Rain City Guide

There truly is an adage in the real estate industry of “if it smells, it doesn’t sell”. A great article for dealing with pet odors is at this link.
This is something that, as a real estate agent, I run across frequently. With the number of cases of asthma and allergies rising in the US it’s even more important that [...]

Important Fair Housing Notice for Seattle
The City of Seattle has recently adopted a new ordinance that requires all real estate professionals (including brokers and property managers) within the city limits to prominently display a fair housing poster in their place of business. The poster is available at http://www.seattle.gov/civilrights/outreach.htm under the link for “Housing Issues.” [...]

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 [...]

We lost IT. We use to have IT and now we lost IT and now you can get it on ebay! This IT is that huge chunk of our commission that used to come from being the gatekeeper to the multiple. At a listing presentation our competition was only another agent that charged the [...]

I was helping an agent with a listing that hasn’t sold yet, and one of the simple, yet dramatically effective things I did was rearrange the blind openings. This is particularly important for view property and any property where cars or the street show when you raise the blinds from the bottom up.
If [...]

This comes under the category of “You learn something new every day.” Over the years I have found that I generally have a much higher percentage of clients who moved here from other countries, or whose parents moved here from other countries, than some of my peers. I was at a client’s house over [...]

That’s right, I’m going meta-meta. Or better yet, I’m going mega meta (unlike Greg who went mini meta! ).

Hanan’s irregular list of new real estate blogs. Beautiful idea, perfectly executed. It is interesting to note that almost none of blogs from his first installment are still around writing interesting content…
10 [...]

I’m still scratching my head as to why agents around the country hate Zillow so much that they want to call it “Z”. Theory is that if they even whisper the name Zillow, they are spreading “the word” and helping it to become even more popular.
Zillow is a system of mathematical calculations, a tool [...]

I have only one criteria when choosing a client. That criteria is very difficult to describe, because the best term to describe my favorite clients, I only know in the Greek language. I dated a Greek guy for six years, from the time I was 16 until I was 22. Whenever [...]

Tim’s Comment: “What many do not realize is the extent and frequency in which commissions are reduced via credits to the parties at closing. It is very common.’While Tim raised this subject as if these credits were commission negotiations, and sometimes they are, more often these credits are how agents help the buyer and seller [...]