Category Archives: General

Zoom… monorail agreement finally reached

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107 0791 IMGThe Seattle Times is reporting that an agreement has finally been reached to build the monorail. As stated in a previous post, you can be pretty sure that high-capacity transit will increase property values.

On a related note, does it seem odd to anyone else that they announced the agreement on a Friday afternoon?

After all, this is the only positive news that’s come out of the Monorail agency in months, and then they effectively bury the story… Of course, the completion data of December 2010 is later than initial forecasts, but at this point, I’d like to see some construction in order to know that all parties are serious about building this thing.

I love referrals!

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SeaTac AirportAre you an real estate agent looking to refer clients to the Seattle market (Seattle, Bellevue, Redmond, etc.)? I love referrals and I’m willing to give your client the red carpet treatment on their arrival to Seattle!

Why should you consider referring your clients to me?

  • I’ll take excellent care of our client from day one and beyond.
  • I’ll provide excellent communication to both the valued client and to you!
  • I’ll pay a 25% realtor referral fee (promptly at the close of the sale).

If you want to learn more about the service I will provide, please don’t hesitate to contact me at anna@raincityguide.com or 206-251-3821.

Housing Prices up 12% this Past Year

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ClimbingThe blogging world is abuzz (at least the blogs that pay attention to real estate issues!) with news from the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) that housing prices rose over 12% this past year. Since the report is in acrobat format, I’ll quote more than usual (*.pdf) :

Average U.S. home prices increased 12.50 percent from the first quarter of 2004 through the first quarter of 2005. Appreciation for the most recent quarter was 2.21 percent, or an annualized rate of 8.82 percent. The new data represent the largest four quarter increase since the third quarter of 2004, when appreciation surpassed any increase in over 25 years. The figures were released today by OFHEO Acting Director Stephen A. Blumenthal, as part of the House Price Index (HPI), a quarterly report analyzing housing price appreciation trends.

“The House Price Index shows the rise in house prices continues at an extremely strong pace and raises the potential for declines in some areas later on,

Seattle Public Library Resources

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spiderDid you know that you can get the full-text of on-line newspapers through the Seattle Library? I read an article describing how many libraries provide full-text access (on-line) to magazines and newspapers that would normally charge fees for such access:

It’s impossible to list every database available from every public library since resources vary amongst libraries. Simply visit your local library’s web site, or give them a call and ask what’s available and how to gain access. It’s a painless process that can be accomplished in a matter of minutes.

After reading the article, I was pleasantly surprised to find many great resources available on the Seattle Library Website. While just scratching the surface, I’ve already found current and archived collections of all 18 Washington State Newspapers, Technology Review, and Harper’s Magazine. The only catch is that you will need a Seattle Library card in order to access many of the databases.)

gHomes Update #2

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Bright Water SchoolAbout 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

Starbucks is Built for Growth

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Pike Place Market StarbucksI ran across this interesting article on how Starbucks manages their real estate. Corporate real estate is not my usual thing, but I thought the insights were quite interesting and show how important location is to the Starbucks brand.

Starbucks is a concept driven as much by real estate as it is by coffee and the coffee experience. These days Starbucks opens at least three new locations a day somewhere in the world. It has taken a lot of real estate to open up 9,000+ Starbucks locations and it will take even more real estate to reach their stated goal of 30,000 global locations.

The blog entry quoted above is from a review of Built for Growth by a former EVP of Real Estate with Starbucks. In the book, the author describes how “Starbucks gained market dominance through finding the best real estate locations.”

While not surprising, it’s interesting to hear the different ways that location has become an intergral part of Starbucks’ growth strategy.

Sales of Existing Homes Hit Record as Prices Soar

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Climbing up Half DomeToday’s NY Times discusses how existing home prices are continuing to soar:

Sales of existing homes swelled to a record in April, rising 4.5 percent, and selling prices climbed at the fastest rate in almost 25 years, the National Association of Realtors reported today, defying predictions of a slowdown and adding to some analysts’ concerns about an overheated market.

While the article is based on national data, the same scenario is playing out locally here in Seattle. Homes that I would have put on the market for only $400K just a few months ago, are easily selling for $430K or more.

Home Data Overload

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purple tullipsIn organizing the data for gHomes, I’ve inadvertently created a treasure chest full of home sale (and sold) information. For example, with only a few minutes of extra coding I put two tables together. The first list the average list price of homes by zip code, while the second lists the average list price by year built and number of bedrooms for the same set of cities.

The hardest part of putting tables like this together is information overload. There is so much information available that simplifying the data down to digestible amounts can be tough. Is data like this of any interest to you? Is there some other housing characteristic you’d like to see? If there is ANY interest in tables like this, I will happily output them on a regular basis.

Here is some major caveats with the data:
1) The tables use the average list price (not sale price!!!) so don’t expect this data to give you an accurate value for your home. If you want an accurate comparative market analysis done for your home, ask me. I’ve got all the right data and I’ll happily give you one for free! (my free offer even extends to FSBOs!)
2) When you see bad data points (like zipcodes that are incomplete), that is a result of an agent (hopefully not myself) entering in the data wrong in the MLS system.
3) There are a bunch of anomalies where prices jump from one cell to another. Remember that the data is an average, and that sometimes, the average is only over a few (like one or two) data points.