Home Staging 2 - The Effect of Home Staging

      For the fear of not being able to get the return on their investment, most sellers are reluctant to spend money on staging before putting their homes on the market. Renovation can be considered as the extremity of staging. To help home sellers better understand the effects of home staging and renovation, I conducted an analysis comparing a staged home with three other non-staged comparables that are sold in Bellevue Washington in 2013.

Polygon Purchases large redevelopment site in Everett

One of the largest builders in Great Seattle, Polygon Northwest, has purchased a redevelopment site in Everett. The 225-acre site is on the Snohomish River on the east side of I-5. The site was once used as a dump and a pulp-and-paper mill. There was also an infamous tire fire burned for months in 1984 in the location. In an effort to clear the way for redevelopment, the city of Everett has spent approximately eighty million dollars and another $20 million in public money will be spent.

Home Staging – Part 1 Introduction

      With the advance of technology, nowadays you can market your home for sale on thousands of websites once your real estate agent input your property information into the database of local multiple listing services. Eventually, the factors affecting how fast a home gets sold and how much it gets sold come down to pricing and staging. A home priced above its market value scares away potential buyers and a home not ready for the market turns off potential buyers.

Negotiation Strategies in a Multiple Offer Situation

      While many of the European countries are still struggling with staggeringly high unemployment rates and stagnant economy, the US economy is undergoing mild recovery largely due to the correct monetary policy set by the Federal Reserve System (FED). Along with the historically low interest rate, the housing market is blooming surprisingly well. We have seen many of the priced right homes received multiple offers and sold in less than 10 days. In this seller’s market, home buyers need a totally different set of strategies from those used in a buyer’s market. I will discuss in this article a series of strategies for serious home buyers to use in a seller’s market without making unreasonable sacrifice.

Feng Shui – Part 3 Bedroom Feng Shui

     We spend one third of our life time in bed. A good night’s sleep is so important that it directly affects our health. The principles of bedroom Feng Shui are to create an environment that is relaxing and conducive to a good night’s sleep. A bedroom with good Feng Shui should has appropriate size. If you ever visited the forbidden city in China, you would find that even the Chinese emperor’s bedroom is less than 215 square feet (20 square meters). While we certainly do not like a depressingly small bedroom, an oversized bedroom would lost the intimacy and privacy needed to create a relaxing environment. If you have an oversized bedroom, you may create a sitting area or add a patterned area rug to take up visual space.

Bidding wars in Seattle

      Seattle is the fifth most competitive U.S. market when it comes to bidding for homes and the most competitive market outside of California, according to Redfin. In Seattle, 74.6 percent of all home offers faced competition in April , which is up from 72.5 percent a month earlier and up from 68 percent a year earlier, according to the Seattle online brokerage company. Seattle trailed only Orange County, San Francisco, San Diego and Los Angeles in Redfin's national competitiveness ranking.

Seattle City Council Approved Rainier Valley apartment project

On April 24th, 2013 a Seattle City Council committee approved plans for the Rainier Valley apartment project next to the Mount Baker light-rail station. This decision underscores the council’s commitment to promoting development along the light-rail line between downtown and Sea-Tac Airport. Rainier Valley will include two seven-story buildings with a total of 307 units on a 1.5 acre site.

The number of closed single-family home sales rose more than 30 percent in January 2013 in Seattle compared with a year earlier, topping the national average of a gain of about 12 percent.

According to a new report by Seattle-based online real estate company Redfin, there were 2,604 home sales in January, up 30.9 percent above January 2011 but down 22.3 percent from December.

Short Sales and the Related Issues

      A short sale is a sale of real property in which the proceeds from selling the property are less than the balance of debts secured by liens against the property. This happens when the property owner experiences financial distress and cannot afford to make the current loan payments. In such a situation, the banks/lien holders agree to release their lien on the real estate and accept less than the amount owed on the debt.

New Homes in Sammamish – Glencoe at Trossachs

            Glencoe at Trossachs is co-developed by two builders, William Buchan and Murray Franklyn and I am reviewing the homes by William Buchan in this article. This New community is located in the Sammamish Plateau. There are two drawbacks to live in Sammamish. First, there is no highway passing through Sammamish and it may be a long commute for most people living in Sammamish. Second, many people may think that the school district in this area (Issaquah School District) is not as desirable as the Bellevue school district.

New Homes in Issaquah – The Bridges at Talus

           The Bridges at Talus is built by Steve Burnstead Construction LLC, which is a brother company of Rick Burnstead Construction LLC. There will be more than 90 homes at the Bridges when the project is completed. These new homes in Issaquah are priced from the mid 500 thousands to the mid 700 thousands and ranged from 1,850 to 3,263 square footage. For those of you who would like a personal touch on your new home, such as paint color, granite, flooring, all deco choices, there are still more than 40 lots available at the Bridges as of January 18^th 2013.

New Homes in Kirkland - Summer Grove

     Summer Grove homes are built by Cam West, one of the largest mass production builders in the northwest. These are 3 – 5 bedroom homes from the upper $400,000s located in the northern end of Kirkland.  Across the street from the Safeway plaza, these new homes feature a high walk score of 77 with various shops and restaurants within walking distance. Juanita Village, downtown Kirkland, San Edward State Park, Juanita Beach Park, and I-405 are just minutes away from these new Kirkland homes.

Feng Shui – part 2, Kitchen Feng Shui

     For some people, the kitchen is such an important factor that it affects the decision in choosing a new home. In fact, two of the features I like the most about my own home is in the kitchen. It has a beautiful slab granite countertop and the kitchen is bright and elegant.
 
    An important guideline that is prevalent in the Feng Shui circles is that water is the destructive element to fire. Therefore, it is bad Feng Shui to place the kitchen sink next to or directly across from the stove. While I do not agree with placing the kitchen sink directly across from the stove has anything to do with one’s luck, I do think that kitchen sink should be kept at some distance away from the stove. The reason behind this is quite simple. You do not want water poured over your stove while you are cooking and you need some space between the stove and the sink for washed vegetables and meat that’s ready for cooking.
 

Many buyers... not so many sellers

House sales surged in King County in October, while the number of houses on the market dropped to its lowest level since at least 1999, according to statistics released by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service. Buyers closed on 1,981 single-family homes last month, 33 percent more than in October 2011 and — perhaps more surprisingly —10 percent more than in September of this year. Please click on the following link to learn more…..

http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2019611317_homesalesxml.html

Common Misconception about Title Insurance Policy

Figure 1. comparison chart from First
 American Title Insurance Company

    Title is a bundle of rights in real property. Since it is the seller who conveys title to a piece of real property, it is usually the seller who is responsible for purchasing title insurance for the buyer. Buyers can choose from one of three title insurance policies and specify it in the purchase and sale agreement: the Standard Policy, the Homeowner’s Policy, and the Extended Policy. Due to the misleading names of these insurance policies, home buyers may lose their right to the best policy if the buyers’ realtor does not have basic understanding of these policies or is careless.

     To show readers how the three policies differ from one another, I got a comparison chart from First American Title Insurance Company and it is displayed in Figure1. It can be seen from Figure 1 that the Homeowner’s Policy (Eagle Protection Policy) covers most items and it is the policy most home buyers would want to have.

Current Trend in Real Estate Market

      It has been said in various news media that the US economy and the housing market are undergoing mild recovery. To show both home buyers and sellers the specific market figures in King county, I pull some statistics data from the northwest multiple listing services (NWMLS) and did some analysis.

    Figure 1 shows the numbers of active residential listings and closed sales in King County from January 2011 to September 2012. During this period, the month with the highest number of active listings (available homes on market) is July 2011 with 8,186 active listings. After that, the number of active listings has gone down to about five thousand every month and maintained at approximately that level. The number of closed sales, however, was going in the direction of mild decreasing until January 2012. Although the number of closed sales started to increase after it hit the bottom early this year, it maintained at approximately two thousand every month.

Determining the Square Footage of a Home

     Buyers and sellers are often confused about which area is included for calculating a home’s square footage. Does the measurement of square footage include the covered porch? What about basement and garage? When reporting the square footage of a home, only the space of finished living area in the dwelling should be included. A space is considered a living area if it meets all of the following criteria.

• Is intended for human occupancy.
• Is heated by a conventional, permanent heating system. (Any space that is heated by a portable heater does not count.)
• Finished, with walls, floors and ceilings of materials generally accepted for interior construction.  
• Directly accessible from other finished area. (Any part of a house that requires the use of a ladder to get to it does not count.)
  

Feng Shui – Part 1 Introduction

            With thousands of years of continuously recorded history, the Chinese civilization has produced a lot of practical techniques and philosophy, such as acupuncture and Feng Shui, which we still enjoy to this date. Feng Shui is the ancient Chinese art and science of placement. The principles of Feng Shui have a history dated more than three thousand years ago. Like all principles of modern science, the principles of Feng Shui evolved out of people’s observations of the nature and the environment around them. Unlike the principles of modern science, which are developed by a continuous process of corrections, the concepts of Feng Shui have not yet gone through any paradigm shift. Inevitably, some of the Feng Shui concepts would seem like superstition nowadays. Nevertheless, there are other Feng Shui concepts that appear to be well justified from a scientific point of view and still applicable to our daily lives.

Title Insurance and Available Policies for Home Buyers

     From the point of view of a home buyer, title insurance insures against financial loss from defects in title to real property.  (There is also title insurance that protects lender's financial interest.) Title insurance differs in several respects from other types of insurance. While most insurance policies guarantee against a specific type of loss (such as injury) at a future date, title insurance generally insures against losses caused by title problems that happened in the past (such as forgery, fraud, duress in the chain of title).

Using Google Maps as House hunting Tools

     When trying to pick a house that is worthy of a tour, many home buyers take into account the school district and the appearance of the home. Few people use the Google Maps to check out neighborhoods before a home tour. With the advance of technology, these interactive online maps can be highly efficient house hunting tools for busy or long distance buyers.