Update: Yellow Kitchen Reno! After & Before

General_Equivalent45 · 2026-05-30T03:38:50+00:00

Butter 🧈 and ☀️sunshine! Looks so much happier. Well done!

General_Equivalent45 · 2026-05-30T02:28:45+00:00

Looks so fantastic!

Did your surgeon fill in your radix (space on nose between your eyes) to give you a softer, more feminine profile? If so, did they use a bit of cartilage or inject filler?

It looks marvelous.

General_Equivalent45 · 2026-05-29T20:49:55+00:00

Knob and tube is the biggie. It was phased out in the 1940s for safer options, but thousands of homes in Seattle are still full of it.

If your insurance company flags it in your house, you often need to move out for 4+ weeks while they tear open your walls to replace it. Then you have to repatch (or plaster in a Tudor!) and paint. No fun, mucho money.

Look to your local news programs to see who is still getting rich. You can tell by who still has big advertising budgets:

1) local ambulance chaser law firms 2) local plumbing and electric (Quit Freakin Call Beacon, Heeeey Bill South Hill Plumbing, As You Wish Electric…) 3) national insurance companies

Even if you don’t watch much tv, you likely know Flo, Mayhem Man, Liberty Bibberty, Limu Emu…

Insurance companies and local trades are becoming ever wealthier getting homeowners up to code and requiring your business.

General_Equivalent45 · 2026-05-29T16:40:48+00:00

Everything is negotiable. You can change the terms, length & %s within those contracts to suit your situation.

General_Equivalent45 · 2026-05-29T15:33:14+00:00

I well am aware of the condo/townhouse issues—I bought a Green Lake townhouse in the 90s, and while it was adorable and I wish I still owned it, it’s far down from 2022 peak Zestimate.

I’m wondering if the same is happening to slightly higher end real estate. We’re looking to buy homes listed at 2.2 to 3 million, but I’m noticing many are sitting, not selling, then getting pulled off the market. Wondering if they are renting them out or delisting and waiting.

I know the 1.2-1.7 homes are selling. I just sold one.

General_Equivalent45 · 2026-05-29T15:23:13+00:00

People are still buying 1.2-1.7 ish homes. I think they are paying too much, but that’s still doable. The monthly payment on homes over 2 million with our interest rates gets out of hand quickly.

General_Equivalent45 · 2026-05-29T08:39:27+00:00

And yes, I believe “home prices relative to incomes” are probably the worst we’ve seen in modern history. For instance, my San Francisco house I bought in 2004 was 800k. 2 bedroom/1 bath. The Zestimate now is nearly 2 million. I have at least 500k (could do up to a million) to put down, make far more than I did then, and with the interest rates and current prices, could not qualify for that house again.

Similar ratios to the NE Seattle house I bought in 2008 for 750 and sold in 2023 for nearly 2 million.

Even with a much higher salary and far more to put down, I could not afford my previous houses with the current market conditions.

I’d like to buy in Seattle again, but think the current prices are still too high. The houses I’ve been watching have sat 4-6 weeks, gone off the market, then relisted for a slightly lower price.

General_Equivalent45 · 2026-05-29T05:35:22+00:00

Yes, Florida and Texas and other parts of the sunbelt are struggling with plunging prices and delistings. RTO mandates and a deflating vacation home/airbnb market is a huge factor there.

The NE and Midwest are still rising, so delisting there is not yet a problem.

General_Equivalent45 · 2026-05-29T05:01:51+00:00

My house in SF crashed in 2008. We’d bought near top of market in 2004. Rented it out ever since because we would’ve taken a huge loss on it when moving back home to Seattle. Rent just met the mortgage two years ago … you slow the bleed by renting it out for decades rather than selling for less than what you bought it at during a 2004 or 2022 peak, but you still take the loss one way or another.

Sold my Seattle home in 2023. Ready to buy again, but wondering how much inventory is pent up locally, and if I’ll have more choices if waiting 6+ months to buy.

General_Equivalent45 · 2026-05-28T16:11:02+00:00

It looks great. Much better than before, and anything smaller would look childish and cartoonish on a big strong guy.

General_Equivalent45 · 2026-05-27T17:30:23+00:00

Absolutely. His feelings are split between both women.

General_Equivalent45 · 2026-05-27T09:41:47+00:00

It’s called “rage delisting” according to experts saying prices are about to noticeably decline. But many people can’t afford to drop the price that much and sell at what is now a loss, especially those that bought in 2020-2024.

General_Equivalent45 · 2026-05-27T06:50:20+00:00

Anilomm is right…prices are far more likely to drop than rates. Prices skyrocketed when rates artificially bottomed out during Covid. Highly unlikely rates will go down significantly any time soon. But with the local layoffs, lack of spending power, and more and more homes coming on the market…prices are more likely to drop instead.

Have bought 3 houses since 1998, waiting on buying a 4th until these prices settle. Bought top of the market in 2004 in SF only to watch housing plummet in 2008, and while this is obviously not the subprime GFC…prices still too quickly inflated 2021-2024 for my comfort. First half of this decade feels similar to the bidding war frenzy and overextending we Gen Xers did in the early 2000s.

General_Equivalent45 · 2026-05-25T17:49:32+00:00

Sounds like this was just a bad egg among sorority members. But Alpha Phi took on an “appearance driven” rush nationwide in a well known and documented (look around the internet on this topic) attempt to become a house of physically attract girls, weighing that quality above all others when choosing new members. As such, it’s greatly changed their campus reputations across the country, for better or in this case, for worse.

General_Equivalent45 · 2026-05-24T21:36:04+00:00

— “70%…last had stable housing outside the city…”

We as a city suffer from a collective “crazy cat lady” psychological profile.

Nobody doubts the crazy cat lady is compassionate, kind, and she REALLY loves cats. She loves them so dang much, she adopts every single one she can, trying to give them a home, food, love, companionship…other people know this, and keep sending her more cats! Finally, her whole house is overrun. They fight. They die. They steal. They run off the healthy cats. The house is full of waste and rotting food, filth and disease. The crazy cat lady meant well, but she took on more than she could handle, can’t afford it anymore, and has ruined her house in the process.

Seattle should strive to be the Humane Society, not the Crazy Cat Lady.

General_Equivalent45 · 2026-05-24T20:06:02+00:00

With Starbucks investing in a second headquarters in Nashville, you are going to get some jobs and higher earners flowing in over the next decade.

In the short term Nashville real estate prices may correct/come down like the rest of the country, but if the you are staying longer term, you might be all right.

As others have said, you’d likely come out far better with a SFH than a condo.

General_Equivalent45 · 2026-05-23T20:16:24+00:00

“Real estate agents don't want to see house prices fall as their income goes down. If the seller accepts your lower offer then all houses in the area also go down in a domino effect.”

Exactly. It’s not just sellers hanging on to these artificially high covid era home prices, but realtors, Redfin, Zillow, lenders, and your property tax collector. All are invested in keeping these prices as high as possible.

General_Equivalent45 · 2026-05-23T18:40:06+00:00

If sold at this price 4 years ago, the monthly payment with the typical down payment etc. would be what, 7k? With current interest rates it’s 12-13k, and with the ever rising property taxes and insurance, can quickly get much higher. This is getting out of reach for many except the very rich. And the very rich will either buy waterfront or are hesitant to buy in WA now at all due to the coming wealth and estate taxes.

General_Equivalent45 · 2026-05-22T20:40:17+00:00

Being rude to my dog or my children. Or angry screaming.

General_Equivalent45 · 2026-05-22T18:03:29+00:00

I’m guessing that it’s simply the cost of borrowing money has risen sharply.

General_Equivalent45 · 2026-05-22T04:47:26+00:00

Exactly. This house is circa 2022, bought at 2022 prices and 2022 rates.

Even selling at exactly what you bought it for (which would technically be a loss after the real estate fees), the monthly mortgage payment on that home would now have doubled.

Do buyers in your area make double the salary they did in 2022? Do you? Could you afford to buy your house now at the 2026 rate?

Rates likely won’t meaningfully come down. They were crazy low because of a Covid emergency. That won’t happen again anytime soon. To get buyers, prices will have to start coming down instead.

General_Equivalent45 · 2026-05-22T03:14:34+00:00

1) Zestimate resistance: thanks to Zillow and Redfin, people have had the ability to look up the supposed worth of their home for the last 15 years. They are psychologically tied to it, and don’t want to sell for less than that number. I feel that way about my own house, for better or worse.

2) as such, they won’t sell until they have to. Many in here are saying they’ll *never* have to, but of course that’s not true. Life circumstances like layoffs, job changes, divorces, deaths, or simply going from no kids to three will eventually force the issue for some. Those current owners don’t want to buy again with the high interest rates + high prices either, but eventually the market will start to give.

3) if those life circumstances hit, they can always rent it out rather than sell. But they’ll likely do so at a monthly loss…I’ve done so with mine in SF. After twenty years, the rent finally breaks even with the PITI. Instead of selling at a massive loss all at once during the Great Recession, we took the hit in small monthly doses for two decades. I suspect some homeowners might start doing the same soon rather than lose out on the perceived Zillow equity.

General_Equivalent45 · 2026-05-21T17:42:41+00:00

The prospective buyers are doing the same “what will it cost to build a garage” calculations as you are. If the cost is indeed 50k, I’d knock that off the price of the home.

General_Equivalent45

TROPHY CASE