A report from the Bellingham Herald in Washington. "Whatcom County home sale prices kept rising at a double-digit pace this summer, but there are signs that it won’t be a strong seller’s market much longer. Inventory is creeping up and multiple offers are becoming less frequent, said Darin Stenvers, branch manager at the Bellingham John L. Scott office. Stenvers expects to see a period where 'price reduced' is more commonly seen on home-for-sale signs. 'This is not the seller’s market that we saw this spring,' said Stenvers."

"When putting a home on the market, sellers typically look at six months of sales on similar homes to determine a price. He said that’s not where the market is now and expects aggressive sellers will be forced to drop prices."

The Seattle Times in Washington. "It’s getting easier to find an apartment to rent, and in some neighborhoods it’s even getting cheaper. Seattle-area renters are enjoying the least competitive market since the recession as more and more apartments sit empty and rents have flatlined — a trend that is likely to continue as the ongoing apartment-construction spree delivers an even higher number of new units in 2019."

"The priciest neighborhoods getting the most new apartments — downtown Seattle, Belltown and South Lake Union — actually saw rents decline over the past year. The University District also saw rents dip, as did Sammamish-Issaquah."

"'It’s been slow. The volume of calls is a fraction of what it was a year and a half ago,' said Larry Crites, who owns nine small apartment buildings in Seattle."

"The Seattle area is building the fifth-most apartments of any metro area in the nation right now, and the four regions building more — Dallas, Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C. — are all significantly larger, according to RealPage. Only Dallas appears to be building more than Seattle on a per-capita basis."

"King and Snohomish counties are on pace to see 13,700 apartments open next year, the most of the current cycle, RealPage data shows. That would push the total number of new units this decade past 80,000 — the most of any decade in history, beating out the suburban-led building boom of the 1980s."

"The downtown Seattle core, which had an eye-popping 25.7 percent of all apartments empty in the spring, has since recovered a bit as the newer buildings start to fill up, but it still leads the region with 17.4 percent of units vacant. More than 10 percent of units are empty in East Bellevue, Bothell, the Shoreline area, Ballard, South Seattle, First Hill, Sammamish-Issaquah, South Lake Union, Queen Anne/Magnolia and Tukwila."

"'If a (renter) is coming into a new apartment community, the list of comps that they’re shopping is a lot longer today than it was before,' Derek Lunde, senior marketing director at Red Propeller, which advises developers on how to fill up their apartments."