Seattle Housing Buzz

(NWMLS Press Release)

KIRKLAND, Wash. (June 5, 2008) – “If you’re a buyer, this is the time to take advantage of unique market conditions.” That’s the message one industry leader offered in reviewing the latest report from Northwest Multiple Listing Service summarizing housing activity for the month of May.

NWMLS figures show inventory remains plentiful (up nearly 22 percent from the same month a year ago, and up about 5.4 percent from April), with thirteen of the nineteen counties in its service area reporting double-digit increases from twelve months ago. At month end, the selection included 43,546 single family homes and 8,271 condominiums – with one of every five of those listings classified as newly built.

“There are such great opportunities for buyers right now to position themselves for the future,” remarked J. Lennox Scott, chairman and CEO of John L. Scott Real Estate. “Interest rates are historically low, there’s a healthy inventory of homes to choose from, and the new, higher conforming loan limits have increased housing affordability,” he noted, adding, “If you’re a buyer, this is the time to take advantage of these unique market conditions.”

Prices area-wide are showing moderate fluctuation. While median selling prices in most counties served by NWMLS are down from a year ago, many areas are showing stability and even increases. In 30 “sub-areas” the MLS tracks within King County, for example, 21 areas reported higher prices in May compared to April.

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Tags: NWMLS

Justin Wilcox wants to sell his home. But, he’s not so sure the traditional methods will work in this market so he’s attempting to try something different. He calls it a “reverse auction” - rather than having buyers bid up a price, the price will be set, then reduced on a weekly basis until someone pulls the trigger. But, he’s not giving the house away…there is a “reserve price”.

The starting price is $499,000 for this 1 story + basement, 2,995 sq ft, 4 bedroom home in Bothell. For more information visit Wilcox’s site: www.BothellCountdown.com.

See also: King5’s report

Tags: Bothell Countdown

Vulcan announced the opening of its third apartment complex, The Borealis, in the South Lake Union district. The development is the result of a land purchase deal with the city back in 2001 that’ll provide 53 workforce units available to individuals and families earning less than 80% of the King County median household income.

As defined by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2008 median incomes for 80 percent are $43,050 or less for a one-person household and $61,500 or less for a four-person household. Rents at Borealis Apartments will start at $875 for a studio, $1,052 for a one-bedroom and $1,244 for a two-bedroom unit.

Borealis features studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartment homes ranging in size from 400 to 850 square feet. The project incorporated green built features such low flow fixtures, Energy Star appliances, low VOC finishes, green screens and bike lockers.

Click here for more info

Tags: Borealis Apartments, Seattle Apartments, South Lake Union, Vulcan

More John L. Scott news…

John L. Scott Real Estate Chairman and CEO, J. Lennox Scott, announced the company’s purchase of Real Tech LLC, a web-based technology solutions company. With this change in ownership, Real Tech will evolve into John L. Scott’s exclusive in-house technology provider. Scott says that the decision to purchase Real Tech was made in order to support John L. Scott’s aggressive technology needs.

“We have a voracious appetite for technology,” said Scott. “The purchase of Real Tech provides John L. Scott with the ongoing, real time resources that we need to meet our ambitious technology goals.”

Real Tech has been John L. Scott’s technology partner collectively for five years and has been responsible for providing the development behind some of John L. Scott’s most notable web-related achievements, including the launch of Microsoft Virtual Earth, Neighborhood Wizard with Microsoft’s polygon drawing tool, and the integration of comparable sold home information with Microsoft’s interactive mapping system. Scott says that the successful partnership between John L. Scott, Real Tech, and Microsoft will continue to produce new innovations for the real estate industry in the coming months.

Real Tech General Manager, Adam Jundt, says, “John L Scott has a serious commitment to delivering cutting-edge technology solutions to their agents and the real estate consumer. Combined with Real Tech’s expertise, this enhanced partnership will fuel the next generation of products and services, continuing our role as technology leaders in the real estate industry.”

Real Tech’s nine team members will now operate within John L. Scott’s marketing and eStrategies department which is headed by Pat Giles, Vice President of Marketing and eStrategies. Giles recently joined John L. Scott, bringing a diverse technical and management background that blends together more than twenty years of experience in marketing, IT, and internet strategies.

Tags: John L. Scott Real Estate, RealTech

Buyers, sellers and real estate enthusiasts can now receive up-to-date sold property information via email. John L. Scott Real Estate, the first company to publish sold property data, has added a sold email feature.

Users can now easily keep track of Seattle’s housing activity. Whether you’re a buyer or seller you can sign-up to receive notification when a property has closed and at what price it sold for. Since the information comes directly from the NWMLS it’s the most up-to-date available.

To utilize the feature, sign up for a John L Scott’s Property Tracker account and create a search using the Interactive Map search option.

Related:
Improved search information on John L Scott
Neighborhood Wizard search feature

Tags: John L Scott, Seattle Real Estate

Apparently, the blogoshpere is getting heated, especially in our small Northwest neck of the woods. Recently, I found myself at the receiving end of another agent’s deceptive Google Adwords campaign.

In respects to blogging, my primary focus is The Seattle Condo Blog. The condo blog has risen to become one of the top condo websites in Seattle - it’s #1 in Google’s organic search results for a myriad of condo related keywords and receives the most visitor traffic (per Compete, Alexa and Quantcast metrics) among Seattle-based condo blogs and websites. And, the exclusive partnership with King5.com is a testament to the blog’s reputation. Admittedly, it’s a nice position to be in.

Well, it appears an agent with a competing condo blog got a little envious and started to play dirty. The agent bought Google Adwords with my name as the keyword search term as well as the title of the ads themselves. Thus, if someone googled my name, the other agent’s ads would show up on the right hand side of the page with my name. As users click on my name thinking they were going to my site, they were instead directed to the other agent’s site. Here’s a screen print:

When confronted the agent removed the ads. Of course, this agent claims no knowledge of this pathetic and unethical attempt to steal traffic and use my name to mislead the public. The agent blames the webmaster, who wouldn’t…but then the agent is closely related to the webmaster.

Our industry has a bad public image and it doesn’t help when a “respected” colleague resorts to this sort of tactic.

Tags: Seattle Real Estate

This isn’t housing news. But, it’ll likely impact employment in Seattle, so who knows. Locally-based Safeco Insurance is being sold to Liberty Mutual for $6 billion. As a former Safeco employee, I have to say this was expected with the sale of its long-time headquarters in the U-District and the campus in Redmond, significant reduction in staffing and poor performance results for most of the decade.

According to an AP report, Safeco shares shot up $21.02, or more than 46 percent, to $66.25, in morning trading on Wednesday. Dang, I sold my remaining Safeco shares two weeks ago!

More from the Seattle PI.

Well…not really lies. More of a mistake, but a serious one. The published March 2008 condo closed sales median price data for Areas 700, 701, 705, 710, 715 and 720, in the King County Breakout PDF are incorrect. The PDF is published by the NWMLS on its public site - www.nwrealestate.com and its member site. As a result, the reported condo sales figures for Seattle are skewed and have been republished incorrectly by local media.

I’ve reported the error and am waiting for the revised data.

Update: They actually sent me the corrected report fairly quickly. It doesn’t look like they’ve updated the public site yet, though.

Tags: NWMLS, Seattle Condos

Not housing news, but effective April 1, 2008, the sales and use taxes in King County will increase to from 8.9% to 9.0%. The additional one-tenth of a percent will go towards mental health or chemical treatment services. The sales tax for communities in non-RTA areas will be 8.6%.

See King County’s bulletin on the tax (PDF file).

Tags: King County Sales Tax

Ok, so I’ll weigh in here. Redfin recently announced their updated buyer-side performance statistics. Redfin agents, they say, beat other companies by negotiating 1.015% off the list price compared to .087%. Locally, Redfin states they’re able to negotiate more off the sales price for their buyers compared to all other agents, 98.89% to 99.38%. And, when combined with buyer rebates, they save their buyers $12,262 on average. This amounts to 2.45%…what they call the Redfin Advantage. Very commendable, indeed.

So, how did my buyers fare? Would they have done better with Redfin?

Over the same period, on average, I negotiated 2.76% off the list price saving my buyers $15,666 off the top. This figure does not include subsequent seller concessions such as seller paid closing costs (not wrapped into the sales price) and credit for repairs and so forth, which amounted to an additional $3,833, on average.

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Redfin buyers save on average: $12,262 which include the buyers rebate.

Ben’s buyers save on average: $19,499.

Tags: Buyers Agent, Redfin, Seattle Real Estate