Tag Archives: Buyer-Information

Cutthroat Competition of Online Brokers Benefits Consumers

Posted on by
Reply

Cutthroat CompetitionA recent study showed that on-line brokers had an extremely high costumer satisfaction levels:

With an average reliability of 99.5 percent, the brokerage industry’s Web site service levels far exceed other industries, Keynote found. In addition, pages that take more than one and a half seconds to download–a time considered first-rate by other online industries–fell well below the standards currently being set by online brokerages.

Have you used an on-line broker? (I have!) I’d be interested in hearing about your experience. Was their service as good as this survey suggests?

Thanks to Garrett French for the background info…

Can things keep going up in Seattle? A Bay Area story…

Posted on by
Reply

[photopress:riley_in_SF.jpg,thumb,alignright]I just thought I would try to put the high prices of the Seattle market in perspective based on a story from a friend of mine from the Bay Area…

This friend (and his wife) moved from Texas to the Bay Area about four years ago. They began by renting, but really wanted to buy a home. After about a year, they were able to buy a home, but they had to move out about an hour away from San Francisco because it was the only way they afford a home due to the ridiculously high prices. Back then (four years ago), the talk of the town from turning from the recent dot-com bust to a coming real estate bust. Well, they purchased a 1,400 sf home in Bay Point (right outside of Pittsburg) for around $310K.

Fast forward to three years later… They are ready to move back to Dallas to be closer to their family. They put their home on the market and receive multiple offers, the best offer at $530K. Take out real estate fees and what-not, and they are poised to make almost $200K in less than three years… In addition, they’ve also bought a home in Dallas for $250K which means that they can use their profits to either lower their mortgage to near nothing, or have a lot of money in the bank to invest.

This young family (both are under 30) has a leg-up for life thanks to one good investment decision. They bought a house.

Of course, it is unlikely that home prices in other places (like Seattle) will continue to see the same time of appreciation, but as the article from the Seattle Times suggests, the lack of housing supply in Seattle is probably going to be around for a long time to come.

Home equity

Posted on by
Reply

living room 01The Seattle Times had an interesting article regarding home equity building rapidly in our fast moving real estate market and investors using home equity to make more speculative investments:

According to Economy.com, Americans pulled out roughly $705 billion of equity from their homes last year, up from $266 billion in 1999.

The bulk of that money came from capital gains made by people selling houses, and these profits often are used to purchase another residence.

Many people also use some of the extracted cash to pay off credit-card debt, which is widely viewed as a sensible way to use equity. Another large chunk of the equity withdrawn goes into home improvements. Spending on such projects totaled $138.3 billion last year, up 38 percent from five years before, according to Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

When Lawyers Steal the Escrow

Posted on by
4

The NY Times has an article today describing the experience of people whose real estate lawyers have been caught stealing their escrow money. The most extreme example they give was from Jay Rosen who would intentionally create problems with the transaction in order to hold onto his client’s escrow money:

A dispute over the home’s title or its certificate of occupancy would stymie the deal, making it impossible for Mr. Rosen to release his clients’ money from an escrow account he controlled. An ancient property-line dispute would rise from the dead. Checks would get delayed. Cash transfers wouldn’t connect.

It was as if money just didn’t want to leave Mr. Rosen’s hands, clients said.

While there will always be a bad apple in the bunch, I’m actually surprised to hear of this problem. (Granted, the article makes a big deal of the problem, but then goes on to say that there were only 100 reported real estate thefts in 2004.)

I’ve yet to hear that this is a problem in Seattle, and considering that the industry relies so heavily on referrals, it would seem the bad apples would be quickly rooted out… However, if you’ve ever been taken advantage of by a local agent, broker or lawyer, I’d be interested to know so that I can adjust my recommendations appropriately.

King County Home Appreciation

Posted on by

AppreciationThe Seattle Times put together an informative graphic that illustrates homes home appreciated by neighborhood between 2003 and 2004. No surprise in that every single neighborhood in King County experienced increase values:

Thanks to low interest rates, last year was a record-breaker that saw 31,333 single-family home sales and 9.8 percent appreciation on a per-square-foot basis. That’s the highest since 1999 and well above 2003’s 4.2 percent. But one thing remained constant: Appreciation varied greatly among neighborhoods, ranging from 31.6 percent in Newport Shores and Kennydale to 3.2 percent in Lake Youngs, between Kent and Renton.

The top five neighborhoods in terms of appreciation were Newport Shores/Kennydale (31.6%), South Central West Seattle (22.7%), Madison Park (22.6%), West Shoreline (17.1%), and East Ballard (15.1%).

Zoom… monorail agreement finally reached

Posted on by
Reply

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.

Sales of Existing Homes Hit Record as Prices Soar

Posted on by

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.

Is Real Estate Investing for You?

Posted on by
4

Thinking BigI’ve talked with many people recently that are interested in investing in real estate but not sure where to start. If that descrives you then I would recommend reading Gary Keller’s most recent book, Millionaire Real Estate Investor. In this book he gives you a step-by-step approach to becoming a real estate investor. It’s nice that his writing style is very conversational and easy to read without being condescending.

A previous book of his, Millionaire Real Estate Agent, illustrates how an agent can set themselves up to become extremely successful in life (as well as professionally!)

(Read the Amazon.com reviews on the above links and you’ll see that I’m not the only one who thinks they are worth reading!)

If you are a potential investor in Seattle-area real estate interested in reading either of these books, let me know, and I would happily pass along one of my copies to you!

gHomes Update

Posted on by
1

Bus Tunnel StitchedI’ve been slowly making some updates to the gHomes site. Today’s improvement was to add a link from the Google minipages to more detailed information.

If you are new to my site, then definitely check out my alpha-version of gHomes … I hope you’ll find it is the best way to search for a new home in Seattle.

(Do you know where the photo from this post was taken? Here’s the satellite image…)