I bought a condo

I wrote this post a while ago but was waiting for the urbnlivn thing to get soft launchable before posting…

The other week I bought a one bedroom west facing view condo on the fifth floor at The Meritage, a new development several blocks south of my apartment.

This came as a shock to several of my friends because since moving to Seattle I’ve been a big believer in the imminent bursting of the Seattle real estate bubble. See interest rates were going up, incomes at the local tech companies have been flat, zoning changes have resulted in more supply, rental prices are low, foreclosures are raising… However, while sales have slowed, the market is still hot, properties have continued to appreciate, the local tech companies have continued to expand, some believe prices will go even higher, interest rates are likely plateauing,…

I definitely should have bought two years ago. But better late than never, right? (I swear I never said that when buying Pets.com stock at it’s peak!).

Now during my real estate investigation I got frustrated about a few things. For one the hot sites just provide listings but no analysis. I want a site that allows me to look at the average cost per square foot (min, max, median) and track that over time. Also other data points like # of new listings, average length of time on the market, closing prices… Looking at Redfin and Zillow both have a lot of work to do in the area of real estate analytics. Speaking of Seattle’s two hot real estate states, I use Redfin almost exclusively (in conjunction with a RSS subscription to a key word feed on Craigslist), while Zillow is useless for me because it only seems to work for single family dwellings.

My other frustration was with the quality of agents at pre-sale centers. Generally, they’re awful. They don’t ask you any questions or try to understand what you’re looking for. Instead they’re busy trying to sell you something that might not even be appropriate; they’re worse than used car salesmen. The agents also have this crazy obession with guarding the prices of the units forcing you to ask about every unit that you might be interested in.

It’d also be nice if there was a new construction portal that did a good job of aggregating pre-sale information giving you the ability to see what was on the market, what was coming up, and what had already come and gone (for historical pricing information). None of the current sites seem to offer this, which is why I built Urbnlivn.