Tag Archives: Seattle

INBOX: Best Brokerage in Seattle to Work For?

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I just received an email from a Seattle investor who has recently earned his salesperson license and is now interested in finding the best place to hang his license. I began by sending him to the list of brokerages I’ve compiled on the wiki, but I imagine there are some readers who could do a better job focusing his search.

I know him well enough to say that he has more than a little bit of experience investing and he is interested in focusing his energy helping other investors.

Is there a brokerage that does better with this segment of the market?

What questions should he be asking as he interviews brokers?

Seattle in Top Ten for Continued Appreciation- Want to know Why?

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We’ve talked alot on RCG about whether we’re in a bust or a bubble real estate market and we in the Pacific NW have been watching the rest of the country and wondering, Why all the gloom? Bankrate.com and today’s Seattle times have some explanation that can provide perspective:

Last week, Bankrate.com unveiled its forecast for the changing real estate market in the U.S. over the next few years – ten markets where housing prices and values will continue to remain strong, ten markets where appreciation will pretty much top out and the ten markets that are most likely to experience a decline. They talked to experts, studied public and private databases, analyzed market trends and examined the analysis of many others.

The ten “bubble blowers,” where appreciation should continue to grow, are:

  • Boise (ID);
  • El Paso (TX);
  • Albuquerque (NM);
  • Seattle (WA)/Portland (OR);
  • Salt Lake City (UT);
  • Raleigh (NC);
  • Philadelphia (PA);
  • Atlanta (GA);
  • Little Rock (AR); and
  • Cincinnati (OH)/Birmingham (AL) (they were too close to call).

Just why this is happening in the Pacific NW is the subject of this mornings Seattle Times article by Elizabeth Rhodes. She sheds light on why Seattle is breaking the national trend toward stagnating or dropping home prices. Her article notes that the average home prices have taken a steep hike in the last year and appear to be continuing the rise.

Citing the NWMLS statistics that came out on Thursday, median closed price of King County single-family homes has shot up almost 12 percent in the past year, reaching $405,000 last month (and up from $392,950 in February).

Interestingly, sales are down, but so is inventory. In March 2004, there were 7,156 homes for sale countywide. March 2005’s inventory was 5,244 homes. This March recorded a further drop, to 5,100. This is the pinch that causing the rise in prices.

At the same time, the local economy is growing and employers are adding jobs, bringing more potential buyers to the area. So the competition for available homes is strong and prices are reacting accordingly.

We agents have been experiencing this hot market all spring as we did through most of last year, possibly feeling the market fluctuations first. We’re out there in it, pricing homes to reflect the low inventory and coaching buyers for the best positioning in a multiple offer situation. I just watched the price of an Eastside condo jump $20,000 in a two week period!

Rain City Guide Meet-Up This Thursday

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Are you interested in meeting up with real estate professionals and/or enthusiasts of Rain City Guide? In an effort to continue to puss the boundaries of a real estate blog, I’m organizing a gathering this Thursday and you’re invited! The meetup is this scheduled for Thursday (4/6/06) at 7PM at Cupcake Royale/Verite Coffee shop in Downtown Ballard (2052 NW Market St).

This idea for a meetup has been cooking in my head for quite a while and was really inspired by a recent evening I spent with a few real estate professionals explaining the wonders of blogging, RSS feeds, del.icio.us and all things web2.0. I’ve tried to cover a lot of these topics on the blog, but sometimes it is so much easier to show people this stuff in person.

With that in mind, I’ve confirmed that at least a few Rain City Guide contributors will show up this Thursday, so you can expect a lively discussion with input from experienced real estate agents, mortgage brokers and real estate technology geeks. I don’t really have an agenda, but would rather let the group dictate where the discussion leads…

Who do I think might be interested in joining us?

  • Maybe you’re a real estate agent, mortgage broker, title representative, etc. who wants to learn how you can better use the internet to serve your clients?
  • Maybe you’re a home owner who is interested in listing your home and want to make sure that you get the most out of the internet and/or a potential listing agent.
  • Maybe you’re a buyer who wants a leg-up on the competition. I can show you how to use Google Earth, RSS feeds and more to make sure you’re getting the most efficiency out of your home search.
  • Maybe you’re a potential home buyer/seller interested in interviewing potential real estate agents and/or mortgage brokers in an informal setting. Should you want that type of thing, I’m sure that the agents and mortgage brokers would be happy to try to earn your business.

As long as you have an interest in real estate (who doesn’t?), you are definitely invited to what will hopefully be a fun and memorable evening.

RSVP? One of the RCG contributors who is helping me organize things thinks that this event might be much more highly attended than I do. Just to make sure that we don’t blow out one of my favorite coffee shops in Ballard, can you please let us know if you are planning to attend by adding your name to the list on the wiki? You don’t even have to use your real name, just something so that we can gauge the interest.

I’ve created a monster!

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Despite my adamant protest, many Rain City Guide contributors have gone off and created their own blogs. (what are they thinking???). However, as each and every one of these people have been very good to me, I thought I’d let you know where you can find more of their writings:

  • Russ Cofano — Realty Objectives [link removed]. While Russ is a real estate lawyer, I can tell you from our many conversations that his true love is innovation. His blog is a reflection of his interest in understanding real estate technology. (Check out his Speaking Opportunities [link removed] section to see something I might blog about soon…)
  • Ardell DellaLoggia — Ask Ardell. I don’t know about you, but I could NEVER get enough of Ardell’s writing… Where does she find the time???
  • Craig Blackmon — Real Estate Law Blog. He’s been keeping up a great real estate blog mainly geared to FSBOs.
  • Robert Gray Smith — Lake Sammamish Living. All kinds of good stuff about life on the Eastside.
  • Galen Ward— ShackBlog. He’s been out of town for a while, but when he’s around, he’s always sharing interesting stuff.
  • Marian Crkon — It’s a Feature. This might sound a little like it is coming out of left-field, but if you’re interested in Oracle applications, this blog is as good as they get!

As I often enjoy following the comments on RCG more than the posts, 🙂 I thought it also might be fun to highlight some of the great contributors (via comments) that regularly appear on Rain City Guide:

Can we create THE Real Estate Guide for Seattle?

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I’ve been playing around with wikis for quite a while, and I finally got around to installing one (that I’m happy with) on the Rain City Guide server. But before I tell you what you can do with the wiki, I should probably give some background…

What is a wiki?

In the simplest sense, a wiki is an editable webpage. Have you ever read something and thought “I know more than the person writing this!” Well, a wiki gives you this option as it is designed to allow readers to edit webpages.

[photopress:hanging_tree.jpg,thumb,alignright]The most popular wiki is, without a doubt, the Wikipedia. The Wikipedia is essentially an encyclopedia made for the web. It allows anyone to update any page. This might sound like a mess waiting to happen, but in practice, the concept has worked well because there are more good people than bad on the site and the results is an amazingly comprehensive listing of public knowledge. While running a wiki takes a certain amount of faith in the “goodness” of contributors, all public wikis tend to have really good “roll-back” features that allow an users to “undo” unhelpful comments and block IP addresses from spammers (including the wiki I installed!).

So what am I up to?
In my quest to create the best resource for real estate information in Seattle, I’ve created a wiki that will complement this blog. Whereas the blog best serves timely updates, the wiki will hopefully become a wonderful way to present information that can benefit from continuously improvements over time.

So what am a really up to?
I want to create THE real estate guide for Seattle. It will take time, but I think that if we keep plugging away, we can harness the knowledge of the Rain City Guide community to create a truly unique resource. As I really do plan for this to become “the” real estate guide for Seattle, I’ve named the site: the.raincityguide.com.

What are some uses for the wiki?
In my mind, the low hanging fruit is a real estate directory for Seattle. If you are a real estate professional in Seattle, feel free to add yourself to the real estate directory that I’ve created. Adding yourself to the directory is easy and just meant to get you comfortable with editing a wiki, while also qualifying yourself as a web-savvy real estate professional. 😉

In terms of the directory, I’ve added the following categories: Appraisers, Construction, Escrow, Handymen, Mortgage Brokers, Real Estate Photographers, Real Estate Agents, Real Estate Lawyers, Real Estate Technology, and Title Companies. But the beauty of a wiki is that if I missed your line of work (assuming it is within real estate), simply edit the page and add your profession. (By the way, I haven’t added separate webpages for any of the people in the directory yet, but if you’d like to add a page to expand on yourself and the services you provide, feel free to create a page by putting your name in brackets, as in [John Doe].

Another idea I have is almost definitely ahead-of-its-time, but could be interesting, is that anyone selling a home is free to create a webpage that describes their home on the.raincityguide.com. It will cost you nothing but time, and if you are creative enough, it might get you some interesting publicity.

Of course, I have even more ideas for how a wiki could be useful for better understanding real estate in Seattle, so don’t be too surprised if I reference wiki articles in future blog posts! With that said, I’m a huge fan of the “release early and often” philosophy (and this feature is definitely released early), so don’t expect too much from the wiki and you likely won’t be disappointed!

Also, if a wiki seems a little bit intimidating to you, feel free to play around in the sandbox. You can’t mess anything up in there, so edit away and I think you’ll quickly see how easy it is to create and edit webpages with a wiki.

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum…

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Actually it was a great evening at the MIT Enterprise Forum program last Wednesday (3/15) on the topic of Online Real Estate. I was on the volunteer program development team that put the evening together, and I got tagged to put together this note for you 🙂 And my own personal thanks to all who helped us with insights and contacts to build the program, including Dustin. There’s already been a lot of great timely comments on the program in this blog, so this note is primarily to report some of the stats and survey results, and a couple of my own comments on disruptive technologies and market inertia (or active resistance, as the case may be).

Attendance at the dinner/program meeting was a sold-out 400 people, one of the highest numbers ever for an MITEF program. The program panel was made up of three local online real estate companies – House Values (Niki Parekh), Redfin (David Eraker) and Zillow (Spencer Rascoff), plus a broker, Real Property Associates (Gordon Stephenson), and an Internet savvy agent, who was also our moderator (Jim Reppond, Coldwell Banker). So it was a good crowd, and a good spectrum of players on the panel. The program consisted of introductions of the players and their companies, key questions and panel responses led by the moderator, and open Q&A from the audience.

Wednesday morning (3/22) we reviewed the results of the online survey we sent out to the 298 attendees that we had emails for – we got 96 responses back, which is a pretty good sample. Here’s some highlights of the responses:

  • 63 % were there because the program was relevant to their work or job – usually not that high; lots of Realtors present, as expected. For over 60%, this was their first time at an MIT Forum event. The other large segment was more the regular MIT Forum attendees who follow, and lead, tech-driven companies and their business issues.
  • 87 % said the topic was relevant to them; 78 % said the program met or exceeded their expectations.
  • 69 % said the level of detail was just right, but 31% said it was too general – higher than we would have liked.

Enough of the stats. Here’s some quotes from the comments that show more of the flavor of the event, and some of the mixed reactions it generated:

“Having Zillow, Redfin and House Values in the same room at the same time was the reason I decided to attend. Not necessarily the speakers themselves, but the companies they represented.”

“I was expecting to hear about more revolutionary technology. It seems the real estate industry is still in the technology dark ages.”

“The topic was “The New World of Buying and Selling Real Estate”. The moderator and the audience of R.E. agents didn’t allow for a real discussion on the future because they feel so threatened by these new technologies. Boos from the crowd of R.E. agents and a moderator who encouraged it stifled an open and honest discussion.”

“It is difficult for businesses to share the future directly as competition is present and they cannot release product plans before they are ready to launch.”

“It was good to hear the stories on the companies’ background and how they work. Although, at times it almost seemed as though I was at an infomercial.”

“Great topic; always fun to hear the spirited discussion that an industry in transition generates.”

All of the above once again proving that it is very difficult to satisfy all of the people all of the time, and that divisive subjects generate divisive reactions. It would be fun to do this again a few years from now, when more of these companies are bigger, and public, and have more visible business strategies.

So now I get to put in my nickel comments, based on my own background as a tech exec, seven years working with the MIT Forum on these kinds of programs, and now full-time realtor for several years. I think that this is an industry in the very early stages of being hit by disruptive technologies and the new business models that they enable. The mass and momentum of the industry are huge, and the consumer market is highly diverse. It may take quite a while for the new business models to clarify and engage their target segments of the market and start to get real (no pun intended) traction. The players we see today may not be the players of the future (for example, see Dustin’s earlier post about Google Base vs Zillow). But some will get traction, and as they do we will see a lot of resistance and delaying actions by those whose market is being disrupted. Some resistance will be tightened corporate policies, some will be PR campaigns, and some will be lobbyist-driven regulation. Anything sound new here? We’ve seen it in industries as diverse as airlines and telecoms and travel and books and so on … Delaying change is worth $billions to the incumbents, and they are pros at the game. But it still looks to me like the technology train is on the tracks, and gathering speed. Personally, I will take every advantage I can of the technology-driven changes… and I will continue to welcome ‘old-fashioned’ people-driven referrals 🙂

The Living Barge Project

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Barge? Life? Art?

Enter the Living Barge Project.

The Living Barge Project is a large-scale, temporary public art installation by Sarah Kavage and Nicole Kistler that will be moored on Seattle’s Duwamish River for the month of April 2006. Native plants will be installed on an industrial barge, creating a temporary floating island full of ferns, shrubs and tree seedlings.

[photopress:BargePostcard.jpg,full,alignright]We want to use this project to create a lasting, positive dialog about the history and future of the Duwamish and the neighbors and businesses that surround it. We also want to raise citywide awareness of the Duwamish and invite people to participate in its restoration.

For years, I’ve been working with Sarah Kavage in a completely different context, so it is a lot of fun to see what she is up to in her “art” life.

Considering the opening day tour to the barge scheduled for April 1st is already sold out, this looks to be an extremely popular (yet temporary) art project. Check out the schedule of events to find out how you can experience the Living Barge.

Local Treasure: Welkom to Ballard!

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As some of you may have noticed, I’ve been taking a break from writing to take care of my beautiful baby boy. During this time off the Ballard community has been so wonderful to me and my family, I thought it would be fun to highlight one of the aspects that makes Ballard a wonderful place to raise a family. Interestingly, this will likely give a different (although hopefully complementary) view of life in Ballard than the video that Dustin linked to the other day.

Ballard is known for having one of the largest Norwegian populations outside of Norway. But the Nordic influences are not limited to Norway as there is a huge Scandinavian influence all around. Along with the Nordic Heritage Museum, there are many local specialty stores that sell things like pickled herring, specialty breads and other traditional Nordic foods.

In addition, the Leif Ericson Lodge plays a wonderful role in uniting the local population through a ton of community events. Lief Ericson Lodge was first organized on May 13 1903 and currently has 2,000 members. Just this past Saturday it had a large bazaar with lots of music, dancing, singing and wonderful food.

We became involved in the community through a wonderful dance class (called Barneleikarringen) that Dustin attends with our daughter every Tuesday night. The class is taught by a wonderful elderly couple who dedicate their time and effort in order to share their cultural dances and stories with the kids. Despite the fact that neither Dustin or I have Nordic heritage (that we know of anyway), everyone at the lodge has been wonderful to our family. (By the way, anyone with children is invited to attend this great dance class… It starts at 6:30pm every Tuesday and the suggested donation is $5/month, which probably doesn’t even cover the cost of the treats that pass out after each class.)

[photopress:nordic_dance.jpg,full,aligncenter]

There are a bunch of benefits to taking part in this dance class that the kids simply love. For starters, they get to walk in the Norwegian Constitution Day Parade as well as dance at a slew of community functions.

(By the way, they also have dancing lessons geared toward adults, but I don’t know much about that… yet!)

The strong Nordic roots are just one more reason that Ballard is a wonderful place to live.

Capturing Downtown Ballard on Video

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A few months ago, I received an email from someone who was working with Inman News to create neighborhood videos. I remember checking out a video from Inman a long time ago that seemed like one big ad for an agent, so I didn’t expect much from the videos and the idea of following up quickly fell off my radar.

However, I’m here to say that I missed the boat on this one… I wish to make amends right here and now because these neighborhood videos are awesome!

This first neighborhood video I want to present on Rain City Guide is a tour of Ballard narrated by a local musician. While it isn’t Hollywood-production material, the five-minute video gives a fun perspective on some of the endearing features of Ballard.


(If you see a bunch of white space above, it means you need to install Flash… It’s worth the effort.)

Here are links to things seen and/or heard on the video:

If you want to see more video’s from Seattle’s neighborhoods, just keep following Rain City Guide, as I’ll put a similar post together for each of the neighborhoods that have already been featured!

But if you can’t wait and/or you want to see other featured neighborhoods from throughout the country, you can either go directly to the source or watch them via Google Video (My recommendation). And budding filmmakers: Click here and then on “Become a TurnHere Filmmaker” to find out how you can get paid to make a film of your neighborhood.

On a related note, Google Video just keeps getting better and better. If you have some time to kill, check out these videos they have collected from the National Archives.

10 Things You Should Know Before Moving to Seattle

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Where do you find inspiration?

Out of all the places to find inspiration for a blog post, my current favorite is deep within the RCG stats where I can find the search terms that people use to reach this site. Today, someone came to RCG looking for: [things+you+should+know+before+moving+to+Seattle], and while we likely disappointed that particular visitor, I would like to make amends by offering up this list of ten things you should know before moving to Seattle:

rain in Seattle1) It rains.

2) No really, it rains a lot here. Despite what they say about it raining more in Atlanta, Boston, or D.C., the rain in Seattle can be like a slow trickle that never turns off. But the rain is okay… really… because one day… some day… it stops. And on those first few warm, sunny spring days, all of life is good in a way that Californians will never understand (unless they move to Seattle).

3) Seattle isn’t always comfortable being a high-tech town. Sure we design operating systems, sell stuff online, try to appraise every home in America and stream lots of music and movies, but a substantial portion of the population relates much more to the art of building airplanes.

4) Consensus Rules. Just agree with me on this one or I’ll never be able to get to #5.

5) Traffic Rules. People in Seattle talk a lot more about traffic than the weather. Depending on where you are moving from, traffic will either be horrible or a non-issue. Most blue-state people will laugh at Seattle traffic because you can normally get between any two points in the City in under a half-hour at all times of the day. Red-state people see the parking lot known as SR 520 and wonder why we haven’t build another bridge yet (see #4 for a hint at the answer).

6) Seattle is not that big. We have all the stuff associated with life in a major city: Theaters, traffic, ballets, sports teams, traffic, skyscrapers, music, etc., but you really don’t have to travel far to feel like you are in rural America.

7) Seattle is closer to Asia than Mexico. If one of the staples of your diet consists of cheap and tasty Mexican food, then you will eventually replace that staple with Pho. The sooner you accept this (and the sooner you stop saying “The Mexican food is so much better in California”), the sooner Seattleites will let you know about the good Asian restaurants. (And by the way, since we’re talking about good food, I feel obliged to mention that the Mexican food I remember growing up with in California was so much better than anything you can find in Seattle…)

8) The intersection of NE 50th St and 40th Ave NE is about a mile away from 50th Ave NE and NE 40th St. In the Seattle area, all the street names are numbered and given one of nine directions (NW, N, NE, SW, S, SE, E, W or blank). The numbers begin at 1 in downtown Seattle and radiate out wards. The directions also radiate out, but are city specific, unless, of course, they aren’t… Like at the intersection of 244th St SW, 100th Ave W, N 205th St and 8th Ave NW. There is logic to the entire street system and if you live here long enough, you will understand. Until then, you will be confused and miss appointments, meetings, birthdays, etc.. On a related real estate note, if you are new to Seattle, do not attempt to search for a home without a real estate agent. The street system was designed by a committee of real estate agents who wanted to ensure that you need their help to locate a home. 😉 Also on a related note, Redfin has proposed new street names (featuring real names) for all streets in a effort to ensure the viability of their business model, but at this point, they are still very far from getting consensus on their proposed naming convention.

9) Paul Allen.

10) Despite what you might have read in Wired, Fremont is the Center of the Universe.

Have I covered everything?