green living resources

Posted on August 29, 2005 by Dustin Luther

I recently added some links on my sidepanel to some environmental resources that I’ve found interesting and/or helpful. Below are the sites along with a little description of why I decided to highlight them.

FreeCycle Seattle “lets you find new homes for things you no longer use and receive what you need–free! Clean out your house, save good stuff from the landfill, and help others at the same time.” The site is similar to the “free” section in most classified ads except EVERYTHING is free… A lot of good stuff turns up on this site, although it is often gone pretty quickly as the turnover rate is quite high.

GreenClean is “the environmentally sound guide to cleaning your home.” While promoting their book by the same name (GreenClean), the site gives some good advice and background on cleaning with the environment in mind.

ReStore has field crews that pick up, salvage, and dismantle building material all over the larger Puget Sound region and central Washington. They offer “quality building and home improvement materials, a wide variety of services including sales, pick-up, salvage, and whole building deconstruction.” Their store in Ballard is filled with hard-to-find materials like old bricks, stones, doors, lamps, etc. If you have an old Seattle home (like I do!), this store can be great source of “original” materials.

Rocky Mountain Institute “is an entrepreneurial nonprofit organization that fosters the efficient and restorative use of resources to make the world secure, just, prosperous, and life-sustaining. We do this by inspiring business, civil society, and government to design integrative solutions that create true wealth.” Based on the 30 years that they’ve spent researching efficiency improvements in everything from water to cars, Amory and L. Hunter Lovins at the RMI offer a glimpse into the environmentally-friendly future that we can create. The book they wrote with Paul Hawken, Natural Capitalism, is a must read for anyone who wants understand how businesses (even small real estate companies!) can learn from natural processes to create positive impacts that benefit us all.

Tree Hugger “The Future is Green. Find it Here.” This blog offers frequent updates on environmental issues and products. Far from being an activist site, the blog is more likely to engage your “environmental aesthetic”. Even so, it is a fun blog to read with lots of good content.

Do you have another environmental-related links that real-estate minded readers might find helpful? Share the wealth by leaving a comment.

Buyers and Sellers: Help is on the way…

Posted on August 24, 2005 by Dustin Luther

I’m pretty sure that many real estate agents wouldn’t want to hear this, but the real estate industry has been very effective at protecting their own self-interest at the expense of home buyers and sellers. There are so many useful tools that could be built, but valuable real estate data is hidden behind thick walls! But rather than focus on the problems of the industry, I’d like to spend a few minutes talking about the future…

If you’ve been reading Rain City Guide long enough, you probably know that last May I put together the first home search (“gHomes

Catching up…

Posted on August 12, 2005 by Dustin Luther

I haven’t blogged in a little while, but that is not because there is a lack of interesting things to talk about. All kinds of interesting things have been happening on the real estate front, so I’m going to attempt to catch up all in one huge post.

First off, I joined up with the Real Estate Blog Squad. The idea behind this group is that lots of real estate agents would team together to blog about topics related to the National Assn. of REALTORS® annual convention and exposition that will be going on October 28-31, 2005. In reality, I have no idea what will come out of this group, but I’m happy to take part in the experiment.

Next I wanted to talk about a local news items from this previous week… Seattle Times: Seattle market: Distorted prices — or room to grow? The Seattle Times ran an article about a story I covered about the riskiest cities to live in… The only reason I mention it is that the article says: “The word went out on CNN. It ran in The Christian Science Monitor. A Seattle real-estate blog reported it, and it earned the cover-story spot on msn.com’s money page.” I’m pretty sure that I’m the only Seattle blogger that covered this story, so I’m going to hazard a guess that the Seattle Times real estate writer is now reading my blog! Welcome Elizabeth Rhodes! I definitely read just about everything you write!

After an absence of 5 days, I enjoyed reading this post from Counter Intelligence that described a situation that I’m sure is familiar to many real estate bloggers: “I’ve got to post a new article today or I’m going to lose readers.” I was surprised to hear that counter Intelligence lost 90% of their daily hits after 50 days of not posting. Contrary to the idea you might get by reading this recent article from National Association of Realtors (NAR), real estate blogging is hard work. Let this serve as a warning to real estate agents who are thinking of diving into blogging. Writing an interesting post on a daily basis is tough stuff. Make sure that you enjoy writing. Make sure that you enjoy keeping up on the news. Real estate blogs like Hot Property have an inherent advantage in that it would be so much easier with multiple bloggers all posting to the same site. Ideally, Rain City Guide will someday get about 5 of 6 different real estate agents who post articles on a regular basis. That way, any one of the agents can take a week off when they get burned out without the site suffering a blackout period.

Funny headline of the week… The Ballard News-Tribune (a local paper with a malfunctioning website) had this title for their August 3, 2005 issue: “We could get monorail first.” The article went on to describe how the Ballard segment of the Monorails Greenline would likely get built before other sections. This begs the question: Do the writers of the Ballard News-Tribune read other newspapers? . Do they know that the monorail is much closer to dead than ever being built at this point. The mayor of Seattle has given the monorail an September 15th deadline to come up with a plan or he is going to kill the entire project. The entire organization is in shambles.

Jeremy Zawodny had an interesting analysis of the insane housing market of Silicon Valley. The fact that home prices continue to rise at astronomically fast rates in Seattle, makes me glad to live in Seattle…

I think I bunched enough stuff together for one post, but I there are so many more stories to talk about… I’m just about ready to publish my first podcast for Rain City Guide. I’ve been working late into the night to create an updated MLS home search on top of google maps (nothing is ready to demonstrate yet!). Curbed nominated the “hotest” real estate agents in NY City (do we need something like that for Seattle? 🙂 )

UPDATE: . I imagine Bill Wendel over at Counter Intelligence will get a kick out of learning that even some at Wired News have been getting burned out on technology lately!

Do you ever Google people?

Posted on July 18, 2005 by Dustin Luther

Do you google people before (or after) you meet them? I’m under the impression that everyone does it, and yet, I feels pings of guilt in admitting it…

Anyway, I sometimes google things related to this site and I was very pleasantly surprised to find that one of our very own contributors received an “Every Day Hero” award from the Red Cross for his quick actions in helping to put out a fire at a home in the University District! Congratulations Tim Pilgrim!

Oh, the things we can learn from google!

Troll Avenue North

Posted on July 10, 2005 by Anna

[photopress:victorious_half_dome.jpg,thumb,alignright]I just returned from a wonderful vacation in Yosemite to find out that two blocks of Aurora Avenue are proposed to be renamed Troll Avenue North. Such huge news! 🙂

We had a wonderful time, and while my family didn’t make it up to the top of Yosemite Falls (so we do not have a “five-years later” photo), my husband did make it up to the top of Half Dome!

[photopress:river_rafting.jpg,thumb,alignleft]With over 40 members of my family in the valley, our vacation involved lots of laid back time with family. We went on many small hikes and found time to go river rafting just about every day. So much fun!

Anyway, I’m sure that as I go through all the websites that I missed while on vacation, I’m going to find lots of stuff to blog about. I’ve got lots of reading (and writing) to do! In particular, google came out with an official “API” for their on-line mapping which should simplify the development of the ghomes tool that I’ve put together. I’m going to work on that this afternoon, and hopefully, I’ll have something interesting to share with you soon!

Yosemite Vacation

Posted on June 29, 2005 by Anna

I’m taking a week-long vacation at Yosemite National Park, but that doesn’t mean that Rain City Guide will go on a break as well… Mary Jereczek has kindly offered to step up and write posts in my absence!

This is a great time to mention that I’m really thrilled with the response that I’ve had from my call for guess bloggers. I think that these top title representatives, mortgage brokers and real estate agents offer an interesting and useful perspective and really help round out the discussion on this site! I look forward to having more guest bloggers and welcome anyone who might be interested!

[photopress:Hiking_up_Yosemite_Falls.jpg,full,alignright]

By the way, this photo of my family was taken at the top of Yosemite Falls five years ago! Obviously, my daughter has grown considerably since then! It should be a lot of fun to show her the incomparable valley again now that she is old enough to appreciate it!

Redfin — The Anti-Google

Posted on June 20, 2005 by Anna

[photopress:sasha_with_troll.JPG,thumb,alignright]I’m extremely disappointed in the latest direction that Redfin has taken and I’d like to use this post to explain why I’ve completely stopped doing business with them.

For those of you not familiar, Redfin is a company that has developed a really great aerial technology for viewing MLS data. When they came out, I signed up as a “Redfin Agent” because their technology was superior to anything else available for searching the MLS. In previous blog entries I’ve mentioned how great their technology is.

How did they plan to make money? In the simplest sense, their business plan involved displaying MLS information via an intuitive interface using aerial images. When prospective clients would look for a home, Redfin would direct them to local real estate agents. After the prospective clients purchased a home, the real estate agent would send a portion of the closing commissions (20%) back to Redfin. By repacking the MLS data in a new way and getting real estate agents to promote them, they hoped to take the industry by storm. However, their site must not be nearly as popular as they hoped because their newest business venture turns them into a discount real estate company.

However, I wouldn’t write this blog entry if they were just another discount real estate agency. I don’t have a problem with discount real estate agencies and I think they provide a useful service for a subset of sellers (and besides, they keep us full-service agents on our toes!). The reason I write this article is that Redfin went from being a partner with real estate agents to a competitor. I think they assumed they could use the goodwill that they’ve built up with agents to slip a fast one on us.

The worst part is that Redfin didn’t have to go that route. Early on, I talked with them about licensing their technology to display MLS over my site. When the showed only passing interest, I decided to develop the MLS Search Engine myself… And while my technology is still in the infant stage, I’ve found a way to display MLS data over aerial photos (so don’t believe their front-page marketing that says that are the only ones doing this!).

If you are currently a “redfin agent” (like I was!), please join me in severing your business relationship with Redfin until they decide to join us again as a partner. As Redfin doesn’t offer a way to “delete” your account, I recommend doing the next best thing. To delist yourself from their database, go to: http://www.redfin.com/stingray/do/my-redfin. Log in using your username and password. Click “edit your profile

Lessons learned from riding two real estate cycles

Posted on June 3, 2005 by Dustin Luther

Bill Wendel over at Boston’s Real Estate Cafe has been posting podcasts on his blog for a little while now. The interview from his latest podcast is from a woman who…

..describes lessons learned over last two real estate cycles: first losing money (at least on paper) on a starter condo purchased at the top of the bubble in Philadelphia in the mid-1980’s; then purchasing another home at the bottom of the last cycle; and ultimately hitting the real estate jackpot in Atlantic City.

To hear the podcast, follow the link to his website and then click on the link that says “Real Estate Bubble Audio Time Capsule #2”. That should download it to your machine and then open it to your default mp3 player.

What is podcasting?
In it’s simplest form, podcasting is a recording that is saved in an mp3 format that is made available via the internet. The recordings could either be groups of songs (a la a typical radio station), interviews (a la NPR), simple rants (a la many blogs), or a mix of all the above.

I’ve linked to this podcast, mainly because I’m intrigued by the idea of podcasting. I know that at some point in the future, I’ll give it a try… If you have some ideas for good podcasts (obviously the topic should be related to Seattle real estate), please let me know…. Would it be useful to have a podcast of my impression of featured listings? Are there any major players in Seattle real estate that I should interview? I could probably cover more ground in a two minute podcast than I could in a three paragraph description…

My take is that podcasting the same information that could easily be written about would be a waste of time and bandwidth. Ideally, it would be great to cover topics that can’t easily be conveyed via a written format. I’ll keep thinking about this and would appreciate your ideas.

gHomes Update #2

Posted on June 1, 2005 by Dustin Luther

About a week ago, Google made an update to google maps (gmaps) which caused errors to my gHomes MLS Search (built on top of gmaps).

I finally found some time to get around to making updates to my coding so that my MLS search would work. In the process, I’ve streamlined the data conversion process, so that it now only takes me a few minutes a day (if that) to update the MLS. While the MLS search is not nearly as smooth as I’d like, I still think it is one of the most interesting ways to search the homes that are currently on the market.

The current version searches all the homes listed in the City of Seattle. I’m in the process of adding additional Cities and neighborhoods. I’d also like to add “sold” information, but that will also take some time. If you are interested in seeing where I’m going, check out:

http://raincityguide.com/ghomes

Moving to Seattle?

Posted on May 16, 2005 by Dustin Luther

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I recently began an ad campaign on google that places an ad when someone searches the term “moving to seattle”…

Did you click on that ad to get to my site?

If so, I’d be especially interested to know what type of information that you are looking for! Is there something specific you would like to know about Seattle?

If you wouldn’t mind taking a minute to write a comment, I would sure appreciate knowing how I could serve you better!

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