By MBAKS Senior Policy Analyst Allison Butcher

The unemployment rate for Seattle, Bellevue, and Everett jumped to 14.5% in April, reflecting major job losses due to COVID-19. Statewide, the construction industry lost 81,000 jobs between March and April, a 32.5% drop. Meanwhile, home prices have been holding steady, with year-over-year median home prices up in King and Snohomish counties amid continued low housing inventory.

The Builder's Bulletin is intended to provide a convenient way to track housing in our market and includes information from the Northwest Multiple Listing Service, State of the Cities Data Systems, Office of Financial Management, and the Washington State Employment Security Department.

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This week, Leah Missik, our Built Green program manager, announces the keynote speaker for our 2017 Built Green® Conference.

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By Kate Wagner, Curbed Seattle

Until around 2007, McMansions mostly borrowed the forms of traditional architecture, producing vinyl Georgian estates and foam Mediterranean villas.

But in the last 10 years, this has begun to change: McMansions are now being constructed in architectural styles from the 20th century, specifically modernism. We are witnessing the birth and the proliferation of modernist McMansions: McModerns.

Though McModerns are commonly found in the places where modernism itself thrives—indoor-outdoor climates like the West Coast and the Southwest, and near liberal cities on the East Coast—they are also beginning to pop up in burgeoning tech hotbeds south of the Mason-Dixon, such as central North Carolina and Atlanta, Georgia. McModern houses are following the trail left behind by NPR, Chipotle, and MacBook Pros: They've become popular with younger, tech-savvier, and more highly educated individuals.