Pierce County apartment vacancy rates have fallen to their lowest level since 2001, according to the Sept. survey released today by Seattle research firm Dupre & Scott. Local vacancies are at 3.6 percent compared to a Pierce County high three years ago of 8.2 percent.

Rents continue to reside well below the Puget Sound average, the report said. The county’s average rent is $771, compared to $930 for the Puget Sound region.

Numerous sources have told me in recent weeks that they expect apartment vacancies to dip and rents to rise as first-time buyers struggle to get financing with today’s tighter lending guidelines. Vacancies are following the predictions – we’ll have to see on the rents. I’m expecting a more detailed report on Tacoma in the next few days and will update when it arrives.

UPDATE
As promised, here are the stats for downtown Tacoma: Vacancies were at 5.1 percent in September, lower only one other time since 2003 when the vacancy rate was 3.3 percent in March 2006. Average rent was $860, up from $813 for September of last year.

Here’s what I’m seeing: Harleys, flat-screen TVs, gift cards, furniture shopping sprees, $5,000 and $10,000 off closing.

I’m researching a story on buyer incentives offered by home sellers and am wondering if you’re seeing the same. Anything particularly outrageous? What do buyers think of such come-ons? Tempting? Or now such a part of so many offers, they’re becoming an expected part of the transaction?

Looking for an affordable place to live? If you want to stick in Washington state, head to the Tri-Cities. At least according to a nationwide survey profiled by BusinessWeek.

The Coldwell Banker survey says the Tri-Cities is Washington's most affordable market. The most expensive? Bellevue. (More than 300 markets were evaluated for the average selling price of a house with about 2,200 square feet, four bedrooms, 2.5 baths, a family room and a two-car garage, according to BusinessWeek.)

The most affordable market in Oregon is Salem. In Idaho, it's Coeur d'Alene, though not by much. The most expensive is Boise, with just a $30 difference between the two.

There's a slide show listing every state's top and bottom markets. (Washington is slide No. 48.) The list seems more accessible than most, with affordable places a bit more likable than the ones that seem to usually fall on similar roundups. One of my favorite stops on an East Coast trip last year -- Portsmouth -- was New Hampshire's most affordable market.

An area measured by the S&P/Case-Shiller index that includes Pierce County led the nation in July for house-price appreciation. (The stats do not include condos.) The Seattle-area index was up 6.9 percent – the highest of the 20 areas around the nation that were measured, according to stats released this morning. In fact, most declined. Overall, the index was down 3.9 percent.

Go here for a closer look at the index.

Started last year, the index has quickly become one of the most popular of the more than 100,000 Standard & Poor’s publishes, said spokesman David Guarino. The housing price index ties values to January 2000, the point at which every area was assigned an index of 100. The Seattle-area index (including Pierce, King and Snohomish counties) in July was at 192.3, meaning prices have grown 92.3 percent since Jan. 2000, according to Standard & Poor’s. Nine other markets grew more in the previous seven years – all of which saw year-over-year declines in July. The biggest drop was in Detroit, which fell by 9.7 percent.

Any predictions for where the index will head in the coming months?

Following my Sunday story on adjustable-rate mortgages, we got talking in the newsroom about whether or not home buyers read the stacks of loan documents they sign.

I did, when I bought last spring. But only after the escrow officer told me that nobody reads all the documents, seeming to imply that I was wasting my time. She did, however, readily and thoroughly answer all my questions.

One of my reporter colleagues said she felt when buying a couple years ago that the escrow folks seemed taken aback when she insisted on sitting in a conference room with her documents and reading them.

Did you read every loan document associated with the purchase of your house? Any sympathy for those who don't and found out later about prepayment penalties or rates that adjust?

Just a few months into his discount-real-estate adventure, Ray Pepper says he’s getting more push back from real estate agents than he expected. (Pepper opened $500 Realty in South Tacoma this summer.) Some of which has come at the company's Puyallup Fair booth, where you can find him and his free T-shirts this weekend.

“Anyone who gets upset with $500 Realty or Redfin, there’s so many other things to get upset about,” he said, referring to other companies he believes will some day make multiple listing services obsolete.

Consumers don’t complain, he said. The company charges $500 for a listing and refunds 75 percent of commission to buyers. $500 Realty’s tagline: “We are your only true friend in real estate.”

One change Pepper’s considering, after receiving numerous complaints from agents: Removing copy on yard signs advertising $500 Realty’s three-quarters of commission refund.

“I don’t want to make it so much tougher on these agents,” he said.

$500 Realty isn’t the only real estate booth at the fair. Open House commenters say Windermere and Genesis Real Estate also are there – I have a call into a fair official to confirm.

A local real estate radio show is set to debut this Sunday afternoon at 4. The hour of talk comes courtesy of Steve Sloboda, an agent and broker and former marketing director of the Tacoma Rainiers.

Sloboda, an owner of KCS Properties in Tacoma, says he hopes to cover topics of interest to consumers -- buying and selling, investing and home improvement. But he also expects about half of his audience to be industry professionals.

The first show was taped yesterday. Sloboda said the first segment of the four was a little rough.

“I was definitely nervous,” he said.

Sloboda, a first-time host, wanted to kick things off telling listeners why he’s doing the show but found focusing on himself harder than he expected.

“I’m not on there to talk about me, I’m there to talk about the subjects,” he said. “Once I got the kinks out, I was a lot more comfortable.”

His first guest was Karen Orr, owner of Touchstone Lending. The two discussed factors affecting the mortgage market, some lending success stories and how buyers can clean up their credit report.

You can find the show at 1180 AM, KLAY, or online here.

More help from the state government for home buyers on shaky ground: The Department of Financial Institutions has launched a statewide campaign, in English and Spanish, to educate those with adjustable rate mortgages. (Yesterday the governor announced a mortgage task force.)

The first big batch of such loans scheduled to reset after two years are exected to begin resetting in October, said Scott Jarvis, Department of Financial Institutions director. The theme of the ads? "Don’t lose your home. To alert them these rate increases are coming, make sure they’re looking at their product," Jarvis told me this afternoon.

Expected to cost around $60,000, the ads will be on the radio, in magazines and newspapers and on Tacoma movie screens.

Go here to find out more about what DFI can tell you about home loans and interest rates.

Yes, Pierce County was No. 1 in the state for foreclosure-related filings in August, according to figures released today by real estate research firm RealtyTrac. But looked at a number of different ways, the county is in far better shape than many, many others.

Here’s a breakdown of the stats:
• Washington state ranked No. 27 in the nation, down from its July rank of No. 20.
• Pierce County had one foreclosure-related filing for every 660 households. (Thurston County, at No. 7 in the state, had one filing for every 1,204 households.)
• Both did better than the national average, which is the highest since RealtyTrac began its reports in January 2005: One foreclosure filing for every 510 households.
• Foreclosure bargain seekers might find better luck elsewhere: Detroit had one filing for every 87 households, Nevada had one filing for every 165 households, Ohio had one foreclosure for every 281 households.
• The nation's worst foreclosure filing rate was in Modesto, in California’s Central Valley, where it was one for every 79 households.

RealtyTrac gets its numbers by compiling default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions.

On an added statistical note, The Mortgage Bankers Association ranks Washington state even lower when it comes to foreclosures. In its second quarter survey, Washington was No. 48 for the percent of home loans in foreclosure. Which two were better? Wyoming and Oregon, respectively.

Gov. Chris Gregoire has formed a task force to address potential mortgage problems in the state. Among those lined up: Gary Oakland, president and chief executive officer of the Boeing Employees Credit Union, and Scott Jarvis, director of the state Department of Financial Institutions, according to a press release.

I called Adam Stein, owner of American Brokerage in Auburn and also on the task force, to find out what he hopes to accomplish. He talked about the possibility of new loan products and consumer education but said his focus would be on improving disclosures to borrowers.

Disclosures already are required but beyond the fact that they are often not read, they aren’t consumer friendly, said Stein, who also is president of the Washington Association of Mortgage Brokers.

“I would like to see a single document, a one-page document that would go out and give clarity to the consumer, which I think would help a lot,” he said.

Don’t go looking for such changes in the next week, however. The task force announcement just came today and the group has yet to schedule its first meeting, Stein said. The release did say recommendations from the task force are due to the governor by the end of the year.

In case you missed Alan Greenspan on "60 Minutes" last night, here's a link to the story in print form and some video excerpts of the interview with Lesley Stahl.

Stahl, you might remember, made some waves in the real estate industry a couple months ago with a story on Seattle's Redfin, which also questioned the commission paid traditional real estate agents.

In yesterday's story, Greenspan -- the former Fed chairman -- does admit he missed the significance of the downside to the once-popular subprime lending, which allowed mortgages for borrowers with shaky credit or other financial issues. Greenspan's new memoir, "Age of Turbulence," comes out today.

I sat down last week with Rick Ardmore, the former owner of All Fund Mortgage in Tacoma, to talk about how he started the company and what's happened with it in recent months. Ardmore also owns the Pacific Avenue building All Fund operated out of until recently. He said it’s been a number of days since employees have been on site. (Look for a Q&A with Ardmore in Monday’s paper.)

Ardmore said he’s expecting to have to fill the 13,000-square-foot space.

It’s been looking for weeks like All Fund Mortgage might have closed, but there’s no official word yet from the company. The doors at the company’s Pacific Avenue location are locked and calls aren’t returned. I'll update if I hear one way or the other.

The latest forecast from the National Association of Realtors reveals nothing too surprising but also not particularly rosy.

Sales activity, it said, for existing homes will decline even more than it previously expected – down 8.6 percent across the country. Declining sales are certainly an issue here. In August, closed sales were down 30 percent in Pierce County, according to the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.

Tuesday’s release from the Realtors also addressed median home price – an area where Pierce and other nearby counties are outshining lots of other places around the country.

Here's the national outlook: “Existing-home prices are likely to slip 1.7 percent to a median of $218,200 this year before rising 2.2 percent in 2008 to $223,000. The median new-home price is estimated to drop 2.2 percent to $241,100 in 2007, and then increase 1.7 percent next year to $245,100.” the Realtor release said.

The most recent local numbers show Pierce County’s median home price increased 4.4 percent in August, to $285,000, according to the listing service.

Check out the whole Realtor roundup here.

August home sales stats were just released by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service, revealing mid-single digit appreciation for most Puget Sound counties.

Kitsap was the standout with 7.9 percent growth in median sale prices compared to the same month a year ago. I grew up in Kitsap County so I can attest to the quality of life that might draw homeowners. Any other reason prices grew more there than elsewhere? Affordability? (Kitsap's median price in August was $299,950 – higher than Pierce County’s.)

Here’s the rundown on some other counties:
Pierce: +4.4 percent
King: + 5.9 percent
Thurston: - 0.3 percent
Snohomish: +4 percent

In late-breaking Friday news, Countrywide Financial Corp. said it plans big layoffs -- the latest in a trio of corporate lending job cuts announced this week.

I talked to a Countrywide loan officer a few weeks ago, who said employees had been instructed to no longer talk to the media. A call to the company's Calabasas, Calif., corporate office wasn't returned Friday afternoon. We'll try next week to find out whether the South Sound will see any of the Countrywide job losses.

Here's an excerpt from The Associated Press story on the cuts:

Struggling lender Countrywide Financial Corp. said Friday it will cut as many as 12,000 jobs as it struggles to deal with challenging conditions in the mortgage industry.

The company said the cuts, amounting to as much as 20 percent of its work force, are needed because it expects new mortgages to fall about 25 percent in 2008 from this year’s levels.

The job cuts are expected to center primarily on the company’s production divisions and its general and administrative support areas, Countrywide Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo said in a letter distributed to employees Friday.

The Pierce County Assessor-Treasurer's Office says it will be working on the west side of the Narrows Bridge starting in mid September. State law requires the office to physically inspect all properties once every six years.

So know when you see a county vehicle with county logos and an exempt plate, it could be an appraiser. Any questions? Assessor Ken Madsen says feel free to ask the appraisers for ID.

You can get more info on the assessor's office here.

New numbers from the National Association of Realtors continue to paint a bleak home-selling picture. Apparently, investors didn’t like the latest figures, which examine pending sales, given that the Dow Jones industrial average is down 172 points as of just past 11 a.m.

Here’s an excerpt from this morning’s Associated Press story, which includes a prediction of more housing market pain on the way:

Pending sales of existing homes fell in July to the lowest level in nearly six years as borrowers struggled to finalize home purchases, particularly in expensive areas.

The National Association of Realtors said its seasonally adjusted index of pending home sales for July fell 16.1 percent from a year ago and 12.2 percent from the prior month.

July’s reading of 89.9 was the second-lowest ever for the index and its lowest since September 2001, when the economy was jolted by the terrorist attacks.

“Numbers like this should put to rest the belief that we’ve reached the bottom,” in the housing market, said Joel Naroff, chief economist for Commerce Bancorp Inc. “There’s still a lot of pain that’s ahead of us.”

The index is designed to predict sales levels over the following two months. A reading of 100 is equal to the average level of pending sales activity in 2001, when the index began.

Lawrence Yun, the Realtors trade group’s senior economist, called the problems “temporary,” and related to jumbo home loans above $417,000 that can’t be packaged into securities sold to investors by government-sponsored mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

I don’t often cover the number of pending sales, with so many other indicators to follow. But to give you some perspective, year-over-year pending sales in Pierce County in July were down 15.8 percent, according to the Northwest Multiple Listing Service. That’s not much higher than the drop in nearby Kitsap and Thurston counties, though King County’s pending sales were down by only 6.5 percent.

Look for new MLS numbers early next week.

Having seen a number of stories and some outraged blogposts on the topic, I wondered what all of you out there are thinking about President Bush’s plan to help homeowners with mortgage troubles.

The idea, according to what I’ve read on the plan, is to get those with adjustable rate mortgages into FHA loans at interest rates lower than what they would be adjusting to and, therefore, avoid foreclosure. Some, however, are characterizing the plan as a bailout for irresponsible borrowers and lenders. What do you think?

Here’s an excerpt from a Bloomberg story on Bush’s plan:

President George W. Bush today pledged to help people who have fallen behind in their mortgages keep their homes and to tighten safeguards against predatory lending, while rejecting a bailout for “speculators.”

“I plan to help homeowners. The government’s got a role to play,” Bush said in a statement at the White House. But, he said, “It’s not the government’s job to bail out speculators, or those who made the decision to buy a home they knew they could never afford.”

Bush said he will let the Federal Housing Administration, which insures mortgages for low- and middle-income borrowers, guarantee loans for delinquent borrowers, allowing them to avoid foreclosure and refinance at more favorable rates.

Tighter credit and higher borrowing costs threaten the housing market, which has been an engine of U.S. economic growth. At the end of last year, there were 7.5 million subprime mortgage borrowers with $1.4 trillion in loans, according to the Center for Responsible Lending, a research organization in Durham, North Carolina. More than 2 million Americans will lose their homes as introductory interest rates on mortgages reset to higher levels in coming months, according to the center.