Economy? (Seattle, Pullman: for sale, real estate, apartment)

[ButterflyUK]

I have been watching the economy as best as I can for the Tri-cities for the past year. It looks like things are still good. Not booming, but not in decline. Houses are still selling and prices have seemed to stay steady. What do you see living there? How is the economy in the Tri-cities?

[j_k_k]

Originally Posted by ButterflyUK

I have been watching the economy as best as I can for the Tri-cities for the past year. It looks like things are still good. Not booming, but not in decline. Houses are still selling and prices have seemed to stay steady. What do you see living there? How is the economy in the Tri-cities?

Fuel prices have made a significant dent, cutting back on spending and changing some habits. Too bad our area is so poorly equipped for bicycling. More people are doing it, however. A lot of houses for sale aren't selling. Apartment/condo people have overbuilt, in my opinion, as have developers. That makes it a buyer's market for the newcomer, who should drive a very hard bargain. God, I wish I was buying now. I'd get this house (paid $155K seven years ago) for $130K simply because it would have sat on the market so long.

As for renting, don't. Renting in the Tri-Cities makes little sense when you could own a small home for what you pay in rent, unless you were elderly and didn't want the home maintenance hassles, or unless your credit is shot. I would say we are not nearly as impacted as some areas. We still have several sources of semi-permanent employment, mainly because we are hiring the children of the people who made a nuclear mess to clean up their parents' mess. Everyone can easily see that the quicker it gets cleaned up, the less jobs there will be at Hanford, so there's little urgency there. Hanford folks, of course, will blame it all on unions and the DOE. Yeah, like they would really rush to work themselves out of a job if left to their own devices. Sorry, but the Hanford culture is too embedded in the Tri-Cities to allow that.

The school districts are large employers, and they seem to be holding steady with fairly minor cuts. The expansion of WSU-Tri-Cities is a positive step; while the campus is causing new Cougs (good news for pizza places and Wal-Mart as it means plentiful job applicants), having a four-year university in the area can only be good for the economy because otherwise universities are steady employers and student subsistence money will be better for the TC if spent here rather than in Pullman or Seattle.

[GameHog9]

^ You know hes right

Home sales are actually down, but still pretty good. An analyst in the paper said that this is actually signs of a healthy economy. I dont know, maybe hes an idiot .

New stores and businesses are popping up all over the place, especially on Southridge, 68, and Queensgate. I expect the economy to keep going.

And if by some ungodly means it slows down to a crawl... then we'd still be better off than other parts of the State (*coughyakimacough*)

[tcres]

They keep saying things have slowed down here but it was well after the rest of the nation and it's still positive. Honestly it doesn't really appear to have slowed from my view. Seems like everywhere you look there is something under construction.

[Moon Waffle]

I think your original post is right on. TC has held steady for the past severel years. There was a boom in the early 00's but it seemed that construction slowed off at the right time. As a result, the market is slower than it was during that period, but I would not say it is in a slump. Just nice and steady. Very re-assuring when you look at places like Miami, Phoenix, Vegas, California, etc....

[j_k_k]

In today's Tricycle Herald:

Tri-City home sales drop 23% - Mid-Columbia News | Tri-City Herald : Mid-Columbia news

In case you're like me and don't usually go to the link, here's the opening part:

"Sales of existing homes in Benton and Franklin counties were down 23 percent for the second quarter of the year when compared with the year before, according to a Washington State University research group.

That still was better than the state's housing market, however, as the rate of decline for the second quarter was 31.7 percent statewide, the Washington Center for Real Estate Research reported Thursday.

The report also listed Benton County as having the most affordable housing in the state."

That squares with what I'm seeing: a decline but less pronounced than I'm hearing out of Seattle.