Three Lakes

A blog for members and friends of Three Lakes Neighbors for Responsible Growth, dedicated to monitoring and maintaining the rural environment of central Snohomish County, Washington

Sunday, August 07, 2005

Housing bubble is busting -- good news for us if not for the country.

That Hissing Sound - New York Times:
"This is the way the bubble ends: not with a pop, but with a hiss.
Housing
prices move much more slowly than stock prices. There are no Black Mondays, when
prices fall 23 percent in a day. In fact, prices often keep rising for a while
even after a housing boom goes bust.

So the news that the U.S. housing
bubble is over won't come in the form of plunging prices; it will come in the
form of falling sales and rising inventory, as sellers try to get prices that
buyers are no longer willing to pay. And the process may already have started."


Which may not be good news for the national economy, but it is good news for us in attempting to preserve our rural neighborhood. If the local housing boom busts, then we might end up with many fewer houses built on our friendly neighborhood Rural Cluster subdivision than the builders might anticipate. Instead on only taking a few short years to fill it up, it could take a lot longer. I suppose it would get filled up eventually, but the sales rate will be much slower.

That will, of course, prolong the period where we have big sales signs up at the entrance to 163rd, and the traffic from potential buyers, but the traffic will probably be lower and spread out over a longer time.

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