Emily Elliott, I have your COVID-19 card

On my 10 mile morning walk today, I found your COVID-19 Vaccination Record Card on Market Street in Ballard.  

You received dual Moderna shots in March and April of this year.  You are 22 years old, Emily Elliott.

You will need this to enjoy basic human freedoms, to be employed, to attend concerts and sports events, and to visit bars and restaurants in the time you have left.

Please drop me a line at cgustafson at gmail dot com, and I'll gladly return this to you.  

A walk to Ballard is a fine excuse to visit the Twice Told Tales bookshop; on my last visit I found a hardcover 1st ed. of Strauss and Cropsey's History of Political Philosophy, if you can believe it.  

In darkest Ballard, I know!

Friendly reminder to friends that the results of the Maricopa County 2020 election audit are due out after market close this Friday, September 24.  Chow down on me, hogs.

End of the housing bubble in north Seattle

In the last real estate bubble, the north end of Seattle -- particularly the Crown Hill, Greenwood, and Loyal Heights neighborhoods, all north of Ballard -- had abandoned projects and vacant lots left in its wake.  In the current stupid cycle, we now have one last wave of frantic development, a desperate effort to build as much bugman housing as possible while the going is still good.

I won't mince words.  The developers and lenders for these projects-in-progress are going to be splendidly fucked, all of them, as the bubble pops and demand evaporates overnight for this garbage.  Did you not get the memo?  Amazon stopped hiring months ago.  It's over.  It's all over.

There are two houses on my block going on the market in the next few weeks, one from a smart friend of mine, a long-time owner, who I'm sure gets it, and the other from the worst sort of scum real-estate flipper.

I'm seeing for-rent signs on buildings, and Wolf Richter is seeing what I'm seeing in the aggregate numbers.

So let's take a look at some of the chipboard sawdust nightmares about to flood the stagnating RRE market on the north end of Seattle.

progress in Ballard

85th Street NW

A large sawdust development on 15th Ave NW ...

... so shitty and shoddy it's embarrassing ...

... I see ... black mold ... in your future

15th Ave NW

future tenements

someone please mortgage your future for this

on my weekend walk, 15th & Dravus NW

almost finished, ready for a bloated market

Good luck, FIRE sector jerks

more at Dravus & 15th.  a Starbucks closed recently near here.

Hurry up and finish these so you can discount the rents

future tenements

big project almost up on Market Street & 15th in Ballard ...

... I think that is actual concrete used in the structure, how about that!

YUGE project going in northeast of the Ballard Bridge ...

... this will be a very special disaster for the developers 

they have broken ground and can't turn back

once there was actual productive industry here

loose credit, credulous tech bubble idiots ...

... and you get this shite on 15th Ave NW

for fuck's sake, read the Austrians already

dead Crown Hill Hardware ... so build more housing!

finished product 85th & 80th NW, ugly as hell

absolutely disgraceful, what they have done to our city

dead shitty Mexican restaurant 15th Ave NW -> more housing!

Crown Hill, replace the brick bungalow with some chipboard shit

dead Radio Shack, re-zone this for condos?

Restaurants gone, new housing coming, dead Pizza Hut

who will blow up the Pizza Hut?  for housing

dead strip club, more housing coming

who will demolish this dead sushi restaurant?  85th & 15th NW

bugman housing going up behind Value Village

I think I saw actual plywood used in this construction

new plots just dug out at 85th & 12th NW, more garbage coming

there were dead vacant lots left on 85th in 2009

black mold and rot ahead in Sunset Hill ...

... the garage has better bones than the house!

Everyone get ready for the panic and crash cycle.  Seattle is so over.

Amanita muscaria

Green Lake, Seattle, WA, this morning.

Waiting for the Bollinger

If our analysis hinges on the top Bollinger Band of the SPX, then we need to be patient -- it's way up at 2136 this morning.  Since this is a measure of extremes, of standard deviation of our moving averages, then we need to wait for it to calm down before we can reach it.

Of course, with all of this excitement and energy and animal spirits and relentless innovation in the markets, we are still building like mad here in the Seattle.  From my walk to work:

To the moon!

Here you can see the top Bollinger Band on the daily SPX, and how we flirted with it before finishing up the third wave in the series (red 3).  We never did penetrate it, however, so that 2093.55 high was always suspicious.

SPX 02-24

The next few weeks may be terribly dull, I'm sorry.

EDIT: no, well, actually, it could either be horribly dull, or we could see that herky-jerky ending-diagonal play out after all.  That would be both exciting and very trade-able.  Pray for that!

Seattle bubblicious fence 2

As the Seattle RE market continues its slide downhill, we have a new champion for a bubblicious fence!  Site 17 in Belltown, welcome to Deflation Land!

This building was a $1100 1-bed rental when I arrived in Seattle during the dotcom heyday in 2000.  It went condo, and now has 10, count-em, 10, lockboxes.  Another perspective:

Part of condominiumization involves applying a thick layer of pretentiousness.  By buying into this disaster, you are experiencing a great aesthetic achievement!

Our former champion, the Athena in Lower Queen Anne, has only 4 lockboxes as of this morning.  No contest!