Happy Valentines day everyone! Hope you and your sweetie or your best pal or your pet or whoever you love in this world are taking time out to remember and cherish that love! xoxo

The Big Story: Seattle Times Article Utilizing Zillow Data
The Seattle Times article we reported about last week continues to come up with clarifications and fact checking. in the story the headline stated “A Third of Mortgaged Seattle-area homes worth less than what’s owed”.  The story has been updated to clarify that 34.3 percent of homes with mortgages, not 34.3 percent of all homes, are estimated to be ‘underwater’ in the Seattle metro area. Approximately 27% of all Seattle homes are free and clear, which was not considered in the original article. The Seattle Times retracted the headline the next day. See our response to the Seattle Times article on our Diva Blog post and the corresponding comments from Zillow->

The Wall Street Journal blog had more clarifying information regarding the methodology that Zillow utilized in developing the data that Seattle times used as the basis for their article. The article is great look at how these valuations are created and exactly the difficulty in developing a blanket assumption regarding the street value of one’s home. Here is an excerpt from the article “Zillow assumes none of the mortgage principal has been repaid, that initial lines of credit are fully tapped and that no additional ones have been taken. Because the first two assumptions tend to inflate the underwater count, while the third tends to deflate it, the company hopes any errors largely cancel each other out. The alternative of making assumptions about each home, “becomes fairly tenuous,” said Stan Humphries, Zillow’s chief economist”. Read the entire article at the WSJ Blog->

Other News
Intiman Theatre Facing Closure: For anyone who loves the work Intiman has produced this is indeed sad news ->

Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac: White House proposes eliminating the federally backed mortgage giants->

Bye Bye Super Low Mortgage Rates: We have seen this developing in the last couple of months and are not surprised that we are now heading towards “normal” rates->