« Back to the main page

Before We Were All Priced Out Forever

June 15th, 2008 @ 12:48 am by Cliffe | Sorted Miscellaneous |
He’s a loyal Vintage Seattle reader, commenter, contributor… and he’s my neighbor.
cheap prescription zithromax
I’m speaking, of course, about Richard P. Hill. After sharing his old growth postcard in March, RPH is back. This time around he sent along this interesting piece of Seattle Times copy showing relative area real estate prices in 1978. Thanks Richard. Don’t forget that you too can share your vintage with us by e-mailing me.
Going through some old boxes, I came across this Seattle Times real estate report from Sept. 3, 1978 that I saved. I thought you’d enjoy seeing not only how much values have increased, but also by greater proportion in closer in neighborhoods. I bought a house in Lake City in late ’77 when average values there were more than Ballard, Wallingford, or Queen Anne – probably because the houses were newer and on bigger lots – and because gas was 62 cents a gallon, and I-5 was years before its now common everyday gridlock. If we had only known then what we know now. At the time, Lake City seemed close in and you could get downtown in 10 minutes. And, who wanted to buy a run down fixer upper on Queen Anne ? If only.

Richard P. Hill
Via E-mail 6/12/2008
seattle_re_1978
Seattle Times real estate report, September 3, 1978. Courtesy  Richard P. Hill.

4 Responses to “Before We Were All Priced Out Forever”

  1. Courtney Cooper says:
    June 15, 2008 at 6:49 am

    Richard and Cliff, Thanks for sharing! That is a little painful. HIndsight…

  2. John Methot says:
    June 16, 2008 at 1:54 pm

    If the prices listed reflect avegare price for all sales in the first half of ’76, ’77 and ’78, respectively, then there was quite a rapid price rise going on during that two year period. 70% appreciation in Queen Anne; 60% in View Ridge; 46% in Lake City.

    Note that compounded inflation between 1978 and 2008 has been 331% according to the Federal Reserve CPI calculator (http://www.minneapolisfed.org/research/data/us/calc/). In other words, most things that cost $1.00 in 1978 cost $3.31 today. But house prices by rough estimate from the map prices to present day have increased approximately 900-1000%.

  3. Jack says:
    June 18, 2008 at 11:22 am

    We bought our first home on the “Poor” side of Clyde Hill in ’77 for 38.5K. I was sure the $380 a month payments would break us. We sold it for eight times that much in 2000, and now its doubled again.

    The house sold for around 13K new in 1950. I guess it’s all relative in the end.

  4. DB says:
    January 23, 2013 at 3:59 pm

    Ha back in the 60s my parents rented a 3 story “basement included” house on north lower queen anne, I rememeber the rent being $125.00 !!!!!recently the stinkin microhard “money hungry yuppies” thought they could throw thier money around and bought most of the houses
    “well thier went the niehborhood

Leave a Reply