Rain City Guide

I’ve noticed a trend in my business lately.  Several consumers are contacting our team for help in re-listing their home after having a poor experience with a prior agent.  While it is true that selling activity in Puget Sound is lower this year than last, there is still some positive selling activity occurring with some [...]

I was a meeting this weekend with an agent in Southern California where he showed me a website he says he visits a couple times a week.   A competitor had built up a large repository of “pocket listings” for the Beverly Hills area and then stuck them behind a registration wall… of which he visited [...]

I’m greatful that I get to work in this wonderful world of real estate sales.  Every family that is buying or selling a home has a story to tell me.  Every investor renting, buying or selling a building or entrepreneur buying or selling a business brings the agent into their lives during the transaction and often long lasting friendships are forged. What I [...]

We “dog food” our real estate search product at Estately (we use it like a consumer): I subscribe to a couple of daily email alerts, a constantly updating RSS feed showing properties as they come onto the market near my house, and I subscribe to a feed of my saved homes to see when they [...]

I put a post here the other day about staging a house and then saying I’d put in photos of the finished product to get responses from readers here (preferably readers and not regular contributors) about whether or not they could see the value and difference staging (and good preparation) makes in a sale. This listing got multiple offers [...]

Today was a busy day and another one that required a bit of handholding and education. We have been working with a client for several months now as they prepare a home for sale. The house has been a rental for several years and when I saw it in early December it was in not [...]

Yes, that’s right, I too have used Match.com in the past and it’s actually how my partner, Michael, and I met. This weekend I was reminded of the dating experience online as I perused houses in the Greenlake area with some clients. First, we looked at houses in a price range of over $1 [...]

Before everyone jumps into the pool, every agent and owner must “LOOK before they LEAP”.
The Zillow Zestimate WILL appear, of course, in the same space as your “Property For Sale” listing. The printed data is also picking up the erroneous square footage info and number of bedrooms and baths from the tax records. [...]

One of the commenters, Redmondjp, asked about tear downs. Kirkland is famous for new homes being put where old ones used to be. But our conversation stemmed around whether or not Bellevue and Redmond ramblers built in the 50s and 60s will go the way of these Kirkland teardowns. I know of [...]

I really would like as much info as anyone may have about removing popcorn ceilings. Whomever invented those things should be drawn and quartered. Also called “cottage cheese” ceilings. I think they look more like large curd cottage cheese than popcorn.
1) How have you tested for asbestos before removing?
2) Any step by [...]