Tag Archives: information

A Birthday Request!

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This past week I received the ultimate gift for my 30th birthday, which just so happens to be today!

With everything going on, I really haven’t spent much time thinking about my birthday (surprise, surprise!), but it did occur to me that maybe I should mix in a new feature of Rain City Guide with a birthday request.

Some background… I’ve been inspired by Jim over at J. LeRoy to write more book reviews. Some of the book reviews will be directly related to real estate (as in “how to buy, sell, invest” books), while other books will only loosely (very loosely) be connected to real estate (but I’m pretty good at stretching things!). The important thing is that I’m going to keep reading (and reviewing) and switching off between fiction and non-fiction in order to add some balance!

Knowing for a few weeks that I’ve wanted to include book reviews in Rain City Guide, I’m a little ahead of the game and have prepared a few book reviews that I’ll be publishing soon. However, I’ve got a problem. Only a few weeks into this endeavor, I’ve got plenty of non-fiction books lined up in my Amazon WishList, but I’m already out of fiction books. I’m in desperate need of some good fiction stories!

All this leads to my birthday request…

What books do you recommend I read in this upcoming year?

Despite my preference for fiction, there are no rules for your recommendations. Feel free to include one, two or ten books… Feel free to include books about investing in real estate, building environmentally-friendly homes, blogging, history, Japanese culture, and so on… Feel free to include books that have taught, inspired, or challenged you… Most importantly, I’m just looking for books that will keep me turning the pages!

Where in the World?

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Since last September, I’ve been using a free stat program that maps the visitors to Rain City Guide. Last time I logged into the site, I notice that they’ve added a new toy (a poll feature) that has inspired me to ask a question I’ve wondered for quite some time…

The “cool” part about the poll is that the results will be mapped out based on where you are when you click “Add my Vote”! To see the map, just click on the “Show Results” link (or click here!)

How does it know where you are? The results are based on the IP address you use to access the internet. Big brotherish? Maybe… But that’s the reality when you surf the web, so it is probably best you’re aware of it!

What Seattle-area real estate professionals would you like to see blogging?

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Life is beautiful!First-things-first: Wow! Life is Beautiful!

It’s been wonderful to take a few weeks off from blogging and I’m so glad that Galen, Robbie, Marian, and Ardell picked up the slack and continued to post very interesting articles! Thanks to all of you!

With that said, I’m definitely looking forward to writing again and I have a whole bunch of ideas for Rain City Guide that I’m planning on implementing in the near future! The most obvious improvement that you’re likely to see is that even more real estate professionals have signed on to post articles! I have a vision for building Rain City Guide into the best resource for real estate information in Seattle and I plan to do that by seeking out a diverse group of real estate professionals with excellent writing skills!

With that in mind, what Seattle-area real estate professionals would you like to see blogging?

Some of the people high on my list include:

  • Rich Barton of Zillow . It definitely would draw some much needed press to this attention deprived start-up!
  • Marlow Harris of SeattleDreamHomes. She’s web-savvy and the odd–ball type stuff on her site would make for some great blogging. (Whoops! just before posting I noticed that Marlow has had a blog since October 2004, six months before Rain City Guide! I guess this only goes to show that unless you embrace the blogosphere by linking to other posts, you’re likely to hide away in obscurity!)
  • Elizabeth Rhodes of the Seattle Times. I’m thinking a few blogging posts would loosen up her style a bit and we might get interesting real estate reporting along the lines of what John Cook does for venture capital reporting on his Venture Blog.
  • Tom Holst of SeattleModern. Some might argue that Tom already has a blog with his weekly redesign of his site, but the site is missing some key ingredients that make for good blogging (and easy reading), such as comments, RSS feeds, link-friendly URLs. Because he changes the URL of his pages every week, I can’t link to any of his articles because they will quickly be out of date! With all that said, once I make my way through the ever-changing layout of his site, I find Tom’s writing and photos to be very interesting and top-notch… Hence, the reason I wish he was blogging!

Of course, I realize that some of these people are not yet ready to post on Rain City Guide, but it is fun to imagine the possiblities…

Who makes your list?

Understanding Credit Score and Credit Repair

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Credit remediation is a subject consumers often face with fear and trepidation, and for good reason. With the exception of recognizing that the best score wins, the average home shopper knows very little about the whole credit scoring process. Sub-prime borrowers who are eager to move into A-Paper territory often find themselves at a loss when trying to find ways to upgrade their credit history. The good news is there are ways to improve less-than-perfect credit scores and obtain a loan for the home you really want.

The first step in the process is making sure that you have a current copy of your credit report. Congress recently amended the Fair Credit Reporting Act so that consumers may now receive one free credit report annually. There are three major credit bureaus: Equifax, Experian, and Transunion. Since entries can vary across bureaus, you’ll want to request a free report from each of the three companies. (Go to www.annualcreditreport.com)


It’s also important to know just what a good credit score is. Most A-Paper scores generally begin around 680, although this number may differ slightly among lenders. Don’t despair if you come up shy, there is always room for improvement. Increasing your score just 5 points can save a significant amount of money. For example, if your score is 698 and you increase it to 703, then you could save yourself thousands of dollars over time as a result of a slight improvement to your loan’s interest rate.

While credit repair is necessary for some, it’s not the only way to increase your credit score. Even if you have stellar credit, you can enhance your score through these steps:

  • Evenly distribute your credit card debt to change the ratio of debt to available credit. Let’s say you have a credit score of 665. If you have debt on only one card, and four additional credit cards with zero balances, evenly distributing the debt of the first card could move you closer, and possibly into, that ideal bracket.
  • Keep your existing accounts open and active. The average consumer is usually anxious to close credit card accounts that have zero balances, but doing this can cause them to lose the benefits of a long-term credit history and increase their ratio of debt-to-available credit. The bottom line is don’t close those old accounts!
  • Keep credit inquiries to a minimum. Each inquiry into your credit history can impact your score anywhere from 2-50 points. When it comes to mortgage and auto loans, even though you’re only looking for one loan, multiple lenders may request your credit report. To compensate for this, the score counts multiple auto or mortgage inquiries in any 14-day period as just one inquiry, so try and stay within that time frame.

Remember, credit scores don’t change overnight. Improving them requires time and diligent effort on your part, so it’s a good idea to get the ball rolling at least three to six months prior to submitting your application for home financing.

If credit repair is what you need, you can either begin the process yourself or seek out a repair service. If you decide to make your own improvements, visit as many websites as possible to get information regarding credit laws and consumer rights. Diligently search through them and educate yourself to ensure that you don’t sustain any self-inflicted wounds. A good place to start would be the Federal Trade Commission’s website, which contains a wealth of helpful literature.

If you’re facing severe or complicated credit issues, then you’ll probably want to enlist the assistance of a professional credit repair company. Before you do, be sure to familiarize yourself with the FTC’s regulations on credit repair. With over 1100 credit repair companies to choose from, it’s important to be certain you are dealing with a reputable firm. Examine the FTC’s information on fraudulent practices to avoid falling prey to credit repair scams.

Addressing credit issues can be uncomfortable to say the least. But by taking these steps now, you’ll be that much closer to obtaining the home of your dreams.

Additional Resources:

To order your free credit report, go to:
www.annualcreditreport.com

To read the Fair Credit Reporting Act, go to:
www.ftc.gov/os/statutes/frca.htm

For the Federal Trade Commission’s information on consumer credit, go to:
www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/credit/index.html

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!

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?

[photopress:santa_moving_to_seattle.jpg,full,centered]

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

Real Simple Syndication (RSS) for Real Estate

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Duck Flapping WingsI can tell from some of the questions I got from my past post about RSS feeds that I was going over some people’s heads. As the resident geek here at Rain City Guide, I feel it is my responsibility to explain RSS feeds and why they are so cool… So let’s begin with the big picture…

Who cares about RSS?
Imagine that you could create a newspaper that only included content that you were interested in. Mine definitely would not include tables if yesterday’s stock quotes! But what would it include? My ideal newspaper would be completely personalized to my interests and include this type of information:

  • Current world, local, real estate, transportation, and tech news
  • Commentary from my favorite writers on world news, local news, real estate, transportation and tech issues
  • The latest photos of my friends and family
  • A photo and description of every new home that came on the market in Anna’s market area
  • Upcoming local events
  • Blog articles written by people who are moving to Seattle

But wait! I’ve already got that newspaper and it is delivered (digitally) to one place every day. Even better, it is delivered continuously throughout the day as new articles appear. My newspaper is ALWAYS up-to-date. It includes selected articles from the New York Times, the Seattle Times, the Seattle PI and 4500 other newspapers!. As a matter of fact, I’ve created such an awesome newspaper that I rarely search the web anymore for new content. Just about all the content that I could possible be interested in gets delivered to me! And best of all, this newspaper with articles, commentary, data and photos personalized to my tastes is delivered to me FREE!

How does this work?
Through the magic of RSS.

What is RSS?
RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication. The idea behind RSS is that a website (newspaper, blog, photo site, etc) publishes a text file on their site with a very specific (RSS) format so that other sites can “ping” this one text file to find the latest news, information, photos (or home listings!). The text file is pretty ugly to look at (here is Rain City Guide’s RSS feed), but that is beside the point, because users should never be looking at a raw RSS feed. Instead, users (that means you!) should get a feed reader that will parse all the ugly text and reformat it in a nice, easy-to-read package.

Have a lost you yet?
Stick with me, and I hopefully you’ll start to see what makes RSS feeds so cool (at least in a geeky sort of way!).

Ducks at LakeWhy go through all the hassle to get a site’s RSS feed when you can just go to the site whenever you’re interested in reading their content?
The beauty of the RSS feed is that updated information is brought to you! Ever since I’ve started using a feed reader, I find myself searching the web for interesting information a lot less because interesting information is brought to me! To give you an idea of the diversity of feeds available, here are some of the things that are delivered to the inbox of my feed reader every time new information is published:

I mention these items just to give you a picture of the diversity of feeds that are available. In reality, over 100 of my feeds are all from bloggers, but the options for different feeds are massive and growing every day. I’ve really enjoyed being able to read articles and see photos from all of these sources within one place (a feed reader!), which brings me to…

So where do I get one of these feed readers so that I can create my own on-line newspaper?
There are a ton of feed readers available. Some of them are desktop-based and some are web-based. Most of my experience has been on the following three web-based options, so I’m going to limit my opinion to these three, but feel free to search beyond my experience:

I began using MyYahoo years ago, and then a while back (months? years?) they added the ability to add any RSS feed to a user’s MyYahoo page. I took advantage of this and enjoyed it so much that MyYahoo page became extremely cluttered. I clearly needed a better option which is when I turned to Bloglines. Bloglines allows you to categorize your feeds into an unlimited number of folders and it does a great job of keeping track of which articles you’ve already read, making it extremely popular and easy-to-use program. Plus it is 100% web-based so that if you log into the service and read an article on one computer (let’s say at work) then when you log in from home, your home computer will know that you’ve already read that article… Bloglines is a great way to keep up on your favorite news, blogs, etc.

Ducks PlayingI’ve also been playing around with Google’s new feed reader called GoogleReader. It’s a great option as well and I really like that it has an “relevance” option that brings the things I’m most likely to be interested in to the top of my list of things to read.

What’s next?
My hope is that if you’re new to RSS feeds, then at least you are starting to see that they have a ton of potential. They are everywhere and Scobleizer (over at Microsoft) would even argue that they are essential for new web companies! Feeds are only going to become more popular, so if you want to be a web-savvy individual, it is time to hop on the band wagon and try it out!

And if you’ve made it this far, you’ll start to notice orange RSS “badges” all over the web. These badges are letting you know that you can read this site’s content from your blog reader.

For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to assume you are using GoogleReader… To add Rain City Guide to GoogleReader, here is what you need to do:

  1. Go to GoogleReader
  2. In the search box, type is “Rain City Guide” and click “Search for New Content”.
  3. Where you see “Seattle’s Rain City Real Estate Guide”, click on the Subscribe button. This will add Rain City Guide’s RSS feed to your GoogleReader.

It is that simple to add a feed. In addition, most sites offer an “+ to XYZ” buttons like this one (Add to Google) from Google. There are bunch more feed readers on the market, and I’ve tried to make it as easy as possible to add Rain City Guide, so I’ve added a button for all the ones that I’m aware of on my sidepanel.

Also, if you are interested in real estate feeds, feel free to grab the real estate feeds that I follow by downloading this file to your hard-drive and using the “import” feature within GoogleReader to add these feeds. (To do this you will need to (1) click on “Your Subscriptions” and (2) on the pull down menu that says “more actions”, click on “import”. Then (3) just follow the instructions to import the XML file.)

So why all the big fuss about RSS feeds? And what does this have to do with real estate?
I’ve been playing around with some ideas I have for an RSS feed of real estate listings and before I announce anything, I needed to have a post I could turn to where I could say “This is what an RSS feed is and why you should care!” There’s nothing I’m ready to present yet, but if you’re interested in being an alpha-tester, let me know and I’ll pass along a link soon enough!

Growing Rain City Guide…

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Russian GenealogyI noticed yesterday that this site has started to get hits from google on the search term “real estate”. I did a little more digging and found that Rain City Guide still doesn’t rank that high on standard google searches, but on Google’s Blogsearch, I’m now one of the top five sites that it returns for “real estate”

This reminded me of a post I put together last march (before Rain City Guide existed!) on Anna’s first real estate blog. Back then I was still trying to figure out What does it take to be a successful real estate blogger?” I just reread the article for the first time in months and I’m amazed at how much that article set the stage for everything that has become Seattle’s Rain City Real Estate Guide. I thought I’ve give my thoughts on how this site has evolved, but first I’m going to take us back to my initial thoughts on a real estate blog:

What does it take to be a successful real estate blogger?
What does it mean to be a successful real estate blogger?

I’ve been asking myself these questions a lot lately as I try to figure out where I should take this site. Where does one start? Google, or course! So I searched “Real Estate Blog”:
Google Search: real estate blog

Of course, generating traffic is of the highest priority, so I want my site to rank high in google searches… So what are:
Southern California Real Estate Blog and Toronto at Home doing “right” so that they rank so high?

1) The highest ranking site, the S. Cal. blog, is using blogger technology. (They have a ***.blogspot address, just like me.) Neither of the top two sites hosts their own site under their own domain (such as www.annaluther.com), which makes me think that I should be content and satisfied with my site location. In addition, the S. Cal site has the poster’s names in it highlighting the fact that the domain doesn’t really matter (in other words, the domain doesn’t have to say “seattle” or “real estate” in order to rank high. The content of, and links to, likely matters much more.
2) Both of the top two sites add a blog entry at least every other day.
3) The top site has been blogging since Aug 2003 (1 1/2 years), the second site only since Nov 2004 (5 months) (at least that is as far as the archives go back.
4) Both place links to other real estate bloggers in prominent places on their website.
5) S. Cal blog is chatty with general updates (spring cleaning, flipping real estate, etc.), while Toronto’s site is loaded with longer articles that would be right at home in a Realtor magazine.
6) Toronto’s blog is particularly slick and is loaded with links to good information!!! The clean photo of the blogger at his laptop sets the mood for the entire site.
7) Each entry on Toronto’s blog is categorized by type of information. This is quite nifty and very easy to use.
8) Both sites are very well integrated with a website (lots of links back and forth). My preference is to not keep up a traditional website, but instead, just find a way to host files that I can link to… I’ll have to think on that one.

In summary, I think the Toronto blog looks a lot better, and I imagine with time, it will surpass the S. Cal Blog in google searches simply because it offers more and better information.
Did I answer the question of what it takes to be a real estate blogger? Definitely not completely, but I’m getting some ideas…

So what’s changed since I did my research 9 months ago? And why did this post affected the development of Rain City Guide? I’ll follow up on each of the numbered points:

  1. Shortly after writing this first comment, I splurged and bought a domain name (raincityguide.com) and a hosting service. While I still believe I could have had a very successful blog using blogger, I really wanted some additional features (like the ability to address comment #7) that simply are not available on the Blogger platform!
  2. I learned that a blog needs to be fed regularly, and I think I’ve been pretty good about that…
  3. Rain City Guide has been up for 8 months and is only now starting to rank high in google searches.
  4. I’ve added links to my favorite bloggers. I’m pretty good about trading links with any relevant site that has good content to offer users!
  5. I’d like to think that I’ve learned from both sites. We try to keep things relatively informal (chatty?) on Rain City Guide while remembering that every once in a while, you have to provide some good meat to chew on!
  6. More than anything, I learned that I really wanted to personalize the site. Knowing that I would be using lots of photos from Wendy Baker’s digital photo library, I added four “Seattle-only” photos to the title bar.
  7. I really wanted the ability to add categories (and photo libraries, calendars, etc), so I moved Anna’s original blog from Blogger to WordPress. I’ve really enjoyed exploring all the options available with WordPress, so I’m glad I made the move early on.
  8. As you may have noticed, I haven’t even bothered putting together a regular website for Anna. If I end up getting a really good home search tool built for this site (I’m working at it very slowly), then I may throw up a more generic site… but I’m not even sure that will be necessary.

Interestingly, my prediction that the Toronto blog would pass up the S. Cal Blog (now simply called “The Real Estate Blog”) on Google searches turned out to be correct. Toronto at Home has moved to #1, while The Real Estate Blog has dropped to #4. Nonetheless, they are both great sites, and I’ve learned a ton from both of them!

Do you have any comments on the direction of Rain City Guide? Would you like to see us cover a different part of the real estate scene in Seattle? You should always feel free to email us or leave a comment on any of the postings!