Meet a Realtor Who Doesn't Sell Houses…

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The NY Times ran an article a few weeks ago on how hard it is for new real estate agents to break into the market (I’d like to the article but it is now behind a password-protected wall, so instead I’ll just link to the Property Grunt’s excellent summary and analysis). This article got me thinking of a way that I could still be very useful to my clients without actually buying or selling any homes.

What’s that? A Realtor who doesn’t buy or sell any homes?

For the next six-months or so, I really won’t be in a position where I can dedicate a significant amount of time to helping clients. (higher priorities! ) But what I would really enjoy doing over the next few months is staying connected to the business by helping buyers and sellers find appropriate agents.

Say that again?

Mariel Kicking a Soccer BallIn my office alone, there are almost 100 real estate agents who would love to have your business (assuming you’re buying or selling a home) and while I don’t know all of these agents, I do know the successful ones . What I would like to do is use my inside knowledge of successful Seattle agents to connect individuals with the right agents.

For example:

  • Are you looking for a condo in Downtown? I know an agent who specializes there!
  • Are you looking to buy land in Woodinville? I know a different agent who specializes there!
  • How about a modern-style home in Seattle? I know a different agent who specializes in modern homes.

Regardless if you’re trying to sell a home, condo, boathouse, townhome, etc., I’ve come into contact with a highly successful agent who specializes in that field. Talk with me, and I’ll connect you with the right person.

Why would I do this?

It is really a win-win-win situation. You get the best representation possible, a successful real estate agent gets one more client, and I can continue to help people in a small but important way. (I’ll also get a small referral fee from the agent…)

By the way, my recommendations are not limited to just people moving to Seattle. I know a few listings agents who go out of their way to please, so if you are currently a Seattle-area homeowner looking to list your house, talk with me before you list. I’m confident that no matter how good your realtor is, I can get you a better one!

What's in a Name?

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[photopress:thor.jpg,thumb,alignright] I like to think that Rain City Guide is constantly growing and evolving… Along those lines, Anna has been doing some growing (and evolving?) of her own lately. (She’s going to kill me for saying that!)

For those that don’t already know, Anna is expecting to have our second child in a little over a month.

So, let’s get down to business… What should we name the child?

Some ground rules:

  1. Boy or Girl: We don’t know if it is a boy or girl, so you’ve got twice as many names to suggest…
  2. Bilingual: Like her big sister, this child will grow up to be fluent in two languages (it is a must since one set of grandparents speak only Russian and the other only speaks English!). While I encourage you to suggest all types of names, if the Russians can’t pronounce it, I’m pretty sure that it won’t end up flying with Anna
  3. Outrageous: I love unusual names. Anna hates them. While I might be able to sneak past a name like Thor or Tyr, you can be pretty sure that we wont’ be naming our child after a major corporation.

Beyond that, I just look forward to reading your suggestions!

iGenHome…

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iGenHomeAn article from the Silicon Beat says that iGenHome is attempting to add a strong technology backend to the standard real estate agency. I’d imagine that just about anyone reading this blog knows that the real estate industry is set for some major technological changes in the near future and that I enjoy watching where the different players take it. I’ll be following this site and maybe have a full review in the near future… (Thanks Venture Blog for point out this article!)

It may sound too techy, but the first thing I look for in a new tech site is their support of RSS. (Scobleizer would understand!) So, I was disappointed to see no obvious RSS feeds available on their site. Even if you don’t know what they are, I’m of the opinion that you will be using them in the near future!

Here’s one example of how RSS feeds could be useful… I’ve begun presenting the “Latest Seattle Listings” here on my sidebar (if you’re reading this via a reader software, come check it out on the site!). This is just a little test of some RSS feed technology that I’ve been working on with Robbie Paplin of Caffeinated Software. We’ve got some other things up our sleeves that I find real interesting and I look forward to presenting more in the near future! By the way, is there a feed of Seattle home-data that you’d be interested in subscribing to? Let me know and I can probably make it happen for you!

The Long Winter

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I just started reading the 5th book in the Little House on the Prairie series (to my daughter!) and appropriately enough, it is called The Long Winter. Interestingly, it begins in the fall with Pa speculating that it is going to be a long winter because the Geese are flying fast and furious to the south (and least faster and more furious than usual).

Playing in SnowOn a related note, all signs are pointing to a long winter here in Seattle. From my office in Downtown, I could see the snow come down pretty furiously this past week, although there wasn’t much sticking in Seattle (yet!) until you got into the hills. And there is speculation that the real estate market is in for a long winter, but considering the usual slowdown in this time of year, we won’t really know the extent of the slowdown (if there is one) until Spring.

All of this makes me think that we’re going to need a lot of good blog reading to get us through this winter… So I decided to start with Chris Parillo’s list of Seattle real estate blogs and update it with some of the new sites that have been added since July.

My idea is to create a comprehensive list of Seattle blogs that cover real estate issues. I’m vigilant about following real estate news and websites here in Seattle and I’d be surprised if there was a real estate blog that has slipped passed me. However, that is definitely possible, but begs an obvious question. If you’re running a Seattle real estate blog that I don’t know about, why are you keeping such a low profile?

But before I give the list of active blogs, I first wanted to note that I was completely disappointed to hear that Tom had stopped posting on Seattle Property News. I thought he had one of the best real estate blogs around and he definitely encouraged me to take on some more analytical topics…

Without further ado, here are the Seattle sites that are actively covering real estate issues:

And here are the blogs I know of that are covering real estate related issues…

If you know of another site that should be included in this list, let us know by leaving a comment!

Reading Seattle

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Flying Santa CoverThe Restless Reader’s recent post on Seattle’s literary scene gives just one great reason for living in Seattle. I was fascinated (but not too surprised) to learn that 80% of Seattlites have a library card. (It was also fun to read that Seattle was rated the country’s most literate city.)

What’s my favorite bookstore in Seattle?

I’m partial to Ballard’s Secret Garden Bookshop. It’s definitely not the city’s largest book store, but it is a wonderful place to find a meaningful gift for kids. Just tonight, we stopped by this bookshop and had a wonderful conversation with Joe and Paula McHugh about their newest Children’s book called The Flying Santa. It seems that there is always something wonderful going on at the Secret Garden…

I guarantee you’re going to get this mortgage, I think.

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Why does the mortgage business seem so insane and unreliable? Well, there are a couple of reasons. One reason is there are a tremendous number of loan officers who came into the business during the boom of 2001 and have not had enough experience. A loan officer’s job is to make your loan work. When they look at a loan application, they examine all possible reasons that could be a problem. These are things like properties under construction, borrowers who are out of work, too much debt, not enough income, complex income situations, low credit scores, title problems, and much more. Loan officers with lots of experience have seen so many different situations with such complex problems, they know how to evaluate a new loan and spot potential problems. The next hurdle is with the underwriters. These folks work for the lenders and they review all of the information sent to them from the loan officer. They have guidelines and matrices which tell them what’s acceptable and what’s not. Underwriters will ask, or “condition

Apply to refinance online and get 50 calls a day for months

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I called a prospect whose name I purchased from a lead vendor. This is something we do regularly in the mortgage business. Rather than word of mouth, mailing, cold-calling, or some other marketing means, we can purchase the names, phone numbers, and other relevant information from a lead vendor. These leads come in various qualities and prices. You can get thousands of random names and phone numbers for pennies apiece or you can get interested, very specific parameter, live transfer calls directly to your phone for $150 or more each. Of course, there are leads for everywhere in between as well.

One of the most difficult factors in buying leads is the “exclusive

Terminating a Contract

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(This is a guest post by Craig Blackmon, an attorney in Seattle whose practice focuses on residential real estate — see www.lawofficeofcraigblackmon for more information. Please note that this post is not legal advice. You should consult an attorney for specific legal counsel.)

Last week, the Washington Appellate Court decided a case dealing with a buyer’s termination of a purchase and sale agreement. The case will not be published, and accordingly it has no precedential value for similar cases in the future. Nonetheless, the case does provide some interesting insight on the factors a buyer should consider before walking away from a purchase and sale agreement.

In Silvers v. Lee, the seller (Ms. Silver) and the buyers (Mr. and Mrs. Lee) entered into a standard MLS form purchase and sale agreement (the “PSA

Major Upgrade Completed

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I’ve wanted to make some improvements to the layout of Rain City Guide for quite some time, and I finally found some time this weekend to get the changes made and tested.

For those who are curious, here is what I did…

I took a wonderful wordpress theme and started hacking at it in the following ways:

  • Added another column on the right to display my del.icio.us links, called “Worth Noting” (more on this in a minute).
  • Changed the colors around a bit.
  • Added recent comments and recent posts to the sidebar
  • Moved all the buttons down to the footer where they are less distracting (but still useful!)

I also made some more changes to the backend of the system, such as:

  • Upgrading to the latest version of WordPress, and
  • Changing the linking structure on the site so that all the pages get a direct link (instead of the “?p=xyz”).

Of all the changes, the one that I like best is the new “worth noting” feature. You might have noticed that a couple of weeks ago I started posting a set of links with a tiny bit of commentary (They always had the title “links for 2005-11-xy”). I REALLY enjoyed putting these collection of links together because it took almost no effort and yet it let me cover a whole lot of ground. However, the feedback that I got from these posts was that they looked ugly and showed that it took no effort to post! 🙂 Hence, I’ve been looking for a better way to display this links… and I’m hoping that the “worth noting” column is the answer.

The links from the Worth Noting column will not show up on the main feed from this site, so if you tend to read Rain City Guide using a feed reader (YEAH!), I also recommend subscribing to my “worth noting” feed. Not sure what a feed reader is? Here’s some background.

And one more last thing about the “worth noting” column that I think is worth noting… I’ve set it up to be a true community-based resource. If you want to post an item with a little bit of commentary to the “worth noting” column, all you have to do is to tag an item using del.icio.us with the phrase “raincityguide”. The link won’t immediately show up because I cache the feed for about an hour, but I assure you that the link and commentary that you write will show up on the site sooner than later. Now, I realize that this method has the potential to be abused, but I think that the readers of rain city guide are generally considerate people, so I’m not too worried. As a matter of fact, I look forward to seeing what links you bring to my attention!

(If you are wondering if this is the RSS announcement I was planning to make, it’s not! There’s still more to come!)

Of course not everything can go too smoothly… There are two issues that escaped my testing that are yet to be resolved:

  1. The search form does not work when searching from within a post (it works from the main page!)

  2. The site simply won’t load using internet explorer on a mac (I get an error that says “Handler could not be removed” which means nothing to me yet!)

Neither of these issues seems like a show stopper, so I’m not going to role back to the old layout… Can you find any other bugs with the new site? I’d definitely like to know.

Now that I’ve given my opinion on the good and the bad of the new layout, I’d be curious to hear what you think!

UPDATE: Solved the search issue thanks to some help on this wonderfully active post for the Regulus theme.

However, since then I’ve also found out that my footer needs some work… So much to do and so little time!

Is Santa Planning on Moving to Seattle?

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I don’t mean to brag, but I was just checking my log files and I noticed that someone from the North Pole found my site while searching for real estate on Google.

I imagine the street level up there is pretty high this time of year. I wonder if one of the elves is thinking of getting out of manufacturing and into a more high-tech job?

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Also, if you look closely, you’ll notice that my North Pole visitor had cookies enabled 🙂