- Seattle is doing a lot of recycling and New York is listening. Did you know that it will soon be illegal to throw away food scraps? At Chez Ward we feed food scraps to the red worms in the bin so we don’t have to pay the city to haul our scraps away and then pay again to get them back.
- The DOJ released a website all about real estate commissions yesterday (beware the Inman paywall tomorrow!). We can argue all night and day about whether agents as a whole are “worth” 2.5-3%, but I’ll tell you this right now: some Realtors are and others are not. The DOJ says that an amazing 70% of home sellers negotiated the commission with their agent. Maybe the DOJ should set up a site on divorcing commisions or the frickin’ health care system, where rates have gone up a lot more than a few percentage points a year. OK, maybe this warrants its own post.
- Only “20% to 25% of the homes shown on the Internet (depending on your information source) use home tours and/or multiple photos … It indicates apathy, arrogance, negligence and many other bad words.” No points for trying; all extra photos must make the process of selling the house better, not worse.
- Apparently banks are even less rational than sellers about home values in a slow market. Teresa Boardman:
“They often hire Realtors, but banks make lousy clients … Buyers need to understand that when making an offer in a bank owned property it can take weeks to get the offer presented and then accepted, or rejected. They don’t seem to negotiate offers like other sellers do, they just accept, or reject and wait for a better offer.”
- Huzzah is a real word. Wikipedia says so.
- Lowell Elementary school ranks better than any other school in Seattle (using standardized tests scores). I learned this while ironing a bug out of Estately’s new Seattle real estate page. And I think I just broke the rules.
- Bonus: the past tense of help is holp. Anyone who says otherwise is decimating the language.
Rain City Guide
Your Guide to the Seattle Real Estate Market
Decimating means killing one out of every ten Legionnaires to put the fear of death into the rest. Anyone who says otherwise is crucifying the Latin language. 😉
> The DOJ says that an amazing 70% of home sellers negotiated the commission with their agent.
I missed that part. A surprise to no one but Lesley Stahl. And, of course, the complimentary number is probably fewer than 10% of buyers thinking to ask how they can save some money.
The real estate industry is hardly “transparent.” It’s tough to find a good agent and to compare what agents cost. HOWEVER, if 70% of sellers are negotiating the rate and a lot of them are likely buying with the same agent, a that is a real indication of some competition, isn’t it?
“Only “20% to 25% of the homes shown on the Internet (depending on your information source) use home tours and/or multiple photos”
that’s sad. Especially the photos. But I also think that agents waste a ton of money on things that ultimately don’t give us or our clients value. Most of our ads we do we don’t follow the results. I mean having a fancy website for a million dollar home is a must, but exactly how many people is finding the site?