Seattle Real Estate:

Did You Run Out of Time? If you missed out on the first deadline to take advantage of the up to $8000 first time home buyer tax credit, you now have a few months longer to plan your move. The original expiration date is November 30th, 2009 but prospective buyers now have until April 30th, [...]

It’s a sign of the times that this question has been coming up a lot lately. Before the market took its current turn, bank owned transactions were pretty uncommon and short sales where downright rare. Bank Owned Commissions Work Like Any Other Sale Learn more about bank owned homes in the Seattle area – read [...]

We recently had a request for information on what’s happening with the real estate market in Bellevue and Issaquah. The following figures are all for single family homes – no condos, land, or multi-family.

You’ll see that the charts call out both average (avg) and median (med) numbers. Each tell a different story and are useful to look at the market from different angles.

The last month displayed is May 2009. I find that it pays to wait a few days into the following month before compiling stats. It can take a few days for all of the sales to be updated in the MLS.

Many Seattle home buyers are interested in a neighborhood that’s “walkable”. In other words, an area where it easy is it to get the necessities of life if you’re mode of transportation is your own two feet. We’ve mentioned the Walkscore Service before, but they recently completed a feature called America’s Most Walkable Neighborhoods. The [...]

In the same week that a potential client asked us if we charged any fees on top of our commission, I read the following: “Although questions about their legality remain, a growing number of real estate brokerages are charging consumers flat fees on top of their traditional percentage-based commissions.” We can add this one to the [...]

The following is excerpted from a HUD news release: “…announced that the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) will allow homebuyers to apply the…$8,000 first-time homebuyer tax credit toward the purchase costs of a FHA-insured home. …Today’s announcement details FHA’s rules allowing state Housing Finance Agencies and certain non-profits to “monetize” up to the full amount of [...]

Buy Real Estate. Invest in Gold. Make Private Loans. These are just a few of the things you can do with funds that you have in your retirement account. It’s all part of the magic of self direction.  We’ve heard from lots of friends and clients lately that they’re disappointed with the performance of their retirement [...]

What do you do when your home doesn’t sell and you have to move on?  Renting is the answer for many property owners.  Whether being a landlord was part of an owner’s plan for investing in real estate or if it came as a last ditch effort to cover a mortgage, the increase of rentals [...]

When you’re considering bank owned homes, you might run across a situation where the selling bank says that they’re going to require you to get pre-qualified by a specific lender.  It seems pretty presumptuous and, frankly, many buyers knee-jerk reaction is, “They can’t make me do that, can they?”  The Washington Realtor News publication has [...]

It’s not surprising that we’ve been getting lots of questions lately about bank owned real estate in the Seattle area.  One question that keeps popping up in various guises has to do with qualifications to buy a home that is owned by a bank.  For example: “Can first time buyers purchase a bank owned home?”, [...]