Seattle Real Estate:

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 [...]

As I was reading the headlines this morning I noticed that Seattle made Forbes Top Ten List for Recession Recovery. Here’s what they had to say: Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, Wash. Current GDP: $168.3 billion End of 2010: $179.8 billion (projected) Unemployment: 8% Although battered by recession, the Seattle area’s high-tech economy is poised to start growing again. [...]

There have been a couple of interesting news items over the past week relating to short sales. Think You Might Need To Do A Short Sale? The first item was a statement issued by Washington Realtors Attorney Annie Fitzsimmons. She states, A new trend is developing in which short sale lenders are establishing policy statements [...]

We’re on a bank owned roll around here lately.  So let’s keep going! So you’ve been hearing about the potential to score deals on bank owned homes and now you’re wondering where you can find information on those puppies.  I hope you’ve done your research on the pros and cons of bank owned homes. Ahem. I [...]

Nope.  Being from the Midwest, where the summers are hot and humid, that’s one thing that Alex and I always notice.  Most people assume that, with the reputation for rain, Seattle is a humid place and typically don’t seem to believe you when you tell them, only when they feel it for themselves. At any [...]

As I watch the end of year numbers roll in perusing the national and local news, as well as blog posts; I am reminded of the following piece of wit from my dear Mr. Clemens: “Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to [...]

Will I get my money back if I remodel my kitchen?  What about adding windows?  We hear these kind of questions all the time from past clients.  We generally recommend that folks never undertake an expensive remodel just for the sake of resale value.  If you’re contemplating a upgrade that you’ll get the use and [...]

Apparently the Seattle area has “won awards for the clever manner in which they designed our addresses to be easy to find”.  Ahem.  I don’t know about you, but when I’m describing to someone the intersection of 124th Street and 124th Avenue in Totem Lake which is technically Kirkland, I’m not convinced that clever is [...]

Here’s an interesting site I found recently, http://www.walkscore.com/.  According to the site: Walk Score helps people find walkable places to live. Walk Score calculates the walkability of an address by locating nearby stores, restaurants, schools, parks, etc. Walk Score measures how easy it is to live a car-lite lifestyle—not how pretty the area is for [...]

I’ve been hearing more and more about cottage style new development.  I think is this an interesting trend, but if it catches on could easily be overbuilt. Particularly in the Seattle market we’re seeing the push for high density and infill development – not only as a result of the Growth Management Act, but also [...]