But Seattle has seen the same thing, the market has gone crazy here and there isn’t much housing supply to meet demand. That is just the forsale market, rentals are much weaker.
Seattle's reckoning/correction is coming. The city is doing everything in its power to chase money away, Amazon is trying to move to Bellevue as an example. People are growing tired of the messy streets, needles are tents are spreading as the city ignores the problem.
On the plus side, our landlord is doing everything in his power to keep us happy, for the first time.
> Seattle's reckoning/correction is coming. The city is doing everything in its power to chase money away
And yet the skyscrapers and office buildings are still going up. The construction boom hasn't mitigated. Seattle isn't doing a good job at chasing money away.
> People are growing tired of the messy streets, needles are tents are spreading as the city ignores the problem.
It's just a handful of streets. It's certainly not endemic to the city. 99.99% of seattle doesn't have that issue. Unfortunately for seattle, that problem is concentrated around the touristy section.
> On the plus side, our landlord is doing everything in his power to keep us happy, for the first time.
> And yet the skyscrapers and office buildings are still going up. The construction boom hasn't mitigated. Seattle isn't doing a good job at chasing money away.
I don't have skin in the game here, but I noticed this statement, which I think isn't right. You need to consider that commercial construction, skyscrapers no less, take years. From conception to funding to planning to approvals to building, the lag is long.
So long, in fact that some have come up with the (controversial, not saying it's correct) "Skyscraper Index" which argues that historically, peak skyscraper height correlated with the worst economic dips in the economic cycles.
Latency is huge. No one thought up COVID, WFH or even CHAZ when they were standing around plastic models of plastic buildings.
Amazon buildings tend to go up fairly quickly, many a couple of years of planning and construction, especially since Paul Allen's Vulcan real estate (who owns most of the land and construction) laid all the plans a long time ago.
> So long, in fact that some have come up with the (controversial, not saying it's correct) "Skyscraper Index" which argues that historically, peak skyscraper height correlated with the worst economic dips in the economic cycles.
Considering that none of these buildings are very tall, we are fairly safe then.
But I think this slow down will be useful in the long run: Downtown Seattle is currently turning into office space for Amazon without much for anyone else anymore. Especially compared to downtown Portland, which is a much better place to live (more retail and services, better access MAX). The boom was really going in the wrong direction, it would be nice if it could be corrected.
I just moved to Ballard, and we have a few homeless encampments (the closest one to me is at Ballard park). I'm really surprised in how bad it isn't here: the residents are mostly well behaved and don't leave needles or anything like that hanging around (and they don't poop on the streets since the city installed a bunch of portable toilets). It is still kind of a bummer, but it is far from a deal breaking nuisance.
Maybe, but it hasn’t happened yet, it’s a seller market ATM. And we just moved from Bellevue where we were renting, houses are actually cheaper in Seattle, we could never afford anything decent in Bellevue.
That isn’t true, no way do 30% of Seattle students go to private school. We moved to Ballard, which has some pretty good schools (it’s high school is a 9/10). And yes, schools are why we didn’t consider south Seattle.
Hello neighbor - I bought my first house in Ballard this February myself.
For SF / SV readers: Ballard is a hip Seattle neighborhood, somewhat like Hayes Valley but also near a beach and bike paths. My house is new construction and walking distance to everything. I paid list price.
When I was doing my undergrad, I used to run up to Ballard via the trail (well, it stopped just short of Ballard back then). It was mostly industrial and blue collar, Amazon didn't exist yet in SLU (which was pretty seedy anyways), how times have changed.
That's a lot higher than I thought it would be. Oddly enough, I have a friend in Clyde Hill (not Seattle, pretty good schools) who sends his daughter to private school in Queen Anne.
I wouldn't be surprised if this is how people in South Seattle deal with living in South Seattle, or in downtown (e.g. capital hill), the schools really aren't great there. The schools don't get good until you hit Queen Anne, Magnolia, Ballard, Wallingford, Green Lake, north of UW (Roosevelt is where all the UW professors send their kids), but then they aren't so great again in north (of 85th) Seattle (not as bad as South Seattle, however). I'm not sure how even the reputation of South Seattle is either; my cousins went to West Seattle high school and they had pretty good experiences.
In my area (Methow Valley) rentals have gotten way harder to score since so many of the people who rented out second homes have moved here full time. It's a pretty big problem for the local workers.
