It is often said that the economy of Bellingham lags behind that of Seattle by about 3 months. Well, Seattle is in the midst of an economic revival--especially compared to the rest of the country. Businesses there have not laid off workers for 2 years. New jobs are being created and people are being hired. Workers are feeling secure in their jobs--not fearing layoffs. As a consequnce, workers are leaving one job to take another not fearing that their low seniority at the new job could lead to a layoff.

 

The housing market is getting strong there. Compared to last year, the number of home sales is up 65%. In spite of that increase in volume of home sales, the average sale price of homes has gone down by 7%. The implication is that buyers are buying less expensive homes than they did a year ago.

 

This is good news...for Seattle. Is it good news from Bellingham? Urban wisdom says that we should see an upswing is sale here not far down the road. However, there don't seem to be new jobs here as there are in Seattle. Guess we have to wait and see. But we can look at local data and see that we are at least stable in our home sales. We aren't going down in price or volume. And last week saw vigorous home sales.