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With the addition of more buses and the train going through downtown Kent heading both to Seattle and Tacoma, there are more options.  We need even more, but at least this is a start.

If any of our readers out there went to the meeting, I’d love to hear how it went.  Feel free to leave your comments!

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So, I finally decided after having a relatively bare agent profile on the site for several months to go ahead and start networking on it.  I’ll say right now that so far I am relatively pleased with the results.  It seems a lot of people do read the stuff that gets written on there and now I must say my competitive side of me is kicking in and I want to be number one in the Seattle spot.  I’m pretty sure if I converted my location to Renton (where my home office is) I’d be number one at this point based on the scoring system they use.

Anyhow, another *sort of* benefit is that a new business opportunity listing we’re co-brokering with another agent in our office (Robin Tomazic) got picked up by a local blogger for the area where it is located - Georgetown. You can see the blog post here.  Hey, buddy, thanks for helping us advertise!  We’d like to find a wonderful new owner for the restaurant and bar who will be as supportive of the community as you are.

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Relax in the large back yard on the deck, or shoot some hoops and then ease your muscles in the hottub. You can’t go wrong with this home!  To make it even more relaxing, there is a 1-year basic American Home Shield home warranty that is available to the buyer at closing to help cover the appliances and systems in the home.

A slideshow of all the photos is available here.  A total of 17 photos to be exact showing all the rooms of the house except for the garage interior and laundry room.  There is an eat-in kitchen with space for a couple of barstools and/or a kitchen table for more informal dining.

The home is located near Totem Lake, where Evergreen Hospital is growing by leaps and bounds and it is also near one of the first Trader Joe’s in Washington.  Lots of local amenities and there is a community pool you’ll have access to as well.  Better get busy before Labor Day weekend if you want to enjoy it this year!  Local park & ride nearby makes the possibilities of reducing your carbon footprint easier.  Easy access to Eastside companies and employment centers(Bothell, Bellevue, Redmond) such as Microsoft, Expedia, and Overlake Hospital.

We’ve even got a great offering from Eric Aasness (one of our co-contributors) that if you use his office for the financing portion, they’ll offer 1% of the loan amount toward your closing costs!  With 10% down, the loan amount will still be under the new, temporary increased level of conforming loan limits - which is $567,500.

Come swing by and take a look for yourself!

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One of the stories I love is about a client who moved to Costa Rica a couple of years ago.  We originally met this clients as she prepared to sell a long time family owned property that sat in L3 zoned land in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle.  Because of the size, location, and level aspects of the site she was able to get much for the single family home than she might normally get in residential zoning. 

Since moving to Costa Rica, she has been sending me updates about her adventures and now the house she is having built.  Just this week I received several photos of which I am thrilled to view and share here.  It’s also intriguing to me to see how construction is handled in a country other than the USA. Check out some of these shots….

Joan and her builder, Richard, walking by Nispero lumber.

Temporary power set up

House view to the north

View east to the garden

Congrats, Joan, on making your dreams come true!  It’s a ton of work, I’m certain, but it’s great to see you putting together what you planned and watching it come together.

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So, a client I’ve been working with for over a year by email comes into the USA for a monthlong trip.  The couple lives overseas in South Africa where the husband works for a government run organization.  He’ll be retiring in the next 1-3 years and, since they have family here, will be moving back to the Pacific NW to be close to their daughters who live up this way. 

Now, I’ll say, these folks were referred to me by an agent in Idaho so I really didn’t think much about who else they might know.  I did get them introduced to an agent in Vancouver and one in the Portland, OR area since these are some of the locales they are considering outside of the Greater Seattle area.

It turned out that with my client’s price point requirements we didn’t really find much for them in King County that was interesting, so we ventured down to Pierce County and focused on the City of Tacoma for the most part since it had commuter services to Seattle and a pretty decent housing stock that met our requirements list.  The house hunting crew consisted of me, the couple, and one of their daughters.  The first day we all went but on the 2nd day their local host offered to take the daughter mall shopping, something she (at 22 yrs old) was more interested in.

While out driving around on our 2nd day of home hunting I got a phone call from a friend and colleague of mine in escrow, Jamie Kondo (yes, one of our co-contributors to this blog).  I told her I couldn’t really talk and asked if I could call her back.  She asked, “are you with your out of town clients?”  Yes.  And she then said, “I think I just met their daughter.”

Huh?

It turns out that the host couple who my clients were staying with in Newcastle, WA are related to Jamie.  In fact, the lady she was telling me about, who brought my client’s daughter to where she was, is her aunt.  That’s 2 degrees of separation to me.  So, from Idaho, to South Africa, to Seattle/Newcastle to Pierce County (Jamie’s stomping grounds) and Oregon (where the daughter lives). 

Jamie and I have worked together on many real estate transactions over the 5+ years we’ve known each other (through 2008) so it’s pretty funny to have this connection work itself out with neither of us having generated it.

What really cracked me up was to hear my clients say that I’d just proven a point to their daughter.  They’d always stressed to their kids that you should always watch your actions in public because you just never know who knows who in the room and where information about any bad behavior might go.  A good lesson for agents too as bad service may travel farther and wider than you can imagine.

Kevin Bacon… I may just have you beat.

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Most of you are aware that Down Payment Assistance programs like Nehemiah, etc. are history effective October 1st. Lenders are requiring that loans using DPA’s fund by September 30th. Therefore, some lenders are requiring locking and submissions by August 15th and others by September 12th.  

If you have any clients that need this program, now is the time to do it. While there is a movement to get the programs reinstated, it’s anybody’s guess as to how that will turn out. Let me know if I can help you in any way. 

Jerry Rutherford 

Professional Mortgage, Inc.
22659 Pacific Hwy So Suite 101
Des Moines, WA 98198
Phone: (206) 870-5050 Cell: (206) 356-1711
Toll Free: 1-800 764-5626
Email: jrutherford@pmiloans.com
www.pmiloans.com
WA Lic. # 510-LO-35158

I’d been receiving some other industry requests asking for feedback to be sent to legislative members who were responsible for voting.  It seems that even with support from the NAR and mortgage professionals who see the daily need for programs like Nehemiah, the folks in government decided to act rashly anyway.  I guess it’s typical politics as usual because government frequently seem like a massive pendulum going to extremes and only after protracted battles and lawsuits will it go to the center and make sense.

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Not only will there be higher initial education standards for new agents, but there will be other fun updates to the requirements such as fingerprinting and background checks with WSP and FBI.  This is not new for other states such as Kansas (where my mom, Myrna Haas, does business) as they’ve implemented this kind of procedure as well.  And, I for one, am happy to see it happen.  Hopefully we’ll be able to better monitor the quality of those getting into the industry and hold higher standards overall.

Want another reason for those kinds of background checks to be done?  One of the noted disciplinary actions in the document revealed that an agent had a level II sex offender background and he’d failed to register and provide that information to the department. There are others who may have convictions in drugs, theft, larceny or fraud that the public might want to have screened out from the business as well.

Oh, and one other thing.  The titles of agents will change too.  People who are currently labeled Sales Associates, Real Estate Agents, or some similar name will become “brokers”.  And those folks that had broker licenses before will become “managing brokers”.  Happy licensing……

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