The Eastside is coming of age!

Check out this great article from Sunday's paper:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2004252231_sundaylynne02.html

The East side of Lake Washington is now officially a destination according to the Seattle Times.

...umm hasn't it been that way for a while now?

2008 Prognostications!

OK, so I'm getting more and more frequent on my postings.

PMI Mortgage has created a 2008 Real Estate Risk Report (catchy name, huh?
Check out this web site) and cites that Seattle has only a 7% risk of home prices being lower than today ... in 2 years.

The report give Seattle a rank of "5" that is the lowest risk rating (0~10% chance of price drops) It certainly makes ME feel good!

Wahoo!

To see the associated press release, head out to the FOX Business Web site

Form more snippets and prognostications, check out my January 2008 Newsletter! Download the pdf (535kB) from http://www.dugaldallen.com/

Happy 2008!

It's a New year and a New World!

Wow, what a cluster!

I was chatting with a friend from the Los Angeles area and he said that homes in his neighborhood that sold for $600k a year ago are now selling for high $300k's (like $375k).

Wow.

We are incredibley fortunate here and if you are a buyer with a steady job and some downpayment, well you are in HOG HEAVEN!

I recently negotiated two deals for clients where we were able to get a 2% and 5% discount from list price. Now that doesn't sound like much, but for one client, it was almost $50,000!!! ...and it doesn't take into account that the original list prices would have garnered an almost 6% discount on one and just over 7% on the other...

It does help to make sure you're pricing your home right - and paying attention to the signals the market is sending.

On the other hand, as sellers, we are no longer in the driving seat. Contact me directly for stats that will help you in your decision-making.

Good luck and good hunting!

As the World Turns. ...or Slows.

Wow, doom and gloom. ...or as one friend jokes: "misery, misery, death"

Not me!

I just spoke with an escrow closer today and she says "December is shaping up to be a killer month!" Scheduled closings are over 50% higher than closings in November.

Real estate is cyclical. This time of year is why Realtors take December and January off. At least interest rates aren't spiking up. My view: people are spooked by the media - and there is some justification to that with billions of dollars or write-downs and losses at the major banks.

However, the write downs are part of a convoluted issue that doesn't necessarily involve the rate of foreclosures itself or any risk associated with buying a home or investment property. The write downs are part of what appear to be a shell game played by the investment banks and brokerages in the secondary market. They were selling off "packages" of loans that had varying risks but selling them as "low risk". Once the foreclosures started and the analysts realized the true risk of the loans in the packages, the market decided that those packages weren't worth the value paid and they downgraded them to junk bond status (or something similar). Hence the write downs as they weren't saleable into the market they were sold at the prices paid.

Now, these packages of loans are probably still earning some rate of return, but not what the buyers paid for them, so it's not "all" bad...

d'oh! What a tangled mess!

...but let's look back at the bright side...

Closings in December are scheduled to be up. My own business is up from last year - and indeed has been better since the whole mess than before!!! I know several investors who are just tearing away, purchasing properties left and right.

Foreclosures in WA state are up, but only slightly compared to other parts of the country. Why? For some reason, there is a lot fewer high risk loans in WA than in those states. Hmmmm, a correlation?

Did you know that WA state expects over 1.8 million people to come in over the next few years (with an associated 1.1 million jobs) and only 15,000 new home starts next year?

We all go to sleep in November and December, starting with Turkey Day and continung through Christmas Day. We (the market) tend(s) to wake up after the carbohydrate-induced coma known as Superbowl.

...so when is a good time to buy? NOW, folks. NOW.

Sellers are nervous, there is lots of choice, home prices are continuing to rise (although slower than before) and you have lots of opportunity to negotiate.

Call me. Let's chat.

You've Gotta Be Kidding! You need to be a contractor to rehab????

OK, so I have been BUSY this past week.

As some of you might know, In addition to being a full-time REALTOR I'm an active real estate investor and I buy old junker houses and fix them up for sale.

Now, I always use licensed contractors when I need to (just about everywhere) and I give the end user a great product and a great home. I also clean up the negihborhood as the homes I buy are never the nice house on the street.

Now the legislature - along with the Department of Labor and Industries says I have to have a contractor's license!


Check out:

http://apps.leg.wa.gov/billinfo/summary.aspx?bill=1843

Hove you ever tried to get a contractor's license? My *minimum* insurance premium will be $10,000! That's because I haven't ever officially worked as a contractor...


If I'm hiring licensed contractors, then shouldn't I be OK?

It's all about consumer protection, then I *get it* - and I *agree* with it. Buyers should get a quality product.


Up until recently, any homeowner was allowed to do work on their own home. Of course you have always had to hire licensed folk to do work beyond the $500 limit (I know - it's tiny, but that's what it's been forever) You were always able to hire the various contractors yourself.

If you take the law as written, then all that has gone away. To buy a home, renovate it and then sell it (or lease it) requires that you have a General Contractor's license.

Will L&I enforce a lot of this? Probably not. There are too many confusing elements to the law and several contradictory exemptions. for example, the *law* states that if you're doing any work to your home with the intention of selling it, then you need that license. Probably not enforceable, but that's the law!


As it's written, it looks like you'll need a contractor's license if you buy a rental property (a condo, a house or commercial) and do any fix-up prior to a tenant moving in.

I'm working with a bunch of local folks to get this changed. I'll let you know how it goes!


Wow!

Blogging for Dummies

Hi All (or is it just me right now?)

Welcome to my BLOG!

I'll be posting comments and narratives and possibly even long-winded passages about the real estate market around the Puget Sound area. For those of you not familiar with what that means, that's most of the western part of Washington state and centered around the Emerald City - Seattle.

Did you know that the Seattle area continues to blossom wth regards to pricing - even though inventory is up? ...an unusual phenomenon, but when you take into account the HUGE growth in jobs in the area (Microsoft, Boeing and hi-tech in general) it makes a little more sense.

However, it is slowing a bit. As we move into the winter, I'm seeing a lot more price reductions than new listings on a regular basis (past 24 hours: 556 new listings and 605 price reductions!) and more inventory is available than has been normal these past few years. People are starting to take their time to buy and are starting to enjoy the luxury of NEGOTIATING a purchase, rather than being dictated to by a seller.

Brash Prediction: A lot of newer agents who don't "get" how to negotiate are going to be lost in this market...

I have a BUNCH of stats that I will share with y'all if you'd like (I might do it anyway!) and those stats aren't your normal cup of tea - they're different...

Anyway, I'd rather keep this one short and sweet as I have some business to attend to!

Cheers,