Team Reba Real Estate

My partner and I were walking our 3 dogs this morning and came across this golden retriever who was wandering alone in our neighborhood.  If you recognize her, or might know who her owner is, please contact me.  We’d like to find her regular home and are keeping her with us till we do.

A happy ending to our little story.  Sadie apparently resides in Renton, albeit a couple of miles from our abode. Somehow she safely journeyed a couple of miles through town where she ended up in our neighborhood.  On Wednesday she was safely returned to her owners.

The way we were able to find her owners is that a local vet did a check for a microchip (for free) on the dog and that’s how we learned where she came from originally. Those owners had given her away but had contact with the family that they’d given her to, so they helped track down the current owners. Had the past owner not had the dog microchipped Sadie wouldn’t be back with her family.  If you own a pet it is a good thing to have it chipped for situations just like this one.  It also reminded me that with our recent move to this new neighborhood, we need to update all of our pet’s chip information in case we run into our own wandering pup in the future.

Buyers/Sellers - consider having your pet(s) chipped and be sure to update the info when you move!

We recently went on market with a beautiful Murray Franklyn resale home out in the Snoqualmie Ridge area. It’s a lovely home with a sophisticated color palette.  The home has 4 bedrooms (all with closet organizers), a gorgeous 5 piece master bath and walk in closet, 2.75 baths and a wonderful built in buffet in the dining room.

You’ll have plenty of room to spread out in this gorgeous home with numerous upgrades (listed below). With an office, media room and a fantastic great room you’ll have plenty of good times with friends & family. Get to know the members of your community by joining the local country club with a social or full golf membership. Rest easy in the large tub of the master bath - there are a total of 2.75 baths here. Great patio and yard for summer fun.

Below are a few photos for your perusal.  You can find them all in a slideshow at this link.

The current homeowners had such nice taste in furniture we didn’t have to do too much for staging other than the usual decluttering and some color infusion.  The house is only a few years old so it is in excellent condition and there are some nice upgrades like granite counters and accents, carpet, full house speaker wiring for multi-room music enjoyment, and much more.  A list of upgrades is noted below:

Featured Upgrades

Premium Carpet, Tile Upgrades in all bathrooms, Granite countertops, and Tub Surround in Master Bathroom, Tile Countertop in additional Bathrooms, Tiled Fireplace in Family Room, Granite Countertops in the Kitchen, InstaHot Hot water in Kitchen, Pendant Lighting in Kitchen, Additional ceiling lights in Living Room, Granite Countertop Buffet with Wine Storage and Mirror in Dining Room, Rough In for ceiling Fans in All Bedrooms, Ceiling Fan in Family Room, Blower on FirePlace in Family Room, All Crown Molding, Sound System with indoor and outdoor speakers, Sprinkler System, Gas Line for BBQ, Rough in for Central Air, Closet Systems in 3 bedrooms, Upgraded closet racks in all bedrooms.

No, it’s not as iconic as the song Georgia on my Mind made most famous (in my mind) by Ray Charles, but Wenatchee is now on my mind after being introduced to a great development opportunity by a fellow RE/MAX agent in this eastern WA city.  The land for sale is actually on the East Wenatchee side of the Columbia River but it is the twin city to Wenatchee.  While not as large, there are similarities to this area and Kansas City (KS/MO) where one area of a large metro area is more of the suburban bedroom community to the next door city.

Anyhow, an article written about me in the RE/MAX Times last year introduced me to this agent, Michael Miller, who is newly transplanted to the Wenatchee area.  He and his wife, Lynn, contacted us at Team Reba to see if perhaps we could help them with promoting this opportunity.  So, here I am doing just that.  It’s pretty exciting actually.  There are several ways you can imagine this land getting developed and all of them are going to be beneficial to that area of the state and the local community. If you’re in the market to develop a roughly 40 acre parcel with a mixture of retail/commercial/residential feel free to contact us and we’ll get you more details.  Be warned though - the parcel, if not subdivided into smaller parcels, has a $10Million price tag.

Some of the development opportunities include townhomes, residential, condos, retail space and more.  I’m personally hoping that a green development might come in and do a really cool urban planned development.  The zoning of the area has quite a list of permitted uses, so there are some very interesting opportunities.

You’ll be reading more about it here on this blog as we get more involved in helping co-list and market this opportunity.

I recently lost out on a listing to another local agent, which is fine, and part of the nature of the business.  There are a lot of agents out there and this gal knew the prospective client for 40 years while I had known them for 5 years. 

What did kind of throw me off as the client told me about their decision was his interjection that the other agent claimed that her firm had the highest volume of business in the area and that was part of his decision making.  I don’t know about other agents but I track pretty closely that kind of info because I’m highly competitive and I work for one of the largest real estate organizations in the world.  In the King County area the RE/MAX offices that I’m affiliated with (Metro Realty and Eastside) are usually #1 or #2 for volume of listings sold so I was intrigued when he tried to make it sound like an undeniable truth that the Windermere folks were the biggest around these parts.

I’d love to see the data that she provided.  The stuff I read comes from the NWMLS and is part of their reporting tools for brokers and isn’t manipulated by individual agencies.

As a consumer - how do you compare agencies and agents?  I’d love to get your comments.

I’m personally very focused on what the track record of an individual agent is and not just their office.  With today’s internet almost all agencies have the ability to leverage technology and some are better at it than others.  RE/MAX has 50% mind share in the USA because of their brand awareness and advertising. They also are still one of the fastest growing agencies nationally and worldwide even though they’ve been around since the early 1970’s.  Plus, our track record of sales is phenomenal. 

The old days of each office having their own listings and keeping those within their ranks is mostly gone because the cooperative brokerage model has taken over and now all exclusive listings go into that bank of data and are available through data feed to all agency websites if the individual agency chooses to receive it.  This prospective client told me he was impressed by a lot of things that, frankly, are old school and not true anymore.  It doesn’t really matter if an office has 90 agents.  How many of those are part time agents and don’t have a large pool of prospective buyers to help sell your home to?  I work with a brokerage with 250+ agents but I also know that we have some of the highest volume sellers in the area working in our firm - hence why we are ranked #1 or #2 at any given time.  I am happy to say that I am typically up in that high volume threshold but usually within the top 2-5%.  I don’t claim to bring in $1M in revenues (yet) each year, but we do a mighty respectable bit of business.

Anyhow, my main question to all of you is the same as what I typed above… How do YOU compare agencies? What is important in your mind when hiring an agent?

The RE/MAX Metro Realty office I hang my license with has a special program that we utilize for our clients and friends that helps us keep in touch and is a few steps above the recipe cards that other agents send out.  It’s called ‘From Your Friends’ and it is a great monthly program of discounts to local Puget Sound restaurants and activities.

Previous months have included the Seattle Children’s Theater, Seattle Thunderbirds Hockey, Purple Cafe’, and Duke’s Chowder House.  This month we get the lovely flavors of The Melting Pot.  I’m very excited about taking advantage of this coupon myself because I do enjoy the Melting Pot and we have a gift card for it right now too so we can stretch our dollars quite a ways by going a couple of times before the card expires.  We always get a few extra to hand out to new clients and/or for friends who want to go with friends or family to one of these restaurants or events.

All of our clients whether they are buyers or sellers (who stay local) are added to the program and with people watching their wallets more these days what with increased prices in gas and groceries, it’s a wonderful way to still have some fun while keeping an eye on the household budget. For those clients who have just moved to the area it is a great way to also be introduced monthly to some of the areas attractions, neighborhoods and local restaurant options.

If you’d like to be added to our list and are open to receiving our monthly email newsletter you can contact us with your details (name, address and email) and we’ll add you to our “friends list”.  It’s just another way we take good care of our friends here at Team Reba.

As an associate member of RHA, I get a chance to meet a lot of really great local professionals. One of them is Chris Benis, a local attorney who I have much regard and respect for in the Seattle area.  He is teaching an upcoming class for RHA that anyone who is a landlord should consider attending to bone up on issues that could impact them down the road.  You never know when a difficult tenant situation could arise, and the best plan is to have tools and information on your side when it happens.  Info on the upcoming class is noted below.   If you are considering getting into the landlord arena, this and many other RHA classes are items you should check out!

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This is a composite account of many cases we have worked on over the years.  The names and events have been changed to avoid disclosing confidential client information.

Frank Sinatra says that love is wonderful the second time around, but the couples’ estate planning can be complicated.  Often, each person has an established career and/or significant assets.  While each of them may be ready for the emotional ties of marriage, the economic ties give some pause for thought.  The good thing is that people entering into second marriages often have “both feet on the ground” and are able to talk openly and objectively about how they want to manage their finances during their marriage, and the provisions they want to make for each other and their heirs at death.

Premarital agreements are common in remarriages – a couple can clarify what each has, how they want to handle living expenses, how they may acquire assets together, and what happens to each of their assets at death or divorce.  Frankly, whether a couple signs a premarital agreement or not, it is critically important for them to discuss the financial side of their marriage.  The community property laws can complicate things for remarriages.  Often it makes sense for couples to agree to keep not only their assets separate, but also their income.  For example, without a premarital agreement, a person’s salary is community property.  Thus, post-marriage employee benefits and contributions to retirement accounts and the growth of those contributions would be community property, while the account balance on the date of marriage plus growth would be separate.  This can create an accounting problem in the event of death or divorce.  Another problem is making sure the survivor of a married couple has sufficient assets to live comfortably, while also taking care of your children and grandchildren or other heirs.

When kids have to wait for their step-parent to die to get their inheritance, it can be awkward for the step-parent and the kids.  Our experience is less that the kids’ begrudge the step-parent the use of the assets, but rather they fear those assets will end up with the step-parent’s family.  Yet, often your spouse needs access to your assets to live comfortably, and this is when good planning can minimize suspicion and/or hard feelings between your spouse and your heirs.  An example of a bad plan would be for dad’s Will to give everything outright to step-mom, as dad’s children will have little assurance of receiving their inheritance and they may be tempted to challenge dad’s Will.  A better plan is to use a properly drafted trust for the step-parent administered by an independent trustee.  Such a trust can allay a lot of suspicion and fulfill the dual goals of providing for your spouse and your children.

These are many important issues to consider the second (or third . . ) time you fall, but consulting with competent counsel will help assure that you’ll be glad you met “the second time around.”

Because I write in several online forums I have to avoid duplicating the exact material from one blog to another.  For those of you that have been getting into the online forums of communication you recognize that search engine optimization only occurs when you have original content and if you cut and paste your posts from online forum to additional sites you’ll end up getting yourself blacklisted by the bots and spiders that troll the web.

So, to keep myself from getting my, what I like to think are useful articles, blacklisted, I’m putting a link to one that I just wrote for my “other site” where I write regularly - Rain City Guide.  In the post I list 9+ questions that consumers can use to help in interviewing a listing agent.  These questions are applicable for any real estate market no matter where you are so please feel free to use them in your own market outside of the Seattle and Washington State area!

Not everyone knows that I’m a big gardening fan but there are times when I’m walking around a client’s home that I can tell they’re surprised by the number of plants that I can identify by sight as we walk around and I’m giving them my staging advice for the exterior of their home.  Yes, staging includes that all important “curb appeal” which will often mean taking a hard look at the aesthetic of the exterior of a home and the surrounding gardens (or lack thereof).

At my last home, the one I just finished closing on the sale of last week, I had done extensive exterior work using a contractor to build a wrap around deck, patio, raised beds, etc.  Not only was this nice for my own personal use, but it was great in the eventual resale of the home because of all the extras that it provided.  In the bedding areas I put in mostly perennials but some of the spaces were also used for organic gardening for our own vegetable food supplies in the spring through fall.  Most of the plant choices were made to be low maintenance as well as drought-tolerant and we had rain barrels installed to catch water runoff from the deck for use in the garden to limit seasonal summer water use.  With food prices and gas prices being what they are today, it is nice to have an onsite garden which helps limit the number of trips to the store for fresh produce and keep our household expenses down.

To keep up on various gardening ideas I frequently read the NWLife section of the Seattle Times, specifically, the gardening section. In the July 2nd edition there was an article on the “native plant of the month” named Sisyrinchium, aka Blue-eyed grass.  I’m looking for ideas for my new home where we have an area that ends up with an occasional water run-off area caused by the topography of the lot and neighborhood.  My thoughts in attempting to limit actual run-off and to help in slowing down the water and helping it to percolate more slowly into the ground is to put in a mini-marsh like garden where water can collect and there will be plants that help the process and that can survive and thrive in that environment.

The blue-eyed grass seems to be one of many that can fit into my little scheme.  Granted, I realize I’m taking on a multi-year process of putting this in place and my first goal is to stake out the spot in our new lot that will become our new vegetable garden, but collecting ideas is part of the fun of gardening.

The best tidbit of info that I gleaned from this article though was the website put together by the Washington Native Plant Society where you can find more information on native plants, including the places where you can buy them.  Growing native plants is a smart move because you’ll have fewer high-maintenance plants to deal with because native plants typically have already figured out how to defend themselves against pests and they usually require less watering than more fussy plants that have been transplanted to our environment.

So, over this holiday weekend, if you’re out gardening - have fun, be safe and “go native!”

The PMI Group, Inc is all about considering risk when it comes to the housing market and mortgages.  Why?  Because The PMI Group, Inc. provides “private mortgage insurance” for lenders that is the fill-in for losses if a borrower defaults on a mortgage.  They care a lot about risk.  When I talk to clients about the lending process we cover the idea that banks are much like insurance companies - they care about mitigating risk.  So, if a borrower doesn’t have a strong down payment, like a 20% equity stake, then the lender is going to offset their risk by requiring mortgage insurance.

For a many years we saw very few loans with PMI attached because all manner of alternate loan programs and products were available.  But, no more!  Most of those programs have now disappeared because of last summer’s mortgage meltdown pushed to a higher frenzy level by the media.

The good news and silver lining of today’s post?  The PMI Group, Inc does regular forecasts of the areas they believe to be the lowest and highest risk within the nation.  Take a look at their 2008 summer forecast and you’ll see that the Seattle-Bellevue-Everett area is considered by them to be a low risk area for housing price devaluation.

Update 10/20/2008:

Even Yahoo Real Estate is promoting the results of PMI’s research into the various markets and Seattle is part of this story.  Check it out here at this link.