Seattle Is Pretty Much Game Over: We Will Become Another San Francisco and Vancouver

Clear signs of gentrification on Beacon Hill. Charles Mudede

There is a moment when you have to accept the fact that nothing will reverse climate change, that we missed every opportunity to correct the situation. Indeed, we are not driving less but more than ever before, which, according to CNN Money, is "a good sign for the economy ." We have not just entered the beginning of this planet's next age, but we're also rushing (pedal to the metal) toward its unknown equilibrium.

Seattle's housing market is in a similar situation. There was a time when something could have been done to avoid its entry into the locked cycle of asset value inflation, but that was a few years ago. We now have to face the fact that this city will become another Vancouver, B.C. or San Francisco (or Miami, for that matter). The soft city is gone for good; the hard city is here to stay.

And the idea of building our way out of this bad situation, as the urbanists propose, will not produce the desired results in reality because the market is not structured in that way. It does not answer to the basic laws of supply and demand. That kind of thing happens in a system with very different institutional arrangements. (To get my meaning, please read "House prices have risen twice as fast as earnings: here’s why" from top to bottom.) Our market is structured for speculation, free capital flows, and rapid asset inflation.

Wall Street Journal reports:



With high home prices, low inventory and heated bidding wars, Seattle is the new San Francisco. In the metro Seattle area, home-sale prices rose 9.5% from 2014 to 2015, putting the median home value at $385,300, according to the National Association of Realtors. That’s below the limit for government-backed loans for the area, which currently is $540,500. But Seattle buyers who want a dream home in a desirable neighborhood will probabl0y need a jumbo mortgage.

Our situation now? Bill Paxton put it best in Aliens:This is true, it is game over, we are totally fucked. But we must keep on fighting even against a permanently bad situation. That is not our curse but our nature.