It’s Sunday, let’s sweep the week…

Friday was full thus a Sunday evening sweep to share content from last week and look ahead to next week; together. Of note, it is our week to each vote. Tuesday, November 8th.

Other headlines last week: Amazon freezes hiring, rate hikes & real estate firms tied to Wall Street don’t look so good in their earnings – many with continued staff cuts. How will this all play out for us? I will answer it this way: put focus solely on your client & the reason they are active in the market. That is the only market and game of chess that matters. Reduce the noise around the rest. There is always a market beyond the headlines.

Last week, broker Sol Villarreal shared a graph he put together – take a look at link here. Note: move your cursor along the trend lines to see data.

Sol’s commentary below…

“The biggest thing that stood out to me was the durability of the seasonality trends in Seattle proper that I’ve observed in my 8 years in the business holding firm throughout the period starting in 2007 (before which the official NWMLS data didn’t break things down beyond King County as a whole) all the way through the Great Recession as well: home prices rise by whatever amount they’re going to rise the first half of the year, and they decline by whatever amount they’re going to decline in the back half of the year. Prices also took 4 ½ years to drop their full 30% from pre-recession peak to mid-recession trough, from $501k in August of 2007 to $350,500 in January of 2012, which I thought was interesting. It’s impossible to say what prices are going to do in the short-to-medium term future, just like it always is, but I think it does point to the fact that they’re very likely going to continue to follow seasonal trends, decreasing or remaining flat through the end of the year and then either increasing or staying flat the first 4-6 months of next year. I’ve talked to several buyers who are convinced that the bottom is dropping out of the market and prices are going to collapse in the next 6 months, and I just don’t think that’s a likely outcome at all.” – Sol Villarreal

Hey downtown Seattle! You are better off than this picture taken during the early shut down days. Curious what is actually going on y’all? The fabulous Tiffini Connell of West Coast Commercial Realty did a very nice job in a quick digestible recap on IG – link here. Ps, did you know we currently have the highest downtown residential population in Seattle’s history? Over 100,000 residents!

…and, Tiffini shared with me last week a pretty cool downtown recovery dashboard – check it out here!

Ok, welcome to Sunday evening everyone and the eve of a new week – a fresh start – a blank slate. I’ll leave you with this thought from James Clear’s (author of Atomic Habits) 3-2-1 blog post last week:

“Your net productivity is the balance of the productive and unproductive forces in your life.

A great deal of time and energy is spent thinking about how to increase effort, but there is a lot to be gained by reducing friction.

A car will travel faster not only if you press the accelerator, but also if you remove the speed bumps.” – James Clear

Have a great week everyone. Here to help. Just maybe I can help you remove a speed bump or two towards an even better net productivity…

Your fan, Laura