A Map of Housing Resilience: Twenty Years of Seattle Through 1.1 Million Property Records

Introduction

Life Is Elsewhere—Professionals Discuss Their Fields

About the Topic

Falling prices can reveal more about a house than rising ones, just as a receding tide reveals what was hidden.

Over twenty years, the Seattle housing market experienced four downturns:

the 2007 financial crisis,

the brief correction in 2018,

the sharp decline following rate rises in 2022,

and the still-unfolding downturn of 2025 described in the original announcement.

Each time, some houses struggled to sell while others were scarcely affected. Which houses, in which neighborhoods, and why?

This session is an exercise in examining data, rather than investment advice:

beginning with 1.1 million listings in King and Snohomish Counties since 2007, alongside government parcel records—

— how does someone with a computing background break an overly broad question about resilience to falling prices into smaller, answerable ones?

— Where do the data give clear answers, and where must we say that we do not know?

Some findings may run against intuition. Others show how a city’s development, commuting patterns, and population changes accumulate in each ZIP code’s price history.

Bring questions about your own neighborhood.