Daryl Fairweather, Chief Economist at Redfin and author of Hate the Game: Economic Cheat Codes for Life, Love, and Work, joins us to explain why the housing market is doing something it almost never does here: cooling off.

In this episode we break down the recent headlines that stopped Seattleites mid-scroll: prices here are dropping here faster than anywhere else in the country. Fairweather points to the perfect storm behind the slowdown: sky-high mortgage rates hitting expensive markets the hardest, Amazon layoffs, and a local tech sector that's lost the confidence it had pre-pandemic. She says San Francisco is eating Seattle's lunch right now, thanks to its AI boom.

But Daryl also sees a silver lining: a slow, steady reset could finally make Seattle more livable and affordable for working people.

We also get into the policy fights. Should Seattle build its way out of the crisis with more market-rate housing, or invest in social housing? (She says: yes, and yes.) Why does she think rent control or stabilization backfires? What can Seattle learn from Austin's building boom, and what should it absolutely not copy?

And what about AI? Daryl thinks it could genuinely help by speeding up permitting or making modular housing cheaper to build. But she's not buying the hype wholesale. Contractors still need to show up and do the work, and no algorithm is going to fix a bureaucratic bottleneck.

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