Yesterday the Seattle Times reprinted a New York Times article on the "third wave" of foreclosures--foreclosures on people who had good credit and reasonable mortgages, but who have fallen behind due to job loss or pay or hours reduction. The first wave came when flippers and speculators got caught by plunging real-estate prices, and wave number two arrived when option-ARM mortgages reset at higher rates. Foreclosures are terrible for the value of surrounding homes. In Seattle, says the PSBJ, the "average price of a Seattle home dropped 16.4 percent in March from a year earlier, which is moving closer to the national average decline of 18.7 percent." more ›

Seattle Bubble directed us to this Bloomberg article the Seattle Times picked up suggesting there might be a "lost generation" of U.S. home values. Baby boomers are downsizing and it's "unlikely that Generation X, born between 1965 and 1976 (or more derisively called 'baby busters'), will bid up home prices. They are only 44 million strong, not as wealthy and even more in debt from college loans." On the bright side, there's probably never been an easier time to buy an apartment near Green Lake. more ›

That's the stat that jumped out at us from the Seattle Times story on our woozy real estate market; they went with "Nearly 30 percent of all homes sold at a loss at the end of 2008." So says Zillow's quarterly home value report. The King Country assessor's office data shows that "Most homes bought since mid-2005 and sold during the last three months of 2008 fetched lower prices than their owners paid." But that twenty percent underwater worries us because that's a sizable chunk who no longer have the recourse of being able to tap home equity in an emergency. more ›