I spent some time tonight searching for Seattle-area neighborhood blogs. I then added the ones that are interesting and publish frequently to RCG’s sidepanel. Please let me know if I missed any that should be included!
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?
In 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:
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!
If you were following the comments from my post from yesterday, I said I would follow up with another stab at diving into how the sales prices versus listing price changes over time. Seeing as how it is already getting late (and I’m tired!), I’m going to stop trying to make sense out of the numbers and present what I’ve found so far.
However, before I go any further, I’m going to rant at my fellow real estate agents! For the sake of all of us who actually care about data, please learn to double check your work before submitting listing information to the MLS! I spent more time cleaning up the database due to lazy real estate agents then I did actually creating the charts! Here are some things to look out for (but this list is by no means exhaustive): (1) Spelling: Fremont is spelled with only one “e”, (2) Location: South Lake Union is not a neighborhood located within Ballard and (3)Price: your home that sold for $345,000 probably should not have been listed for $34,500,000.
With that rant out of the way, I thought I would also mention that I’m not the only one surprised by housing numbers today… Hot Property had an article where Amey Stone says reading NAR’s press releases on sales levels “is starting to be a bit of a yawn — sales weren’t quite at record levels, but darn near close to it.” Unless you get tickled by trends and statistics, expect to sleep through the rest of this post…
When I look at the entire Ballard Area as defined by the MLS (this is a huge area that includes places like Greenlake, Blue Ridge, Wallingford, Fremont, Sunset Hill etc). We see the same seasonal trends over the past two years that I identified yesterday. But when we go back another season, the trend becomes much less pronounced.
Here are the things I found most interesting about the chart:
My speculation is that the patterns identified the above chart have a lot to do with evolving sales tactics by agents. It seems like it has become more and more common for agents to list a home below the value that they think it will sell for… This does two things: (1) It assures a quick sale and therefore a quick commission for the agent. (2) It has the potential to bring in more buyers and thereby raise the final sale price of the home.
When I went to analyze the data at a more local level, things got much messier… Rather than seeing clear seasonal patterns as I did in Loyal Heights, things simply got fuzzy. They got so fuzzy that I’m hesitant to even provide the next chart because it simply looks like an ugly mess…
My goal in creating the chart was to see if the same trend that held up in my analysis yesterday for Loyal Heights, would hold up for other neighborhoods. As the chart above demonstrates, it roughly holds up for all of Ballard, but as the chart below demonstrates, it does not hold up at the neighborhood level. I’ve done enough regression analysis for transportation planning studies to know that a chart like this is going to give meaningless trends.
By the way, if you’re interested in the raw data that I used to create these statistics, just email me, and I can send you the Excel file that has all the wonderful (?) pivot tables and charts I used in creating this post.
Also, please feel free to comment on other ideas you might have for exploring the wealth of information that is locked up behind the MLS database. Anna has the key that opens that door! 🙂
I had someone email me the other day with an interesting question, and I thought I would share my response… and then see if anyone in the community could improve upon it.
Question: I’m moving to Seattle and interested in finding a neighborhood where I can bike to my work at the University of Washington (UW). Where should I be looking?
My Answer: There are a bunch of great places to live in North Seattle that are within biking distance to the UW. I would stay away from the south part of Seattle because there are not a lot of good north-south bike route through the downtown… (too many hills and not enough dedicated bike lanes).
Seeing as how I live in North Seattle and I bike a lot, I end up referencing the bike map put out by the City of Seattle quite often. Here is a direct link to the bike map of North Seattle (*.pdf), but note that this is a large file (1.5 MB). If you download the map, you’ll notice that the Burke-Gilman trail (a solid red line) goes through the UW campus. The Burke-Gilman is a wonderful commuting trail and has been recently expanded to the north-west all the way to the Golden Gardens Park. If you can find a place to live within a short ride to the Burke-Gilman, then you will have an easy ride to work!
By the way, if you follow this link, you can order a free hard-copy of the bike map: http://www.ci.seattle.wa.us/transportation/bikemapform.htm
Do you have a better answer for this question? Are there any neighborhoods that are particularly attractive for bicyclists? Please share your knowledge in the comments section!
The Seattle Tilth is a group that “inspires and educates people to garden organically, conserve natural resources and support local food systems in order to cultivate a healthy urban environment and community.” This weekend (September 10) they will be hosting the 2005 Harvest Fair in Meridian Park (in the Wallingford Neighborhood). Here’s a map of the park. The festival will include tomato tasting, backyard garden harvest, garden demonstrations, music and more.
Did you know you can raise chickens in Seattle? Seattle Tilth teaches a course on raising city chickens.
The 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.
Are you looking for some background information on the Seattle area? Maybe you are moving to Seattle or just want to find out more about a local neighborhoods? You could do much worse than Wikipedia.org where they have entries on all the major aspects of Seattle. Entries include the local economy, culture, polities and neighborhoods (among many other entries!). Currently, the neighborhoods with entries that are pretty comprehensive include:
Also, another group has put a Seattle Wiki together that is much more specific to the area and might be of interest to some. However, as of today, the entries are not nearly as complete as the general Wiki…
What is a Wiki?
Essentially a Wiki is a user-updated on-line encyclopedia. The sheer volume of entries and the fact that anyone can update it are both its strongest and its weakest points. There is a massive amount of interesting articles, but the editors (me and you!) are often a little biased!