Rain City Guide

Where do you find inspiration?
Out of all the places to find inspiration for a blog post, my current favorite is deep within the RCG stats where I can find the search terms that people use to reach this site. Today, someone came to RCG looking for: [things+you+should+know+before+moving+to+Seattle], and while we likely disappointed that particular visitor, [...]

You can ask for the moon in Phase 1 of the inspection contingency. But if the seller’s response to that is less than satisfactory, you need to get specific in your response to the seller’s response.
Let’s say you give the seller a big laundry list of “stuff” that is “wrong” with the house under Phase [...]

(Editor’s Note: I’m happy to introduce Russ Cofano as a new contributor on Rain City Guide. He is a practicing real estate lawyer in Seattle with a tremendous amount of legal and business experience. Among his many roles and accomplishments, Russ is the former retained General Counsel for the Washington Assn of REALTORS (”WAR”), Seattle-King [...]

Everyone knows that Seattle is a Democrat town… So when I threw my zip code into this handy google map hack that maps political contributions, I expected to see a lot of blue markers:
Conclusion: Despite what you may have thought, there ARE some Republicans in Seattle.
And for those of you who are [...]

Very Cool:
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(via MetroBlogger)

I don’t mean to brag, but I was just checking my log files and I noticed that someone from the North Pole found my site while searching for real estate on Google.
I imagine the street level up there is pretty high this time of year. I wonder if one of the elves is thinking [...]

There’s a fun story on the City of Seattle’s website about the history of the Golden Gardens park. Turns out this local gem was named and developed “in 1907 as an attraction at the end of the novel, new electric car lines being built by realtors to induce townfolk to take a ‘Sunday outing’ [...]

I’ve been having a dialog with one of my readers who is looking forward to moving to Seattle. His last email summarized some of the research he has done on Seattle schools, and I thought the entire email is so good that it deserved a wider audience:
Dear Anna –
I’ve got another issue you [...]

The City of Seattle’s website has an interesting tour of Ballard history that has some fun gems of information (including some wonderful historic photos).
“The first claim in the future city and neighborhood of Ballard was filed in 1852, the same year settlers arrived in Seattle itself. Development proceeded slowly until railroad entrepreneurs Thomas Burke [...]

This is the first post in what I hope will be a regular feature. My plan is to post on local treasures… Potential topics include interesting places, events, people, businesses that make Seattle a special place to live.

The Hiram M. Chittendem Locks (also known as the Ballard Locks) map
What are they?
The [...]