday that everyone stayed home. That's right. You couldn't leave my neighborhood without chains and many of us don't have them. I live on a hill as do many people in Seattle. These hills were developed with the understanding that Seattle gets very little snow. That turned out to be wrong this week. Just to give you an idea.....average snowfall in Seattle is around 12 inches. How this works....it falls one day and melts away the next. One news commentor said we have had close to 20 inches of snow during the past two weeks. Its just started melting today. I have not been in my car since a week ago Wed. If you needed food, you walked. I was invited to two XMAS parties that were cancelled that weekend. He was perplexed and vexed by it actually. He said he had never seen it this empty before and he was prepared to battle crowds on that weekend before X-mas. I was at a mall this morning. It seemed crowded. I have to be honest I wasn't paying close attention and this is a low grade mall....no big anchors....just Target, Barns and Noble and the like. In line with my comments in my prior post to you, last time I checked unemployment was still below 5% here. People are worried but it doesn't sound like they are as worried as in some other places. Construction has slowed down but is still going to some degree. There is a spec house going up near me that probably will hit the market around $700k. It started construction in Sept. In my part of the city, there are a number of mixed used projects as well as stand alone apts and offices under construction. The biggest hit we've taken was the loss of WaMu and that was a big loss. However, the rest of our major employers haven't started to do layoffs yet. Its a mixed bag. Places like TX and OK are still going strong. I think the worst may be MI, NV and CA. I understand that even FLA is starting to perk up some. We'll see how this all plays out but I am trying to keep an open mind and not let the fear rule. BTW why do you sign off with GT before the TH? Just curious.