Archive for June, 2005

I’m taking a week-long vacation at Yosemite National Park, but that doesn’t mean that Rain City Guide will go on a break as well… Mary Jereczek has kindly offered to step up and write posts in my absence! This is a great time to mention that I’m really thrilled with the response that I’ve... »

I’m always interested in new marketing approaches and I recently read about two ideas that seem worthy of more consideration. The first comes from Rosa where she describes an investment banker that buys everyone coffee at the local Starbucks once a week. Here’s how Rosa describes it: This morning Kerwin and I walked... »

I found a great article on the land rush in the Pacific Northwest. This article has accounts of many people and their experience trying to buy homes in a seller’s market caused, in part, by a lack of land. What I found most interesting was a resourceful answer to the shortage of space that... »

The Seattle Times ran an interesting commentary discussing how much the central government of Britain has been promoting redevelopment. Without a doubt our government could make vast improvements if they rearranged their priorities. However, I’m not sure enough Americans want to live in these dense “utopias”. At a recent conference in Seattle,... »

This week’s off-topic site that shouldn’t be missed is the flickr montager. It is a great tool that creates a photo montage of Flickr images based on the photo’s flickr tag. For example, type in the words “solstice”, and you can see a photo montage made of up phots from flickr that people... »

Talk to anyone today on the subject of real estate and soon it turns into a discussion about the impending housing bubble and whether or not it is going to burst all over your investment dreams. How worried should we really be? This article in the Seattle PI explained the situation both nationally... »

Mortgage rates are still quite competitive: Mortgage rates fell across the board over the past week, mortgage finance firm Freddie Mac said Thursday, suggesting the housing market still has room to grow. The rate on 30-year, fixed-rate loans averaged 5.57 percent for the week ending Thursday, with an average 0.6 point payable upfront, down... »