Tag Archives: Seattle

Puget Sound's Market Conditions Update

Posted on by
70

Every New Year, my husband’s family makes a trip to Ocean Shores with most of his brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews. It is a tradition that we look forward to which includes as much bowl games you can cram into a weekend, razor clamming, go karts and I get to read the newspaper from front to back while everyone else in our hotel room is still sleeping.

To my delight in the Dec. 30, 2006 issue of The Seattle Times, there is an article forecasting the local 2007 real estate market called “Looking ahead: The sky isn’t falling for the Puget Sound market

Snow is Seattle's Kryptonite

Posted on by
4

And it snowed a couple of inches last night. It’s the not-quite yearly snow that sticks around through the morning, wreaking havoc on the commute and closes schools.

It’s also the day when people with SUVs spin out because they don’t realize that four wheel drive doesn’t actually help you stop any sooner. Tomorrow, the conversation at many work places will turn to “why people in Seattle can’t drive in the snow,” a conversation that always omits our hilly terrain and slushy snow.

My recommendation to new Seattle residents: live on Capitol Hill or in Queen Anne. The slight increase in elevation from sea level means more snow and the steep streets are impassable when we get a half inch, so can play hooky and enjoy the snow days guilt-free.

[photopress:DSC_8402_1.jpg,full,alignright]

Our 100 Year Old Seller Closes Escrow Today

Posted on by
4

[photopress:tudor.jpg,thumb,alignright]Some of you will remember this photo from Halloween when I was trying to do a “night shot” and it came out a bit “spooky” with the moon glowing ominously in the background.  I know Galen will.  Now that I know you are a photographer at gallery level quality, Galen, I’ll be listening more closely when you tell me what to do.  Not my forte…as you well know 🙂

There’s a first time for everything, as they say, and this was my first ever experience with a 100 year old client.  Even back in my Trust and Estate days when many of my clients were deceased, and the living ones were pretty old, I never had a 100 year old client before now.

The house was also so old, no one knew how old it was!  It was built before 1900 when King County started keeping records.  Title Company figured it was built some time between 1888 and 1900, so we know this owner was not the original owner, he was too young at only 100 years old 🙂  I’m sure he just loves being too young for something.

The lovely story of this real estate relationship, is really about his daughters, and specifically the one who had the responsibility of P/A for the sale.  In between going all the way across the ferry to take Dad to the doctor, and back to take her husband and his oxygen to his doctor and with her most everywhere, and the sister that fell off her patio while gardening in Denny Blaine to the doctor with her walker…  Holding communion services at her home, for the invalid…  We prayed and held our breath on this one to the very end…which is today.

The buyers are very, very happy to have this lovely grand old home, and are trying to get more info on exactly when this house was really built.  So if anyone knows where we might find more research about homes in the Mt. Baker/Leschi area, that were built prior to 1900, please give us a heads up.

It’s a good day…and all’s well that ends well.

 

Condos off to a busy start

Posted on by
10

(Editor’s Note: Today is another great day as I get to introduce Matt Goyer as the newest contributor to RCG. I’ve been following Matt’s Urbnlivn website for quite a while and I’ve always been impressed. With urbnlivn, Matt has managed to collect, organize and republish an incredible amount of local condo knowledge. However, if you decide you need more than condo information from Matt, then check out his personal blog, his more general real estate blog, or his contributions on the Redfin’s blog. While I don’t want to pigeonhole Matt into only talking condos, our current plan is to have him synthesize the great condo research he does on Urbanlivn and bring it to RCG on a regular basis. Matt can be reached at mail *at* mattgoyer *dot* com or by leaving a comment below!)

Relative to all of December it was a busy week this past week for new condo construction in Seattle. What made the first week of the new year so busy was three new events on the calendar and lots of action on the MLS.

Three new events

January 9 at 7pm, the POWHat, a community association, is hosting a discussion about proposed condo on Pine. This is the development that started the death of Pine/Pike meme and has been written about in The Stranger, The Seattle Weekly as well as The Seattle PI. Written about not because the developers paid to get in the Saturday New Homes section but written about because it is replacing the independent bars and restaurants which the condo’s marketing people love to tout as the reason why you should move to Capitol Hill. So I’m looking forward to seeing what is replacing the Cha-Cha, Bimbo’s Burritos, the Bus Stop, and Kincora because without those four institutions it’s going to be hard to market this project.

January 18 at at 6pm, Trace Lofts will host their buyers preview. We’re all looking forward to unraveling the mystery that is Trace Lofts. At least no one is upset about this development, yet.

January 19 at 5pm is Decatur Condominiums grand opening gala. Decatur is a conversion originally designed by the Space Needle’s architect. Now the invitation doesn’t mention whether this gala will be black tie or not. I’m assuming no since, I don’t own a tux and the units are supposedly all under $500,000 (people who make less than six figures likely don’t down their own tuxes, right?).

Active week on the MLS

At the beginning of last year most new condo developments shied away from the MLS. But then in the fall as the market slowed more developments listed their inventory hoping to attract more attention. Then towards then end of the year we started seeing price reductions and buyers bonuses; presumably to move inventory before year end. Now that the new year has started prices are increasing and I’m sure we’ll see fewer buyer bonuses.

To start us off, Noma first increased the prices on the 3 units it had on the MLS and then listed the rest of their inventory which is 19 units. They now have 22 listings on the MLS ranging in price from $222,950 to $539,950. I imagine they’re a little frustrated watching Canal’s success.

Olive 8, the development which added 3 floors, had 10 price increases ranging from $20,000 to $50,000. What is odd is that the increases range from 1.5% to 5% and seem fairly random.

9 units from Press 2 were listed. Press is a two phase development originally built as apartments. The first phase was an occupied apartment and has since been converted, phase two was never occupied and renovated.

4 units from Trio came online. Trio is unarguably Seattle’s biggest condo failure with only 28 units sold of 113 in over a year. Glad to see they’re coming to their senses and making their units more accessible to all the users of the MLS. Hopefully this gets them a little more attention in the New Year.

If you’re interested in following the day to day activity in the Seattle condo market be sure to check out Urbnlivn or check back here next week for my weekly updates.

Move Along…

Posted on by
21

[photopress:selling_peaches.jpg,full,alignright]Thanks to both Ardell and Joel, I’ve been tapped to list five things you may not know about me… Not sure where to start, I decided to focus today’s theme on some fun jobs (but I won’t go so far as to take you back to the days of selling fruit on the streets of LA! LOL):

1) At 16 years old, I spent the summer working as an ice cream scooper at a Haagen Dazs shop in Paris. At the time (early 90s), Haagen Dazs was all the rage in Europe, so it felt like I was in the center of the universe. Needless to say, I learned a lot working around a bunch of older (early 20s!) Parisian models for a summer, although my French never got very good because all the girls wanted to learn to speak “American” as oppose to their school-taught “English”. One of the highlights (that I can discuss in a real estate blog) was blasting Nirvana on the shops speakers (loud!) after-hours while closing the shop down. At the time, Nirvana’s Nevermind album had not yet been released in Europe (at least everyone around acted like it had not!), so having a copy turned out to be a HUGE hit.

2) The next career arc came during my UC Santa Cruz years when I was studying Environmental Studies… At 19, I drove to Alaska to work for consumer interesting group, AKPirg, in order campaign for “Campaign Finance Reform”. (I find it more than mildly amusing that 10 years later, their lead issue is still campaign finance reform.) While raising money and making a big fuss about all things political and environmental, I was getting paid to travel around the state and made many national park stops! Grizzlies in Denali, hiking under glaciers in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, and that long, long, long Alaskan highway are all unforgettable experiences… I guess I wasn’t so bad at raising money for causes, because later in the summer I was asked to work for the USPirg office in Chapel Hill and was given the hilarious opportunity to canvass Jesse Helms in an effort to get him to join the Sierra Club! I guess I don’t have Bono’s magnetism, because despite a good 15 minute conversation, I couldn’t get him to join up for even the basic membership! 🙁

3) At 22, while studying Engineering at UC Berkeley, I decided to spend a summer working as a student-researcher for the Pavement Research Center. Believe it or not, this was a fascinating job that brought me up and down (and up and down) the state taking samples from test pavements in order to see the effects of some experimental pavement mixtures under different conditions. The pavement job was really good to me (financially), so I was able to stash some cash away for the school year and still take my girlfriend, Anna, on a cross-country trip via drive-away cars for the last few weeks before school started.

Our first assignment was to drive a car to Charlotte, NC (from Berkeley, CA) and we took I-40 almost all the way. Some of our stops including an evening in Las Vegas, a day on Lake Mead, hiking around the Grand Canyon, wondering in Santa Fe, eating huge steaks in Oklahoma City, dancing (and more dancing) at Elvis Week in Memphis, visiting the Civil Rights Museum in Birmingham, and shopping in Atlanta. For the return trip, we took the northern route (roughly I-80) with stops along the backroads of West Virginia (just in time to watch Bill Clinton give his famous mea culpa speech at our hotel room), a county fair in Kentucky, a Second City performance in Chicago, the Iowa State Fair, an evening in Boulder, CO, a hike in the Rocky Mountain National Park, and a hike on the Great Salt Lake. The kicker is that we did all of this in just a little over two weeks!

4) After graduating from Berkeley, I spent the first seven years of my professional career as a planner/engineer for a transportation consulting firm. This was interesting work in that I got to spend a lot of time working with local government officials to improve their transportation, and in particular their transit, systems. I worked all over the west coast for clients like BART, SF MUNI, SCAG, MAG, Portland’s Metro, and King County Metro, Sound Transit, WSDOT and the City of Seattle and became somewhat of an expert in travel demand modeling and GIS. Despite lots of good opportunities ahead (transportation in every American city will get worse before it gets better!), I knew it was time to look for new opportunities when Rain City Guide started to take off…

5) About eight months ago, I jumped off the engineering bridge and went to work for Move. One of the things I’ve learned is that while the technology (or secret sauce) behind large websites can be complex, it is the business development and marketing opportunities that most interest me. Hence, about a month ago, I switched out of our product development team and into our marketing team (although things are never that simple… :)). Probably the best news (at least for me) is that this switch means I’ll be able to come out of my dark cave and blog a bit more during the next year!

No perpetuation of memes from me! 🙂

Redfin's Maven of "The Mavens"

Posted on by
7

[photopress:hoffman__s.jpg,full,alignright] What a lovely unexpected surprise! When Kevin Boer of Three Oceans called to ask if we could have coffee during his whirlwind tour of Seattle, we “group dated” with Redfin’s Marie Hagman. Redfin’s new “Maven of the Mavens” I’ve already signed up to get an auto email with every new “Sweet Digs” entry. It automatically comes up as San Francisco, so be sure to hit the drop down menu and put in Seattle.

Marie assures us that the seven bloggers selected from the 300 or so that replied to Redfin’s Craig’s List Ad, just turned out to be ALL WOMEN destined to be in the running for next year’s Top Ten! Hey, that only leaves three spots for all of the rest of us.

Redfin’s Rule stated that none of the bloggers could be real estate licensees. Sweet Digs is very cool, and very much the answer to Galen’s prayers. As non-licensees they are free from all of the weight and chains of rules, rules and more rules, and they are just blogging away to their heart’s content. And I DO mean their “heart’s content” as all were chosen, Marie included, based on their passion for anything real estate and their ability to write with that same passion.

And OH MY GOD!…the Eastside Sweet Digger is Jessi Princiotto…cool enough to have her photo taken by cell phone while in the car…I can’t wait to meet her…I can’t wait to read her…and my side of town to boot!! How lucky can I get! My East Coast fix and local real estate reading all wrapped into one!

Congratulations ladies. Marie and Jessi, we’re calling ahead to Hoffman’s for that torte…just name the day and time.

Oh, and Kevin and Kim were there too LOL. My partner Kim Harris (far right in the photo) and Kevin Boer (left of Kim). Kevin is definitely going home with some stories, and hopefully some insight, into how very different the Seattle Market is from his neck of the woods.

Kevin asked, “What do you say when a ‘Redfin Buyer’ calls and says, “I want to see your listing RIGHT NOW!!”, LOL. I answered “Same thing I say to ANY buyer who says I want to see your listing RIGHT NOW!!” Redfin Buyers don’t exactly grow horns, by definition. We had a fun chat. This is Seattle, very few times do we meet people that are ornery, nasty or unreasonable. It’s a great town with a lot of great people…even “Redfin Buyers”.

Have a safe trip back to CA, Kevin! Great meeting you and thanks for the intro to Marie.

Is Seattle Bubble Proof?

Posted on by
166

Best I can tell so far, the answer to that question is a resounding YES, Seattle IS bubble proof, at least in the $300,000 and under market.

I am totally bugeyed, having spent the last 10 hours slicing, dicing and dissecting every single stat in the $300,000 and under market, in $100,000 increments, for 2005 and 2006 year to date on a month by month basis.

While we are seeing a teensy weensy weakness in October vs. August and September prices, the run up from January of 2005 to present has been insane. 72% of families have been squeezed out of the first time buyer market during that time in the $300,000 or under range. So even if we see prices dropping back, we will not soon see the day when the increase will be declared a bubble that is about to burst. In fact a modest correction is well warranted, but I do not see single family homes dropping in price back to where they were in January of 2005 for many, many…if ever…years. So yes, in the single family home market, anything decent in the lowest of price ranges should still be grabbed up. By March of 2007 the opportunity to get any bargains in the entry level single family home markets, will likely be gone for good.

For my neck of the woods, which would be from Green Lake up through Shoreline and beyond, around Lake Washington and into Kirkland and the Eastside, if it’s a single family home priced under $400,000…buy with care…but don’t wait for any of them to ever dip under $300,000 again. I don’t see that happening.

Condo markets in the same price range…entirely different story. I’d stay far away from the one bedroom condo market. the run up there has been as insane as it has been in the single family home market, BUT the one bedrooms are fast converging on the price of a much large two bedroom. So don’t assume you have to buy a one bedroom condo if you are starting out.

So many have overlooked the two bedroom opportunities, that the price growth of the one bedrooms has far exceeded the price growth of the two bedrooms. As fewer people can afford single family homes, more and more are buying condos in the under $300,000 price range. Hold out for the two bedroom units whenever possible, and let the one bedroom condos back off in price a bit. Some one bedroom units are tryng to sell at 79% more than they did 16 months ago! Pass them by. Hold out for a two bedroom, unless the one bedroom is reasonably priced for what and where it is.

I’m too worn out to go further than $300,000 today, but what I’ve written is worth studying. I have every single number broken down by $100,000 increments and split between condo markets and single family markets. I didn’t post them all, but I will keep my sheets of pencil notes for awhile, just in case anyone has any questions.

Buying wisely in any market

Posted on by
110

[photopress:seg.gif,thumb,alignright]I find that most people who track countywide stats, looking for bubbles and market trends, are not people who are buying and selling property. Anyone who is actually buying or selling property knows, that countywide stats tell you both everything and nothing. It is in the small subsections of any given market that you will find the information you need to make wiser choices.

For instance, can you really compare ramblers built in the 60s to newer housing choices? Can you compare “too small for anyone” condos of 400 square feet, to the saleability of 2 bedroom 2 bath condos? Lumping everything together tells you nothing. Houses on busy roads, for example, will not sell as well, and will sell worse at times like this when buyers are being more cautious. I think of houses on busy roads when I hear comments like, “The market is getting weak! I see more and more for sale signs every day while driving to work!” Well let’s assume that most people do not drive on quiet 25 mi. per hour residential streets when driving to work. So what they are seeing is the weakness of properties situated on busy roads, not the market in general.

A good example is tracking newer townhomes, in the $300,000 to $500,000 range, within 3 miles of Microsoft. This is a market segment that is driven by its own forces and outperforms the market in general. In the last six months there were only 21 townhomes sold, built since 1990 and within 3 miles of Microsoft, between $300,000 and $500,000. Of these 21, 16 sold AT or better than full price in less than 30 days. Several in less than 10 days and most in less than 20 days. At the moment there are only 3 available, all on market less than 15 days and two at less than 5 days on market and there are 3 in escrow.

So of the total six month inventory, you can expect four to sell per month and there are only 3 on market, two of which have only been on for two days and three days, respectively. Those are some pretty strong market stats. What are the odds that these will start dwindling on market for excessive periods of time or go down in price? Slim to none. Making offers on this product, based on what you are reading about the King County market in general, would make no sense whatsoever.

So Chicken Little, maybe the sky IS falling for older ramblers built on busy roads with only one bathroom. But conversely the sky is still the limit in newer townhomes for sale within close proximity to Microsoft. There’s a whole lot of varied stats in between. Make sure you are making your choices based on the product and market segment that YOU are considering buying. Buying the biggest “bargain” on market, could lead you into buying in that segment of the market that will not appreciate, and will be difficult to sell later for at or more than what you paid.

Cocktail Party Primer

Posted on by
76

I’d like to open this thread up to a conversation on the health of the Seattle market…

but there is a catch. I will not allow it to dissolve into a conversation about racism, liberals, RCG, or faith. If you’d like to have a reasonable intellectual conversation, you are more than welcome to participate. If you attack me, RCG, or any contributor, then I’ll happily delete your comment.

By the way, please consider this post the “anti-linkbating” post. Not only will I quickly delete any off topic comments, but more importantly, I will mark those comments as “spam”. That will allow me to ban your email, name, IP, etc. from the site after only a few off-topic comments.

Two days ago, Michael Lindekugel of Team Reba made a very interesting comment. No one ever challenged him on the merits of his argument, so I think it makes an appropriate starting point into a discussion on the health of the Seattle market:

It’s the hot topic at most cocktail parties. Is Seattle going to experience a bubble and burst? The short answer is no…..the long answer follows:

We experienced a busy market with a shortage of supply and increasing demand resulting in four or five offers and short “Days On Market