Gabrielle's Blog

Spring has started here in the south of Seattle area, in spite of our recent snow day! Who would'a thought we'd have snow in Seattle in March, for pete's sake!

Buyers are starting to call with the "let's get going" message, especially over the last couple of weeks. Now that daylight savings time is in place and the sunshine is starting to come out, I'm thinking we'll finally be solidly in our Spring selling season.

No matter how much educating I do and how much keeping in touch with past clients and how many times I pop by, sometimes a call comes in like this one:

Client:  Hey Gay, I was just wondering if you'd be available sometime tomorrow afternoon? We drove past a couple of houses that were for sale and have an appointment to see them. We wanted to know if when we could get together in case we like the houses."

After chatting for a while about the kids, the jobs, the existing house, the market, etc., I ask

Me: "Now, tell me about these houses you drove by. Who's your appointment with?"

Client: "Well, the name of the agent that's on the sign, of course!"

Me: "Would you prefer to work with that agent, or did you want me to help you?"

Client: "Well, we didn't want to bother you ... and the name on the sign is selling the house, so we thought she should show it to us. But we trust you. You helped us with our last house and we see you all the time! So, of course, if we decide we like the house we want you to be our agent!"

Yikes! Somewhere in all of the handholding and massaging and reminding and educating, I've not gotten the point across -- Call ME when you're driving around and see a house with a For Sale sign in the yard that you absolutely have to see!

Bless them, they did call me! And we're going out together this afternoon to see these houses! And bless the listing agent; she was so kind and understanding about my call! Whew.

Maybe I've skated around the "Call ME!" message without saying it directly. Guess I'd better include it in big letters on the newsletter that goes out next week!

January sales in Auburn, Washington were slightly up during the first month of 2009! Granted these are small gains, but I'll take 'em!

Trying to get a sense for the current market trend as far as how long it might take to clear out the current inventory was a bit tricky, however. Our snowy and rainy weather during December and January, combined with the holiday season, really put a damper on sales. Because the last three months comprises November, December, and January, I've used information for the last six months (August through January) in order to determine what might be a predictor for how long it could take to sell a home.

Remember, however, that this information is just an estimate. Your house WILL SELL as long as, in the eyes of a buyer, it's the best house on the market -- both as far as condition and price. It's important that an agent evaluate the market right around your own home to determine just what's necessary in order to achieve a quick sale. Of course, it's up to both of you -- your agent and you -- to define "quick!"

Lakeland Hills and all of its neighborhoods is a master-planned community on the east side of Auburn, just north of the Lake Tapps border. While the majority of homes in Lakeland are in King County, a portion of the community is actually in Pierce County.

With it's combination of single family homes, townhouses, condominiums, apartments, shops, theatres, parks and beautiful views, Lakeland is one of my favorite Auburn places!

Since I prepare sales statistics for Auburn, my home town!, I was asked to please prepare a little closer look at Lakeland activity this last month. So ... here you go! Please let me know if I can answer any questions!

A quick review shows that homes in Lakeland priced between $200,000 and $300,000 currently sell the quickest, with approximately 7 months worth of inventory currently on the market. This number is a calculation based on the number of homes currently for sale (active) as compared to the number of homes that sold within the past six months in the area. Normally I like to run this number based on only three months, but with Thanksgiving through our bizarre December and January weather, sales slowed down even more and calculating numbers based on that period would just be skewed, in my opinion.

The other piece of information you may find useful is a quick break down of where these sales are occurring:

Private sales - i.e., sold by the owner or through corporate relocation of some sort, as compared to New Construction (either completed or in presale form) or bank owned properties. I also break out short sales separately-even though they're technically "sold by the owner," they require lienholder approval  and are therefore, not quite the same.

Sorry for the delay in getting these out this month. Time sure goes by fast!

Hopefully this makes sense. I haven't figured out how to do a good job inserting tables into blogs yet, so all the nifty colors and fonts fall apart making this a bit more difficult to figure out.

It's interesting looking at the activity for various "areas" of Auburn. We're so diverse here. As with most other areas, the lower-priced homes continue to sell well. Gads, there's actually fairly brisk selling going on for homes in the Auburn West Hill neighborhoods. Less than six months of inventory!

Remember, what we're looking at here is to help determine what might happen if you were to list your home ... For example, if you listed your home in the West Hill area for under $300,000 ... you might expect that it would take just under six months to sell it. Well, of course, YOUR home would sell much faster, as it would be the best prepared, the best priced, the best overall! Working with an experienced listing agent (like me!) will help certainly help!

 Every single neighborhood, whether on the West Hill, East Hill, Academy, or not even in Auburn, has it's own personality and historical time line. As you evaluate your course of action -- whether buying or selling -- be sure to carefully study what's really happening for homes like yours in your own neighborhood.

Don't hesitate to ask your agent to help you interpret what the numbers mean. That's what we're here for! 

Buyers, what is "perfect?"

Believe me, I understand that this is a buyer's market ... and in a buyer's market, buyers can really really be choosy, but let's talk about this for just a minute.

Here's a scenario:

Suppose you walk into a house and right away the wallpaper in the entry is just a turn off for you. Do you walk further? Or do you leave?

Let me throw a couple of ideas out to you:

Suppose, just suppose, that should you walk through that wallpapered entry, you find that the rest of the house is, to your taste, poorly decorated or poorly painted, or the colors just don't appeal, or the carpet is worn, or it has cooking smells, or wet doggy smells, or whatever. The layout is perfect. Big rooms, big yard, great bones! But OH, it just needs sooo much paint, new carpet, etc.

What do you do?

Do you pass on the house because it just needs too much work?

Do you attempt to see past the decorating and into the house?

Is it your taste that's different, or is it the seller's?

What if that weird house is priced considerably below the rest of the market? But at the top of your number? Will that make a difference?

So ... let me ask this question another way: How long do you anticipate you'll stay in your new home? Long enough to make it yours? Would "any" house be absolutely/exactly to your taste on first look?

I believe that, for the most part, homeownership is long term. Granted there are investment properties, but I'm not talking about those here. Making a house your own is part of the charm and, for some, one of the biggest reasons a home is bought. So the walls can be painted florescent pink with purple stripes if they want. (just don't do that on the outside if there's a Homeowner's Association!)

Granted, as an agent I attempt to counsel my seller clients that staging works wonders and minimizing the "uh oh" factor is critical. Sometimes, however, a seller absolutely loves their decorating, or even more commonly now, just can't afford to make any neutralizing changes. Perhaps the Distressed Property thing is going on. Sometimes there's just extreme push back from a seller when encouraged to allow changes and modifications to be made.

I also attempt to counsel my buyer clients to look beyond the surface of a home. To look at the layout, the potential lifestyle the home, yard, and neighborhood provides.

So ... back to my original question: Do you walk further and look for the hidden beauty in a house that's in your price range ... or do you leave?

According to the press release of King County Council, in an effort to reduce costs and help balance their budget, King County has approved 10 unpaid furlough days for county employees. Essential emergency services such as police, fire, etc. will not be affected.  Below is a list of the dates King County offices will be closed in 2009. 

     Friday              Jan 2
     Friday              Feb 13
     Friday              Apr 10
     Friday              May 22
     Friday              June 19
     Monday            July 6
     Friday              Sept 4
     Monday            Oct 12
     Wed                Nov 25
     Thurs               Dec 24 

Since the King County Recorder's office is part of the Executive Branch, it will also be closed on these dates, so transactions can't be recorded on these days.

The separately-elected officials of the County, including the Sheriff, Prosecutor, Sheriff and the Superior and District Court, will determine their own furlough schedules. 

For further information about schedules and agencies that are affected, visit the King County site. 

Actually, these thoughts are from other agents as well - not just my own (gotta get that disclaimer in here pronto!).

While dropping in at the office to pick up my mail yesterday, I had a chance to chit chat for a few minutes with a couple of agents. These were folks that've been "in the business" for years and years. They've seen versions of this market "adjustment" before. Nothing quite like this, but definite slow downs where listings just sort of sit. And Buyers were scarce. Compared to them, my almost five years in the business makes me a baby agent. They're both positive "can do" kind of people full of ideas and suggestions, so I always cherish the chance to hear their perspective.

So with a grateful nod to them for their thoughts, I'm going to try to turn their ideas, and a couple of my own, into a blog entry here. And I thought it would be interesting to gather yet a few more of your own ideas. Maybe we should package them all up and send them along to Mr. Obama. They can await him front and center on his desk on January 21^st when he sits down after recovering from his inauguration bash the night before.

•1.       Make every mortgage assumable. Hmmmmmm. We don't see many of these mortgages around here anymore. Haven't seen assumable loans for years from my limited experience. This is an interesting thought. This could mean that a troubled homeowner could "walk away" from making payments on a house after a buyer qualifies for and agrees to just "take over the payments." Now, some sort of consumer protection mechanism would need to be in place here, I would think. I mean, I see a potential for some ne'er do well to come in and just cause all sorts of havoc. But I kinda like this idea. Why not?

•2.       Rather than give money to the automakers, give every single person of some sort of driveable age some money to buy a new car.  The amount mentioned was $25,000. Let consumers go buy up all the car stock sitting around on dealer lots. Get rid of the surplus. Then the automakers would have enough money to build new cars. And folks in the auto industry would still have jobs - and the rest of us would be driving reliable new vehicles. Whew. $25k apiece. That's a lot of money.  But then again, so is $17 billion to continue to build cars that will sit on parking lots somewhere.

•3.       Here's another one: Allow everyone with a retirement account of some sort ... say a 401k ... to withdraw penalty free ONE TIME ONLY up to maybe $50,000 to use towards buying a home. Well, this is a good idea too. But this only helps folks that have retirement accounts. These are savers - admittedly a very good crowd to target. I mean these should be "safe" mortgages, wouldn't you think? And then these home buyers would be vested in their own homes in some form, so maybe less likely to default. I'd like to add to this idea and say that these would have to be for primary residences rather than investment properties. I dunno. It just seems to me that this is where the sticking point might be. I'm working with both buyers and sellers that want to buy/sell but there's no assistance of any sort out there to help them with massive downpayments. Well qualified credit wise, but no available cash.

•4.       Okay, this one's mine: How about requiring banks/lenders/investors/whomever to approve or disapprove a short sale within, say, 90 days. Period. No excuses. Make it mandatory. With some sort of teeth. I know there're additional approvals involved from the mortgage insurers and investors, but make it work. Either approve an offer as written or come back with an alternative. Pronto. No more of this months and months and months of waiting only to have a buyer walk away because they're tired of waiting for a black hole to respond. Let's get this inventory off the books and put people into them. So prices quit falling. And houses quit going all the way through foreclosure, which further erodes sale prices of other homes.

•5.       Hubby says: How about another tax rebate? In cash. To everyone that grosses, say, less than $500,000 a year. That's over 18, whether they live with mommy and daddy or not. Even the college kids spend money and make money. Let's give them back some. I don't know ... let's give them a big number, maybe $5,000 each.

 •6.       Here's another one: Let's take a good hard look at the cost of higher public education and balance it out a bit. Student loans are ridiculous (spoken from the mom of a college kid). Maybe require those "golden" coaches making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year (and more!) to take a pay cut. Back down to no more than, say, $500,000 a year or so (I like that number-gads one oughta be able to live on that kind of money, wouldn't you think?)

•7.       Oh wait ... one last one and then I'll quit. This treatise is changing form here and I don't want to get too far side tracked. But this is a personal soapbox issue: Before laying off folks because "of the economy," require that all executives making more than $500,000 (see there's that number again!) take a pay cut. Period. Nobody gets fantastically wealthy budget balancing through "downsizing." Everyone keeps their jobs. Folks keep working.

So that's it for today. Blast away. This should be interesting.