To find signs of this denial let’s take a look at the Property History of the listings in the data base of the Northwest Multiple Listing Service (NWMLS). The Property History captures the price trend of every property from when it was listed to when it was sold - if and when and how often and by how much the price was reduced. What is used in many published statistics is the spread between the listing price (at the time of the offer) and the purchase price. However, that tells only part of the story....more
In a word: NOTHING.
When I go house hunting with a buyer I have nothing to sell. I don’t own the houses and condos I show. Yet, in the lingo of real estate I am the Selling Agent. Until the early 1980s there was only one agent:
the Listing Agent. Buyers thought they were represented by the listing agent when, in reality, they weren’t represented at all. When we bought our first home in 1982 we knew nothing about real estate. The agent was a nice guy and it looked to us as if he was “on our side.” He wasn’t....more
The prospect of a new job in another country or city can be exciting. The first move is to look for information about the new city on the web. Often, that first move is made by the spouse or “significant other” who is not starting a new job but a whole new life in a new place. Naturally, questions about housing, neighborhoods, and home prices top the list. When there are children, education is another priority concern. Soon, the personal sense of anticipation meets the realty of corporate relocations....more
Some say this is a great time to buy. Not so fast, I say.
It’s an OK time to buy if you do not have to sell first. It’s a good time to buy if you don’t have to sell first and have good credit. It’s a great time to buy if you don’t have to sell, have good credit and have saved up for this very purpose.
If you are young, have a well-paying job and would find another job in greater Seattle with relative ease, this is your day to go house hunting - eh, make that condo hunting. ...more
On June 12, the Washington State “Distressed Properties Law” took effect. That’s House Bill - HB 2791 If you have the time to plow through the bill, here’s the whole official mess as a PDF file. If you have a shorter attention span, read the June 6 Press Release from the Washington Attorney General. In their desire to protect homeowners who are "distressed about the possibility of loosing their homes" the law makers may have done more harm than good....more
Issaquah Highlands Home Hunting
This is a great time to buy homes in and around Seattle, especially if you do not have to sell. Two of my first-time buyers are taking advantage of the local buyers’ market. One young couple will close in two weeks on their first home in Monroe, the other just started looking with their eyes set on homes in the Issaquah Highlands.
Ready and Qualified to Buy their First Home
Both couples share a trait that is becoming rare these days: save before you buy and then buy less than what you could afford. Needless to say, it is a treat to negotiate a deal for buyers like that....more
Seller Disclosure Statement: Form Fatale
Almost as inevitable as death and taxes, the Washington Seller Disclosure Statement is a sure thing when it comes to selling residential property in Washington State. Form 17, as it is also called, looms large and larger.
Getting more complex over time.
The state legislature keeps adding and changing Form 17. The last major change was in 2003. Subsequent effective dates and changes/additions pertained to: ...more
Seattle Eastside Condo Conversions
Condo conversions remain an attractive choice for first-time buyers.
(Note: this is an update of an article I wrote more than a year ago for my website GNADE.com .)
Although the Seattle real estate market has cooled off since 2006, condo conversions are still an attractive option for first-time home buyers. With good reason because often it’s the only affordable option.
Over the past four years, developers have plucked one eastside apartment complex after another from the Seattle eastside landscape and created new real estate for sale. Some of the more recent conversions are in or near downtown Redmond, such as the Riverwalk at Redmond - built originally in 1983, The Boulder (1985), and the Bella Vista (1981). A conversion in progress is the Champagne (1969) in Bellevue near 148th on NE 8th Street. ...more
Confounding Condo Conditions
Being on the Bellevue and Kirkland condo prowl with one of my valued clients, I was reminded again how difficult it can be to find out all the facts before making an offer. One of the listing mentions some “possible future assessment” and the listing agent professes not to know anything more specific.
What to do?
Call the management company. I am still waiting for a call back but I’m not holding my breath. Scour the web, looking for “name of condo + lawsuit” or similar, but to no avail.
You want the information? Make an offer!
To get this elusive information the buyer must make an offer and the seller needs to accept the offer - i.e., the two parties must reach mutual agreement. Only then will the buyer receive the RESALE CERTIFICATE (from the condominium association or authorized agent) ...more
The address is 16275 NE 85th St #411, Redmond, WA 98052, MLS Listing 28103167 Call your agent or Gerhard Ade at 425-891-8213 or or send Email for more information.
For $199,500, this could be your new address: 20714 76th Ave W, Unit 9, Edmonds, WA 98026 (SOLD)
If so, this is what you will tell your friends:
We enter our townhouse steps from our two parking spots on level ground. (Great when you have your hands full.) We dig the clean and comfortable downstairs with our spacious kitchen and private back porch – our little Schnauzer loves it here ;-) There's a good-size utility room with side-by-side washer and dryer and plenty of storage. For the night and what not we retreat up the stairs to our two sizable bedrooms and a smallish but useful office. This is a great community and neighborhood: all schools are within a quarter-mile and the Edmonds Community College nearby.
What to do first:
Call your agent and tell him/her to check out MLS 28037667. Tell her/him to call the Phone-To-Show number; then GO and SHOW. (Park in one of the two #9 spots.) Don't forget to mention that these Murkin Townhouse units rarely come on the market. Then don't forget to add: This is a Most Willing Seller looking for a willing buyer (that's you). Almost forgot: here's more detail and more pictures! Also: here is the coolest video on the place on animoto.com and here's the same mash-up on YouTube!
What you'll tell your friends when they come to visit and tell you how smart you were because you bought the place at a terrific price ($199,500):
From I-5 or 99 head West on 196th St SW, then South on 76th Ave West. Murkin Townhouses complex entrance is on West side of 76th before 208th St SW. See ya! Yummy food waiting for you!
More pictures for the impatient-don't-want-to-link-to-another-website-folks:
I joined Brio Realty on February 7, 2006. On February 4, 2007, I wrote a blog with the title: Nothing Endures But Change
Jonathan Washburn had rejoined ActiveRain and quit as broker and president of Brio Realty. The new broker was Patrick Flynn, the new president was Tyson Knaevelsrud who also ran MTG Mortgage.
Not all change is for the better. You've heard this adage: "Making the right decision is the result of experience and experience is the result of making many wrong decisions." All I knew was that I had joined Brio on the strength of Jon's vision and he had disappeared.
I met Ardell DellaLoggia in the virtual world some time in December 2006. In early January 2007 we met at her home in Kirkland. I knew (almost) everything about her which wasn't hard given her ubiquity on the Web. Names like Ardell DellaLoggia and Gerhard Ade are easily "googled." We talked for at least two hours.
I knew that she'd been in real estate for 15 years-plus and had started on the east coast were she grew up. I knew that she had plenty of experience which meant she had made her profitable share of mistakes. With my barely five years of experience at the time, I knew that I could learn from someone like that. And she was not shy in pointing out that my web site contained some errors - and she was not talking about spelling mistakes.
We kept in touch online. My next real world encounter with Ardell was in late spring 2007 when she gave generously of her time and experience in regard to staging a home. It was in no small measure thanks to her advice that this, my most expensive listing to date, sold.
Ardell the Brio Realty Broker
It's been anything but boring since Ardell became the broker. She's not the kind of person about whom one can be neutral. She is confident in her knowledge and ability and not always modest about it. She is not shy to speak her mind but she knows of what she speaks. She knows her stuff. Most importantly, she truly wants to help. She wants me to be successful. She wants Brio Realty to make a difference. Rather than being afraid of change she is a change agent. She's not afraid to make decisions.
Some decisions will be wrong decisions. We learn from experience.
I like to be in control. "Teamwork means a lot of people doing what I say." (ARDELL, I did not come up with this myself so you are permitted to make this your tagline.:-) When I don't have a team I must do it all. That includes telling myself to learn a new skill.
So I moved my SERENE blog. I wanted to be in control. I also want to know how things work. So I am learning WordPress and a bit of PHP and MySQL in the process.
Some of you may consider learning this sort of stuff a waste of time. "Your job is real estate, Gerhard." True enough but have you ever had anybody say: "I wish I hadn't learned to play the piano," or "I am so sorry I learned speaking Mandarin fluently"?
I am not sorry I learned how to write clean HTML and optimize my websites for search engines. Now I can change my websites on the fly in response to something I learned a minute ago. Most of my new business comes from the web because people find me when they look for what interests THEM.
So I moved SERENE. The fashionable thing to say is that "I want to shape the SERENE brand." (Excuse me while I throw up.) But, seriously, a blog is more than the words and pictures that go with it. It's the header and all the "widgets." It's the look of everything and the functionality of everything. It's also experimenting and learning how to improve the brand constantly.
The nice people at RSSpieces (thanks, John, and welcome back to ActiveRain, Mary!) are helping me to move last year's blogging content. Easier said than done. Another learning experience.
Having taken a break from blogging has helped, too. Having ARDELL as a broker will also help. Not just with the blogging but why I am doing it: "your job is real estate, Gerhard!"
To see this Kirkland Juanita condo in person, call your agent or contact the listing agent, Gerhard Ade, Brio Realty, Inc at 425-891-8213 or send an email to homes@gnade.com
Address: 11103 NE 124TH Ln #A-102, Kirkland WA 98034 - Google Map
Like most of you agents out there I wonder once in a while if the grass is greener on the other side. In one case the other side was a friend from church, an agent working for an established national company. In the second instance I had to satisfy my curiosity about the new kid in town, a Nevada technology-driven company that gave a presentation in a real conference room using the term "virtual" about most everything else.
Neither encounter proved entirely satisfying.
Old-school agents usually downplay the changes brought on by the Internet. Some are in complete denial that anything is changing. Some can afford to be blasé because they've been blessed with the quiet success of the good old days. They tell stories about an agent who was dropped off in the middle of a cornfield, who made his way to the nearest public phone booth where he started calling people starting on the last page of the local phone directory. The Zswlienskys had never been called by a real estate agent and picked him up with their John Deer and invited him in for lunch. They sold their trailer and moved into a bungalow. The Zimmermans were next. The rest is history. They named the town after him. You can look it up on the Internet.
Speaking of the Internet, that's where the still youngish man lives who gave the presentation about the new way of doing real estate, including a pretty spiffy virtual transaction process. There was one thing he said that gave away his provenance which is programming. "It's crazy to show a buyer 20 homes." Well, he's never met the Zswliensky's grand daughter who is planning to move to Seattle to join that Redmond behemoth. She thinks herself any bit as Internet savvy as any agent and, if it weren't for that keypad and lock-box she would not need an agent at all. So, since she is doing all the work anyway and finding the homes on the Internet, the least she can expect is to see as many homes as she damn well pleases.
The contrast of these two encounters with the old and the new got me thinking. I am sort of in between the two camps. The old-school agents, besides their good stories, have much wisdom to dispense and I seek them out for their experience and down-to-earth plain smarts. There isn't much the Internet-raised agent can tell me that's going to make me a better real estate agent. But the Internet-raised agent does understand that this business is changing even if he or she doesn't know exactly what this means.
So both sides have a lot to learn - from each other.
It all started so innocently with cut and paste...
The automating of our communications can be a good thing. Starting with cut and paste. But there the trouble starts. I've sent out an email (more than once) where I forgot to replace "Dear Lisa" with "Dear Ludwig." I've received proposals from people where the "document property" in word revealed a different author and a different client. Computers are stupid. I need to stay alert. Check it and check it again.
and grew to endless possibilities of mistakes with the "help" of templates.
This sort of automatic mistake gets worse when you outsource your communications. I am not pointing fingers - this could have happened to me or you.
An automated inquiry for feedback on a listing I saw.
<http://www.homefeedback.com/images/logoNew.gif>
Hi Gerhard,
1234 123th PL NE Redmond, WA 98053 <http://www.homefeedback.com/USER_DATA/v/anybody/listingImages/Im467ff4efca43e.jpg> LP: $899,950 MLS#: 27112345 Listing Info: -- Virtual Tour: -- Bedrooms: 4 Bathrooms: 2.5 Est. Sq. Ft: 3700 Year Built: 2004 Map Code: -- Property Type: Single Family
Your Text Here. Your Text Here. Your Text Here. Your Text Here. Your Text Here. Your Text Here. Your Text Here. Your Text Here. Your Text Here. Your Text Here. Your Text Here. Your Text Here. Your Text Here. Your Text Here. Your Text Here. Your Text Here. Your Text Here. Your Text Here. Your Text Here. Your Text Here. Your Text Here. Your Text Here. Your Text Here. Your Text Here. Your Text Here. Your Text Here. Your Text Here. Your Text Here. Your Text Here. Your Text Here.
Thank You,
Powered By Homefeedback.com <http://www.homefeedback.com>
The Your Text Here was meant for text by the listing agent or assistant for something like: "Thanks for seeing my listing. Any feedback, especially regarding pricing, would be appreciated."
(Note: I've changed the data in the homefeedback.com message to conceal the agent's identity.)
Ardell DellaLoggia, the new Brio Realty broker, was moving into her new office with, among other things, a Ziploc brand bag full of Zillow.com pens in assorted colors. Generous by nature, she passed some of them out. We started to joke about what was so special about a Zillow pen. This inspired me to think about brand-appropriate advertising specialties (also known as "trinkets and trash" by the ad specialty trade).
The Zillow.com Pen - writes all over the place
The Help-You-Sell Clock (Slogan: For Sale with Owner) - you provide the hands
The Redfin Calculator - subtract whatever you think is wrong from all totals
The Windermere Seahawks Schedule Magnet - 3 by 2 feet, occupying the entire refrigerator door
MLS for Owners Carving Set - manual includes instructions to perform appendectomy on yourself
Disclaimer: ActiveRain Corp. does not necessarily endorse the real estate agents, loan officers and brokers listed on this site. These real estate profiles, blogs and blog entries are provided here as a courtesy to our visitors to help them make an informed decision when buying or selling a house. ActiveRain Corp. takes no responsibility for the content in these profiles, that are written by the members of this community.
If so, this is what you will tell your friends:
I like to be in control. "Teamwork means a lot of people doing what I say." (ARDELL, I did not come up with this myself so you are permitted to make this your tagline.:-) When I don't have a team I must do it all. That includes telling myself to learn a new skill.
One-bedroom, ground level, no-steps entry, 2005 remodeled condo - the perfect place for the first-time-buyer. If that's you, here's what you get:
Old-school agents usually downplay the changes brought on by the Internet. Some are in complete denial that anything is changing. Some can afford to be blasé because they've been blessed with the quiet success of the good old days. They tell stories about an agent who was dropped off in the middle of a cornfield, who made his way to the nearest public phone booth where he started calling people starting on the last page of the local phone directory. The Zswlienskys had never been called by a real estate agent and picked him up with their John Deer and invited him in for lunch. They sold their trailer and moved into a bungalow. The Zimmermans were next. The rest is history. They named the town after him. You can look it up on the Internet.
;)
;)
