Rain City Guide

With more and more home buyers and sellers participating in the home buying & selling process to a greater degree than ever before, we can’t write enough posts that provide the basic infomation and skills that help them evaluate home prices. The other day I talked about the popularity and pricing of homes in differering [...]

Headlines come and go…life goes on in our Seattle Neighborhoods….
A refreshing Alki twist on an old time summer favorite. On Beach Drive Blog some resident wildlife captured in aerialist feats of fishing. Discovered at West Seattle Blog rare sightings of pink birds are anticipated to be seen in West Seattle yards soon.
Happy 500th [...]

Yesterday, Google Maps introduced Street View Maps for 5 major cities (alas, Seattle wasn’t one of them). The implementation of the Street View feature rocks even though the image quality isn’t as good as it could be. Jim and Galen have already blogged about Google’s new release, so I’ll avoid repeating what they’ve already said.
What [...]

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 find that most people who track countywide stats, looking for bubbles and market trends, are not people who are buying and selling property. Anyone who is actually buying or selling property knows, that countywide stats tell you both everything and nothing. It is in the small subsections of any given market that [...]

Last week of August. Who bought what, where and for how much? Typically a slow week with agents and clients taking some time away with their families before school starts.
This is my absolute favorite property that sold this week, in Sammamish for almost $4,000,000. Going home there is like going on vacation every day after [...]

This past week, Top Producer quietly rolled out a home valuation tool, called HomeInsight, for a few markets in California and Washington*. I was not part of developing the tool, but I like it enough to pass along the link to Rain City Guide readers before the local media picks it up.
What differentiates [...]

Robbie, Stephanie, Harrison and I went to the Street of Dreams together yesterday. What I enjoyed most, was their company. What Harrison (age 3 1/2) enjoyed most, was the school bus ride from and to the car. His first ride on a school bus.
The house I liked best, though not everything about [...]

Bellevue is #21 of the top 100 best (smaller) cities to live in around the Country . What’s up with the “Biggest Employers” section though? U-Dub #1 at 25,000, Microsoft not listed?
How many employees DOES Microsoft have working on the Eastside?

The Seattle Street of Dreams is back and promises to continue it’s tradition as “the most popular single site luxury home tour in the country”. Essentially, it’s a month long open house of multiple multi-million dollar homes. This year it is being held from July 15 through August 20 and features 6 homes that [...]