Not every business listed for sale will ultimately sell. In fact, some trade groups in our industry have stated that less than 10% of businesses that are listed "for sale by owner" will actually sell!  They go further and say that businesses that are listed by Business Brokers actually have a 40-50% probability of selling.  That's a 4 to 5 times improved rate of success, when a business uses a business broker!  As a business broker, this is great, but I know why this is the case.  I, myself, as well as other Business Brokers (as least the good ones), screen the businesses we want to work with.  We have limited time and resources, so we want to take on clients whose businesses we KNOW have a greater chance of selling.

There are a number of reasons why

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Seasoned investors seeking their road to wealth will readily acknowledge that the easiest and surest path to long term wealth is through holding a portfolio of houses. And the best way to keep your houses is using the lease options. To appreciate how important lease options are to your financial prosperity, it is important to first having an understanding of what a lease option is.

Lease options as an exit strategy may or may not result in the actual sale of your property. You are renting the house out to someone and giving them an option to later buy it. They have a rental agreement with you and then they pay you additional money in exchange for the right to purchase the property at some point during their lease. It is customary to charge 3-5% of the

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Have you ever wanted to own a franchise that caters to young and old alike, is a fun place for your customers, and a joy to operate because of all the smiles you see every day?  If so, you now have that opportunity. There are two Menchie's Franchise locations in the greater Seattle area for sale at about half the cost of establishing a new franchise. These stores are great village location with plenty of walk-in traffic. The businesses are clean and well laid out and  are so attractive that it's very hard for children to walk or drive by without asking their parents to stop in. The equipment and fixtures are in compliance with the franchise and are like new, well maintained, and spotlessly clean. The owners are selling to pursue other business interests

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Core Curriculum Clock Hour Course

A Fantastic Class by Point Escrow that Discussed Current Issues in Washington Real Estate, Great Turn Out For Today's Class!

Topics included:

• Legislative and Legal Updates
• Handling Multiple Offers
• Fair Housing Issues
• Advertising and Social Media Guidelines

The Cascade Team Always Provides Free Classes for Our Agents.
In Today's class we had a prize drawing for inspection coupons, congratulations to our winners below!





Thank you to our Vendors!

   

 

Our Local Real Estate Team

Cascade Team Real Estate agents are proactive in serving their customers, studying the market and touring homes, so they can provide the most accurate housing market data

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This mornings News Tribune published a very informative article about the supply of available homes in King, Kitsap, Pierce and Snohomish counties.  This is how bad it is if you're looking for a house.  The shortages are now reaching critical levels states the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.  I'll bullet point some of the article and for the full story you can read it online  at The News Tribune.

*Gridlock in the Puget Sound housing market. Virtually sold out of inventory and there's a pipeline of stalled buyers.

*Shortage of available homes is causing a Frenzy. This continue to be an historic time for the real estate economy.

*The figures tell the story. See The News Tribune Article.  Very informative!

King County had the states highest

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You? Buy a home? If that prospect sounds as unlikely as your becoming the next U.S. president—well, this campaign season has shown us that anything can happen.

Sure, amassing the funds and slogging through the necessary paperwork for your own piece of the real estate pie can be daunting, especially if you’re a less-than-stellar loan candidate. Still, if you just assume there’s no way you could buy a home, without doing any research, you could be missing out.

Here are some oft-cited reasons people don’t buy a home, and the reality checks showing why they shouldn’t give up hope.

Reason No. 1: ‘I don’t have enough money for a down payment’

This is probably the most common justification for not making the leap into homeownership.

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The South Sound real estate market showed no signs of a seasonal slowdown in December as sales once again jumped by a double-digit margin in Pierce and Thurston counties. And the lack of inventory continues to drive the market, according to Northwest Multiple Listing Service data released Wednesday.

Pierce County months of inventory — the amount of time it would take to exhaust the number of single-family residences for sale — fell below two months to end the year at 1.78 months. In Thurston County, it was 2.4 months. A healthy supply of single-family residences that doesn’t favor either the buyer or seller is thought to be around six months.

But with little to choose from, combined with buyer demand (mortgage interest rates are still low and the

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Make your nomination today!

May 20 is the deadline to nominate projects, plans and programs for the VISION 2040 Awards, a program of the Puget Sound Regional Council. Any individual, business, agency, organization or jurisdiction may submit a nomination.

The awards recognize projects, programs or plans in King, Kitsap, Pierce or Snohomish counties that help achieve the region's growth, economic, and transportation strategy. The projects may be developed in the public or private sectors, or through public/private partnerships.

PSRC said examples of programs and plans include comprehensive or subarea plans, economic development plans, design guidelines, outreach/education efforts, transportation demand management programs, and other similar

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Tehaleh in Bonney Lake makes the list

Home sales in the top 50 master-planned communities during 2015 jumped 14 percent from the volume reported for 2014, according to John Burns Real Estate Consulting. The 23,263 sales in the latest report accounted for an estimated 4.7 percent of all new home sales nationally and marked the highest volume in the six years the masterplan list has been compiled.

Commenting on their findings, the consultants from the John Burns team credited "historically low mortgage rates, solid job growth, low levels of resale competition and outstanding execution by the developers" as factors that drove demand. 

One community in Washington state, Tehaleh, made the list. The 271 sales it experienced earned that project 46th

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Trend continues even during downturns

Homeownership as a wealth-building strategy was the subject of a paper The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies presented at a 2013 symposium. Now, the authors of that report revisited the topic using more recent data and lessons learned from the housing crisis.

Researchers report their updated analysis "upholds the bottom-line result from the earlier paper: that homeownership was associated with significant gains in household wealth, even when viewed across the tumultuous housing crisis period of 1999-2013."

In the earlier paper covering the 1999-2009 time period (before the downturn), the authors reached three key conclusions:

1. Even during a time of excessive risk taking in the mortgage market

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