When Lawyers Steal the Escrow June 10, 2005
The NY Times has an article today describing the experience of people whose real estate lawyers have been caught stealing their escrow money. The most extreme example they give was from Jay Rosen who would intentionally create problems with the transaction in order to hold onto his client’s escrow money:
A dispute over the home’s title or its certificate of occupancy would stymie the deal, making it impossible for Mr. Rosen to release his clients’ money from an escrow account he controlled. An ancient property-line dispute would rise from the dead. Checks would get delayed. Cash transfers wouldn’t connect.
It was as if money just didn’t want to leave Mr. Rosen’s hands, clients said.
While there will always be a bad apple in the bunch, I’m actually surprised to hear of this problem. (Granted, the article makes a big deal of the problem, but then goes on to say that there were only 100 reported real estate thefts in 2004.)
I’ve yet to hear that this is a problem in Seattle, and considering that the industry relies so heavily on referrals, it would seem the bad apples would be quickly rooted out… However, if you’ve ever been taken advantage of by a local agent, broker or lawyer, I’d be interested to know so that I can adjust my recommendations appropriately.
Farmers’ Markets in Seattle June 8, 2005
As a test for a new little program I wrote to post things on Google Maps, I’ve put a map together displaying all the Farmers’ Markets in Seattle. In order to do this, I cribbed heavily from a few websites such as metroblogging and the Neighborhood Farmers’ Market Alliance .
The farmers’ markets current being displayed include:
- Pike Place Market
- Ballard Farmers’ Market
- Broadway Farmers’ Market
- Capital Hill Farmers’ Market
- Columbia City Farmers’ Market
- Fremont Market
- Lake City Farmers’ Market
- Magnolia Farmers’ Market
- University District Farmers’ Market
- West Seattle Farmers’ Market
If you know of some other farmers’ markets that should be included or some data that needs to be updated, just let me know.
By the way, I also made my first google maps “marker” for this site. If you look closely, you may notice that the marker is a tulip based on the flower in the center of the above photo.
Where are the sellers? June 7, 2005
The Seattle Times highlights the fact that there are fewer sellers in the Seattle Market than last year:
According to May statistics released yesterday by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service, the number of available King County houses and condominiums was off by 31 percent compared with a year ago.
The reason?
I’d tend to agree with Judy Hay’s assessment from the article that:
The lack of inventory is at least partially the result of a shift in homeowners’ thinking. A year and a half ago, she says, they were trading homes simply because they wanted something else. Not now.
Unless there is some reason to move, they’re not doing it. They’ve refinanced and they’re saying, ‘Let’s remodel and stay where we’re at.’
The lack of sellers is all the more surprising considering the median home price in Seattle has risen 17% in the past year.
It seems to me that trying to time the market (whether real estate or stocks) is a game that should be left to the professionals! However, it is just common sense that Seattle home owners even remotely considering selling their home should talk to a real estate agent to find out how much their home would probably fetch on the open market. If you’re interested, I’d be happy to provide a free home valuation report.
King County Home Appreciation June 6, 2005
The Seattle Times put together an informative graphic that illustrates homes home appreciated by neighborhood between 2003 and 2004. No surprise in that every single neighborhood in King County experienced increase values:
Thanks to low interest rates, last year was a record-breaker that saw 31,333 single-family home sales and 9.8 percent appreciation on a per-square-foot basis. That’s the highest since 1999 and well above 2003’s 4.2 percent. But one thing remained constant: Appreciation varied greatly among neighborhoods, ranging from 31.6 percent in Newport Shores and Kennydale to 3.2 percent in Lake Youngs, between Kent and Renton.
The top five neighborhoods in terms of appreciation were Newport Shores/Kennydale (31.6%), South Central West Seattle (22.7%), Madison Park (22.6%), West Shoreline (17.1%), and East Ballard (15.1%).
Zoom… monorail agreement finally reached June 3, 2005
The Seattle Times is reporting that an agreement has finally been reached to build the monorail. As stated in a previous post, you can be pretty sure that high-capacity transit will increase property values.
On a related note, does it seem odd to anyone else that they announced the agreement on a Friday afternoon?
After all, this is the only positive news that’s come out of the Monorail agency in months, and then they effectively bury the story… Of course, the completion data of December 2010 is later than initial forecasts, but at this point, I’d like to see some construction in order to know that all parties are serious about building this thing.
Lessons learned from riding two real estate cycles
Bill Wendel over at Boston’s Real Estate Cafe has been posting podcasts on his blog for a little while now. The interview from his latest podcast is from a woman who…
..describes lessons learned over last two real estate cycles: first losing money (at least on paper) on a starter condo purchased at the top of the bubble in Philadelphia in the mid-1980’s; then purchasing another home at the bottom of the last cycle; and ultimately hitting the real estate jackpot in Atlantic City.
To hear the podcast, follow the link to his website and then click on the link that says “Real Estate Bubble Audio Time Capsule #2″. That should download it to your machine and then open it to your default mp3 player.
What is podcasting?
In it’s simplest form, podcasting is a recording that is saved in an mp3 format that is made available via the internet. The recordings could either be groups of songs (a la a typical radio station), interviews (a la NPR), simple rants (a la many blogs), or a mix of all the above.
I’ve linked to this podcast, mainly because I’m intrigued by the idea of podcasting. I know that at some point in the future, I’ll give it a try… If you have some ideas for good podcasts (obviously the topic should be related to Seattle real estate), please let me know…. Would it be useful to have a podcast of my impression of featured listings? Are there any major players in Seattle real estate that I should interview? I could probably cover more ground in a two minute podcast than I could in a three paragraph description…
My take is that podcasting the same information that could easily be written about would be a waste of time and bandwidth. Ideally, it would be great to cover topics that can’t easily be conveyed via a written format. I’ll keep thinking about this and would appreciate your ideas.
I love referrals! June 2, 2005
Are you an real estate agent looking to refer clients to the Seattle market (Seattle, Bellevue, Redmond, etc.)? I love referrals and I’m willing to give your client the red carpet treatment on their arrival to Seattle!
Why should you consider referring your clients to me?
- I’ll take excellent care of our client from day one and beyond.
- I’ll provide excellent communication to both the valued client and to you!
- I’ll pay a 25% realtor referral fee (promptly at the close of the sale).
If you want to learn more about the service I will provide, please don’t hesitate to contact me at anna@raincityguide.com or 206-251-3821.
Housing Prices up 12% this Past Year
The blogging world is abuzz (at least the blogs that pay attention to real estate issues!) with news from the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) that housing prices rose over 12% this past year. Since the report is in acrobat format, I’ll quote more than usual (*.pdf) :
Average U.S. home prices increased 12.50 percent from the first quarter of 2004 through the first quarter of 2005. Appreciation for the most recent quarter was 2.21 percent, or an annualized rate of 8.82 percent. The new data represent the largest four quarter increase since the third quarter of 2004, when appreciation surpassed any increase in over 25 years. The figures were released today by OFHEO Acting Director Stephen A. Blumenthal, as part of the House Price Index (HPI), a quarterly report analyzing housing price appreciation trends.
“The House Price Index shows the rise in house prices continues at an extremely strong pace and raises the potential for declines in some areas later on,” said OFHEO Chief Economist Patrick Lawler. House prices grew considerably faster over the past year than did prices of non-housing goods and services reflected in the Consumer Price Index. House prices rose 12.5 percent, while prices of other goods and services rose only 3.1 percent.
The biggest price increases in the HPI during the past year occurred in Nevada, with a 4-quarter increase of 31.2 percent. With the latest annual data, California overtook Hawaii to become the state with the second fastest growing house price appreciation. The smallest increases occurred in Colorado, Ohio, Oklahoma, Indiana and Texas.
Other significant findings in the HPI:
1. Arizona’s annual house price appreciation has accelerated significantly in the last year, rising 19.4 percent compared to 7.7 in the preceeding year.
2. Utah is showing increasing price momentum. In the latest period, the annual appreciation rate for Utah grew to 6.3 percent and the state now ranks 35th compared to the fourth quarter of 2003 when it ranked last among all states.
3. The list of the 20 fastest appreciating MSAs remained largely unchanged from the
previous quarter, with 14 of the 20 fastest growing MSAs in California, 4 in Florida, and 2 in Nevada.
4. As in the previous quarter, the top three Census Divisions were the Pacific, South Atlantic and Mid-Atlantic Divisions.
5. Despite mildly accelerating appreciation, the New England Division fell from 4th to 5th place in terms of its annual appreciation rates.
6. The Mountain Division has seen a steady increase in its growth rate. In the first quarter of 2005, it had the fourth highest 4-quarter appreciation (12.96 percent), a substantial acceleration since its 3.6 percent increase in the third quarter of 2003.“There are a number of likely reasons for the sustained rapid price increases, including continued low interest rates, income growth, and the apparent impact of speculation in some real estate markets,” said Lawler.
Why Mortgage Rate Changes Do Not Always Follow Fed Rate Increases June 1, 2005
John Schoen has put together a clear explanation of why mortgage rates are not going up despite federal rate increases:
The Federal Reserve sets term rates: literally, the “overnight” cost of money. This so-called “fed funds” rate is the rate one bank pays another for borrowing money overnight. The reason banks borrow from each other is to maintain what are called minimum reserve requirements. If you’re a bank and you have, say, $500 million in loans outstanding, you’re required to keep a minimum percentage of those loans, in cash, at all times. So if one day Bank A lends out a little more than it can cover with reserves, it borrows from Bank B, which happens to have a little extra.
Long-term interest rates (which include mortgage rates) are an entirely different animal. These rates are “set” by the bond market, just the way the stock market “sets” stock prices. Banks, brokerage firms, pension funds, foreign countries, mutual funds, insurance companies and individual investors bid for bonds when the Treasury sells them every three months. The more demand there is (the higher the “bid”), the less the Treasury has to pay in interest rates to sell them. (The Fed can, and does, try to tinker with long-term rates by buying and selling bonds that it holds. But as big as it is, the Fed can’t control the global bond market.) These bonds are then bought and sold all day long, fine-tuning long-term rates between Treasury auctions. And because the Treasury market is so large and liquid, other long-term loan rates — like mortgages — tend to follow suit.
Update 6/3/05
The Seattle Times came out with this interesting chart that illustrates how the rates on the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage have gone down this past year despite the fact that the federal rate has gone up. The best explanation for this is that the long-term fixed-rate mortgages have already priced these federal rate increases into their rate. The Seattle Times has more.
Seattle Public Library Resources
Did you know that you can get the full-text of on-line newspapers through the Seattle Library? I read an article describing how many libraries provide full-text access (on-line) to magazines and newspapers that would normally charge fees for such access:
It’s impossible to list every database available from every public library since resources vary amongst libraries. Simply visit your local library’s web site, or give them a call and ask what’s available and how to gain access. It’s a painless process that can be accomplished in a matter of minutes.
After reading the article, I was pleasantly surprised to find many great resources available on the Seattle Library Website. While just scratching the surface, I’ve already found current and archived collections of all 18 Washington State Newspapers, Technology Review, and Harper’s Magazine. The only catch is that you will need a Seattle Library card in order to access many of the databases.)
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