Advice Real Estate
Looks like Seattle’s already achieved 50% the number of housing units they were targeting for 2024 here in 2008. Approximately 47,000 housing units are built or being created right now which would represent the city’s 2024 housing targets. Specifically, Ballard and Eastlake take the cake as far as being the most overbuilt for now. Other areas in the Seattle region include Bellevue, downtown Renton, Covington and Maple Valley as far as areas that qualify as growing very fast in terms of housing.
My thoughts are possible good buying opportunities given the downturn in the housing market on top of a surplus of housing units.
More about how Seattle’s overbuilt in terms of housing here.
Sitting in a taxi cab driving home earlier tonight, I thought to myself “The Taxi rates are pretty low here in Korea. How long will this last given the increase in oil prices?” Very specifically, it costs a little less than $2 (U.S.) for a 5-10 minute cab ride and it only cost me $6 to drive across town from the express train station tonight. (more…)
So, I just ran into this while surfing…
“Your Annual Real Estate Horoscope for 2008
A lot of us who are both interested in buying and helping sell real estate appreciate the section of the newspaper on the weekends which lists latest properties for sale and other interesting tidbits of local housing info. However, the first section consumers and supposed “experts” in the industry should actually read the business section from the front page to the back. Why? The business section tells you what companies are coming and going, what companies are booming and which ones are busting and most importantly, it is the true pulse of what drives every real estate market. (more…)
An article I read recently from the International Herald Tribune. It was titled “Soft landing unlikely for the housing slump” by David Leonhardt of the New York Times. It made so much sense that I’m wondering when the next “opportunity” to buy. Despite all the efforts of the Federal Reserve in the United States, there’s one unescapable fact and it’s something I’ve been preaching to my students: prices of real estate have outpaced incomes. Let’s be frank, but if you don’t have the money to pay for the housing you buy, you simply will have to give it up to foreclosure or sell it to some Joe or Joanna quick enough that they don’t realize they’re going to have the same problem soon. It just took a matter of time before the current Ratio of Median House Price to Median Household Income got too high. It’s at… (more…)
So, doing a search on “bellevue wa real estate”, I come up as #20 on a recent search. It fluctuates and so you may have to look on the 3rd page at times (results 21 through 30) and sometimes it climbs higher. When searching for “buyer’s agent condo bellevue”, I show up on the first page. On the most recent search, I’m #7 on the first page. The funny thing is that I’m not even practicing in the Real Estate world anymore minus helping out some Realtors who contact me occasionally. Which by the way, unfortunately due to time constraints, I can’t just help out anyone for free. However, if I do help you, you will see results better than I even imagined in my first year of real estate, I believe. The question is “if” I can help you though. (more…)
So, I saw a headline recently reading “confessions of a mortgage broker” and how they do business. Reproducing the story from Yahoo here was difficult to find. So, instead I searched on YouTube.com to see if there were any good clips. The #1 clip for the search on the phrase “mortgage broker” was a news story about a broker I believe in California getting raided for doing shady business. He and his company were falsifying documents to secure loans for people. (more…)
So, a sister of a great past client of mine just recently asked for some advice getting into the business. While I didn’t copy the whole email here to her (for her benefit & mine ;), I did want to share one of the things that I would advise in looking at when interviewing brokerages. Actually, the first bit of advice is interview your brokers or new places of employment. Don’t spend just one week or just sign up with the first one you get a good feel. Make sure they give you the time of the day…the manner in which they treat you the day you come in for an interview is probably representative of how they’ll treat you moving forward as an agent. The other tip is that “they WANT you” instead of you wanting them. They should treat you like royalty, but you have no idea when walking in the door. Every sale you make for them moving forward with them is more money in their pockets and the day you sign with them, they’ll most likely accrue fees from you…so, they want more agents…even if they are bad agents. However, of course, a more savvy broker will look for agents that will improve their brand name, not taint it….
Anyway, here’s the list of criteria I would use when looking at a new brokerage… (more…)
1) Can you give me the contact information at least 3 satisfied clients (buyers, if you’re buying and sellers, if you’re selling)
2) Describe the 3 most recent sales you helped clients — you can tell a lot from their recent assistance of other clients
3) What area do you know the best? An honest agent will tell you what they know the best…a less honest or one that’s a little unrealistic will tell you they can help you with anything. Unfortunately, unless they have a large team doing all the real estate data mining & constantly being fed about all the local markets, they are probably out of touch with many of the different areas in the local real estate market.
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These may be “fightin words…”, but it’s relatively true. O.K., maybe z57, the real estate web site developer service isn’t a total joke, but maybe the agents who buy the service are a joke? Well, regardless, they’re selling very basic services packaged in what appears to be great products or at least they would like you to believe they are. They’ll even admit it if you get them to honestly tell you what they’re selling. Then again, maybe it’s the fault of the agents who don’t figure out what they did a while back…
So, when I was in the real estate business, I didn’t really know who could help me with my website. After I did all my homework, I thought I would have to pay a web developer that would cost me $1000 or more and probably pay some search engine marketing service thousands of dollars to get (more…)
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