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"much can be said" courtesy of our Flickr pool's +Russ
How is the Seattle real estate market like an ice cream cone? It's frozen and it either is currently "clearly a double-dipper" or will be. (Once again, Portland gets there first.)
Hell may have frozen over as well as Seattle; the Seattle Bubble says this could be a good time to buy a home. Granted, they're talking about prepared buyers taking advantage of that below-market deal they've found. Anecdotally, this is echoed by Redfin's report on the Seattle area market, which notes that a few first-time home buyers are making their move.
Otherwise, of the Seattle area homes pulled off the market in November, a full 60 percent were delisted by owners who plan to wait out the winter. Only 40 percent were sales. Of the city of Seattle 1,700-house November inventory (down 14 percent from October), 344 sold, while the time it took to close on a sale continued to lengthen thanks to difficulties finalizing financing.
Seattle condo sales remain way back in the deep freeze section, down a full 50 percent year over year. 137 sold, but 200 were delisted, to wait for spring. The Bubble warned that the home buying credit program was simply pulling demand from the future, and that once it ended, we'd see the frozen wasteland currently before us. But it is also true that many first-time buyers went the condo route, and now sit underwater, unable even to think of taking a short sale's loss; the average condo sale price per square foot is down just 1.2 percent from last November.
Meanwhile, bottom-callers have these home-price declines to stare at. (Here's the Bubble's latest Case-Schiller graphs.) It's not just Seattle, of course--Seattlepi.com reports that Seattle and ten other metro areas are seeing a "triple-dip," and analysts predict anywhere from another six to fifteen percent slide over 2011. (Nor is the problem limited to residential real estate--the Wall Street Journal reports that Beacon Capital Parters, owners of the Columbia Tower Center, are selling their best-performing asset to raise capital to meet debt obligations.)...
"FREE HOMES" courtesy of our Flickr pool's photocoyote
What's it all mean? The latest concern over messy mortgage paperwork injects more uncertainty into people's already uncertain lives. The Seattle Bubble reports "foreclosure notices are still rising rapidly year-over-year." FBR Capital Markets analyst Paul Miller says foreclosure delay losses could range from six to ten billion dollars. Any delay in processing will simply drag out the larger real estate market reset.
But the burning question once again--as with the subprime loan meltdown--is what the size of the problem is. Are these errors that can be corrected, or have lenders fast-tracked themselves into writing unsecured loans?
When I first heard that banks were halting foreclosures, I thought, naively, that they were attempting some kind of homeowner assistance program. But it turned out that banks have been illegally foreclosing on homeowners, through what's known as "robo-signing"or otherwise cutting corners.
In Washington state, Attorney General Rob McKenna says that investigators responding to complaints have found "inaccurate documents, conflicts-of-interest, faulty chains of title and failures to provide the disclosures and conduct mediations required by law." He's asked 52 Washington foreclosure trustees to suspend action on any "questionable" foreclosures....
It seems every few days we are inundated with claims of new sources of clean, green energy. But these new directions tend to offer a lot of potential, rather than proven results. Yet, as the Gulf oil spill demonstrates, little good can come of staying the course of fossil fuel.
So what's behind door number three? Solar energy isn't a new technology. It's growing comfortable in middle age and showing surprising perseverance. Solar energy systems for homes are still pricey, but if you live in Seattle and have watched your electric bill rise almost 20 percent this year alone, you might have started weighing your options.
"The first question we get from customers is always, 'Will a solar energy system work in Seattle?'" says Jeremy Harvey, the advertising and marketing director for Ballard-based Sunergy Systems. "The answer is yes." (A thick cloud cover does reduce the electricity you get, but partly cloudy days can actually improve power production.) Our long summer days help compensate for the dark December half-days, and at the exact time of the year when our hydroelectricity supply is at its limit.
Sunergy is one of the largest installers of solar energy systems in Washington. (Find more here.) They focus on residential systems, but can also install commercial systems, and Harvey says they are on track to double their installation total from last year.
The sun has been harnessed for energy in a variety of ways since the earliest days of man, but the solar power industry as we know it is really about 40 years old. It first began to attract public interest as a viable residential application in the 1970s and many people's perceptions are still shaped by early versions of solar energy technology.
One thing is still true, which is that the sun pours out much more power than we can get at: Even cutting-edge photovoltaics don't transform more than 30 percent of sunlight into electricity. (They're working on it.) But in terms of what you need to power your home, panels take up much less space and look snappier to boot.
Shoreline Community College's 18-kW system
"We've evolved in every way," Harvey says. "The systems are more efficient, easier to install and maintain, and there are many more types of systems available. Some of the biggest innovations in the industry are government incentives."
Solar energy systems are not cheap up front. The "average" price for the installation of a 5-kW solar electric system is between $20,000 and $40,000. Seattle City Light says a 2-kW system can run $12,000 to $20,000. To make that money back through electricity bill savings and incentives might take 10 to 12 years, though that recoupment time, remarkably, is down by almost half from what it used to be.
Costs are lessened through tax breaks and incentives at the county, state, and federal levels--more or less, depending on where you live. It's not just a free ride for hippies with big screens--policy wonks, like our friends at Sightline, have been pushing for incentives that take into account not just homeowner savings, but also the savings from not adding power infrastructure. Do you know what a new nuclear power plant costs these days?
Issaquah Fish Hatcher's 1-kW panel
Currently, the IRS will allow a tax credit equal to 30 percent of the cost to purchase and install a system. Below that, the incentive game can get confusing. The state will reimburse 15 cents per kilowatt-hour, and up to 54 cents/kWh if your system was manufactured in-state (currently, there is only one manufacturer in Washington State).
Snohomish County has a magnificent program of financial incentives--offering an instant rebate or low-interest loans to pay for installation--but King County has no such program. Seattle City Light will let you collect "rollover" kilowatts, as any excess energy you generate flows back into their system. Sunergy aims for a system that leaves you holding a $0 electric bill over the course of a year.
According to Harvey, the typical solar energy customer so far is in their mid-40s to 60s--in other words, people likely to live in a home long enough to reap the long-term benefits--though some younger, green-conscious families are signing up too. Because photovoltaic panels have no moving parts, maintenance is virtually nil. Occasionally defects in manufacture appear, but these are covered by warranty.
Though solar electric is the most common system ordered, it is not the only type of system you can install. Solar-heated hot water systems are gaining in popularity.
Hot water production is the second highest energy expense in any home, right after central heating (it may be the highest, obviously, if you have radiant heat). Solar hot water makes the most efficient use of the sun's energy, netting you almost three times the energy you'd get from photovoltaics.
In Western Washington, according to Harvey, families can meet about 90 percent of their hot water heating needs in summer, 75 percent in the fall and spring, and 30 percent in the winter. (The solar hot water heaters are "hybrid" systems, with an electric supplement that handles the darkest, coldest months.) And all it takes is some tubes filled with a biodegradable antifreeze solution.
Hot water systems cost substantially less than photovoltaics, so they can pay you back for installation through fuel bill savings in well under ten years. If you'd like to learn more, Sunergy holds special Solar Energy 101 and 201 classes in their Ballard location; contact them for the next date.
Windermere has a Capitol Hill condo selling for $149,000 down the street from The SunBreak offices, at 1125 E Olive (at 12th Avenue). It's 436 sq. ft., hardwood floors, forced air, HOA is $200. It's the lowest-priced condo on my email update by far, with $40,000 between that and the next listed price. But if it's snapped up before you can put down an offer, stay cool.
Whether you call it depreciation or affordability, Goldman Sachs says the next two years should bring more of it; Seattle Bubble (naturally) spotted their prediction that Seattle home prices would lead other major U.S. urban areas with a 22 percent decline over the next two years.
Goldman Sachs calls our situation a "back-loaded price decline," which has a familiar ring to anyone familiar with Seattle Bubble's time-adjusting housing price graphs. Las Vegas and Portland join us in home devaluation "due to high homeowner vacancy rates and/or rising mortgage delinquencies," but Seattle is way out down in front, losing ten percent more in value than Portland over the next eight quarters....
As I sit here trying to cudgel some thoughts together in response to the Mark Morris Dance Group performance at the Paramount last night (also tonight 8 p.m., Sunday 2 p.m.), what's running through my mind is Sly and the Family Stone's "Dance To The Music."
MMDG "Jesu, Meine Freude" (Photo: Nan Melville)
And what I mean by "to," if I can drop a little Bill Clinton on you, is not "in accordance with the notes," but more like "facing the music"--which, literally, is what Morris was doing as he conducted "Gloria" last night, but is what he seems always to be doing, metaphorically. I suppose it's similar to looking hard at a painting for hours; yes, you'll become familiar with brush strokes, but you will also step into the whole (or not).
Let us turn now to a chapter of Genesis (Mark Morris, by Acocella): "He is listening to the music very hard, analytically--phrase lengths, key changes--but as he does so, an emotion is being born in his mind, an emotion that gradually eats the music, makes it his."
There. That's got it.
"A Lake" (1991) finds Morris in an uncharacteristically unsaucy mood, his dancers taking springy steps and having a bit of a party that's interrupted by a mournful middle movement that bends them low.
If there's a lake involved, it's off a ways--this reminded me of Virginia Woolf visiting her family's lakeside cabin (though those shortish skirts wouldn't have cut it) and watching the sun and clouds play over the afternoon. How much work it is to have fun, sometimes....
Jim Kent and Ellie Sandstrom in Scott/Powell Performance's "Home." Photo by Peter Mumford.
So yes, there's one big dance event this weekend that everyone's going to be paying attention to. But it would be a shame if that overshadowed a pair of shows from two of Seattle's own leading choreographers, each with an impressive resume of her own, as well as a site-specific performance early next week that deserves consideration in its own right.First up, tonight is the opening night of Scott/Powell Performance's Home, at the Erickson Theatre off Broadway (tickets $12-$15). I have to admit, when I saw this piece in a shorter form last year at NW New Works, I had mixed feelings about it at best. But with a year's time to reflect, I've grown to appreciate Molly Scott's sculptural vision, mixing, as she does, both a choreographic and visual art approach to her work, which certainly showed in the piece's unique costuming and emphasis on subtle, repetitive movements.
Plus, extended to evening length, I imagine Home has lost most of the episodic feel that initially bothered me. And anyway, this piece features a remarkable line-up of dancers, including Beth Graczyk, Jim Kent, Jess Klein, Michael Rioux, Sean Ryan, Ellie Sandstrom, and Belle Wolf, the sort of people whose skill allows them to work wonders with subtlety.
Second, tomorrow night, choreographer and dancer Catherine Cabeen and Company is presenting an evening of mixed works called Form and Fluidity, at the Seattle Changing Room (tickets $15). Cabeen's a remarkable dancer and choreographer, as anyone who's seen her work knows. With her company and associated collaborators, Cabeen is exploring the "shifting intersections" between various means of communication, in a performance that promises to be charmingly intimate (the Changing Room is actually a yoga studio). Friday night is, unfortunately, already sold out, but tickets are still available for Saturday.
And finally, Tuesday, May 25, dancer and choreographer Alice Gosti is presenting a site-specific performance atop Kite Hill in Gasworks Park. Gosti, a dancer who, among other things, produces and curates the quarterly Modern Dance Behind the Pink Door series, is presenting DO While, performed by Gosti, Devin McDermott, and Meredith Mieko, explores "endlessness through body performance by juxtaposing physical endurance with spatial architecture." Set before the backdrop of the city at twilight, the costumes feature lit elements which track the artists' heartbeats, creating both a dramatic visual dynamic and a representation of the complex internal processes of the body. The performance is, of course, free to anyone who wants to come, but check back to its Facebook page, as this week's performance was effectively rained out due to mud.
Flickr pool member abosco adds a sense of mystery to real estate.
February's MLS report shows Seattle residential real estate has got a little tiger back in its tank, with pending sales up 35 percent from February '09. (I direct you to the Seattle Bubble for a grain of pending sales salt.) More convincingly, closed sales are up 34 percent as well, with 459 closed compared to 342 same month last year.
The safe conclusion we can draw from this is that some people want to sell and some people want to buy (though total "activity" was actually down almost eight percent). But speculating about the health of the market seems premature. It might be good news that the median price jumped $10,000, to $390,000, but then again it might not.
For one thing, that's very much in the ballpark of the $8,000 homebuyer credit. For another, the median doesn't tell you about short sales.
But that's Seattle--Seattle Bubble points out that except for Seattle and the Eastside, home prices around King County took a dive, year-over-year. And even so, while Seattle's median price for homes was up almost four percent, the condo median was down over six percent. UPDATE: The Bubble gets granular, and finds the median affected most by sales of Eastside homes.
Someone needs to invent a way of leveraging negative equity, and then name it a SNORKEL. The PSBJ reported yesterday that 15 percent of mortgages in the Seattle-Bellevue-Everett area are under water (it's 16 percent statewide, 24 percent nationally).
This is based on First American CoreLogic's Negative Equity Report, covering 85 percent of all U.S. mortgages. Their chief economist, Mark Fleming, notes that millions of people owning a home worth less than they owe on it tends to drives up foreclosures. For one thing, not being able to sell your house limits your ability to move to find a job if you've been laid off.
Seattle Bubble has an assortment of graphs based on the latest numbers from Case-Schiller; the C-S data breaks out the "Seattle" market (King, Snohomish, Pierce counties) into high, mid-level, and low cost tiers based on sales volume, which is interesting. "Low" at the moment is under $266,000. The Tim casts a cold eye on the last ten months of flat house values--despite the stimulus.
Former Seattle Times real estate editor Tom Kelly quotes Edward Pinto, former chief credit officer at Fannie Mae, as saying, "All we are doing is kicking the can down the street." Writes Kelly, who once offered to sell me a huge old Capitol Hill home on 17th Avenue East for $220,000 and I didn't jump at it, which is why I have trouble sleeping:
Basically, Pinto believes the extra cash the government is tossing into the housing market is simply adding fuel to the fire by depressing prices while foreclosures continue to flood the market.
RealtyTrac shows 3,495 foreclosure filings in Washington this year. This ain't over yet.
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