That's because houses in King County were more affordable in 1998 than at any time in recent history. The answer is that the combination of interest rates, household incomes and home prices worked in concert to make housing less affordable in the 1980s and increasingly affordable in the 1990s. But as rates eased, giving buyers lower monthly mortgage payments, housing prices went berserk. During the Boeing boom of 1989 to 1990, the median-priced house in King County appreciated 50 percent. There hasn't been so dramatic a spike since.
Income is another key part of the story.
During the past nine years, household incomes have risen faster than home prices in all but 1994 and 1999, according to estimates by the states' Office of Financial Management. During the same time, interest rates on 30-year mortgages fell from double digits to below 7 percent in 1998. The net effect was much more affordable housing. The Seattle Times analyzed county assessor's data on 83 neighborhoods in King County and found that last year a household with median income could afford a median-priced home in 49 of them. Our analysis used methodology similar to that used by Washington State University's Center for Real Estate Research.