Seattle One Of The Stablest Housing Markets

This article has some informative looks into the market. I think there are some parallels in our market.

"It's not like any of these markets are going gangbusters," he says. "Even Seattle: It's been very strong, but conditions are weakening and this year, at best, will be an OK year."

"It largely reflects that these markets never went through the boom and aren't going through the severe bust," says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com. "Price growth is not great, but [these markets] are not having house price declines. [All markets] are experiencing pricing problems, but in these markets it's less of a problem."

This is one of the best articles I found recently. Most are either doom and gloom or "everything is rosy, buy, buy."

One place I am guessing we differ is the non-conforming loans. I see a lot of those all year long.

"Seattle continually bucks national housing trends. Price appreciation in the Emerald City has been strong over the last six quarters. Besides a very low unsold housing inventory and a strong sales rate, there are very few non-conforming loans, which lessens the chance of widespread foreclosures and delinquencies. While the market is slowing, the strong lending situation and sales rate bode well for the market."

And in respect to my problems with how statistics are presented to worry people rather than report,

"Regarding this measure, "it's important to differentiate between [delinquencies]: how many people are late relative to their most recent due date and how many people are in the process of losing their home," says Douglas Duncan, chief economist of the Mortgage Bankers Association. "Ninety percent of all 30-day late pays get fixed. Serious delinquencies are 90 days past current due dates."

We may get out of this relatively unscathed when accounting for the market as a whole but it is a Buyer's Market.