Tips from The Cascade Team Agents

Did you see our latest mailer? Find the answers you're looking for below!

2017 was a record year for The Issaquah Highlands. Some sections of the housing market increased by nearly 30% with the over-all price for a home increasing just under 18% for the year. Take a look at an in-depth review of The Issaquah Highlands market from the number 1 listing brokerage in the Issaquah Highlands and see where the housing market has grown, the highest priced SOLD home, the home that went the MOST over asking price, and also get an idea of what to expect in 2018.

 

  Issaquah Highlands 2017 Real Estate Recap
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Attention Real Estate Brokers: Buyers and Sellers are targets for wire fraud and many have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars because they simply relied on the wire instructions received via email.

A hacker may break into a real estate licensee’s email account to obtain information about upcoming real estate transactions. After monitoring the account to determine the likely timing of a close, the hacker may send an email to the buyer, posing either as the escrow agent or as the licensee. The fraudulent email may contain new wiring instructions or routing information, and request that the Buyer send funds accordingly.

With scammers increasingly targeting real estate transactions, the National Association of REALTORS® is teaming up with the…

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Trying to decide when to plunge into the real estate market can be quite intimidating—especially when prices are high, choices are limited, and history urges restraint.

Locally we’ve seen two or three years of what could be considered unprecedented levels of price appreciation, as well as an inventory shortage that resulted in a record-low number of homes for sale across Western Washington.

See: 2018 Real Estate Market Trends - Seattle Area Prices Continue Upward March

If there’s one thing most early forecasters agree on, it’s that home prices will continue to rise. Where they differ however, is how much they will rise.

The median price of a home across the Seattle metro area has now soared 80 percent since bottoming out five years ago,…

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Today was the 1st day of classes for the "New Market Reality" course. Thank you to everyone who could attend and I'm looking forward to seeing everyone signed up for tomorrow as well!

Not that long ago, real estate agents were in the business of providing information. In fact, you can probably remember a time when all real estate professionals did—the only value we thought we had—was giving information.

What’s for sale, what’s on the market, what’s the pricing of similar homes, etc.

Back then, to protect our value, we locked away this information in a fortress called the MLS. If any person outside of the real estate business tried to reach into our fortress and grab a slice of that data, we were trained, like guardians outside the gates, to…

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The Cascade Team Real Estate is  looking for a dynamic Managing Brokers and Broker/Agents for Spokane.

We have closed over 300 Spokane area transactions in the past 2 years and are looking for an aggressive leader to help build and manage the Team and take it to the next level of success!

As a Managing Broker you are provided with industry leading tools, training and support to help recruit new agents and prepare them for maximum success. The Cascade Team provides FULL marketing support which you can view HERE along with proprietary back-office lead management and lead generation systems are second to none, and we do more to help promote and sell homes than any other brokerage out there. You need a Managing Brokers License, and good…

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KIRKLAND, Washington (January 5, 2018) – The year 2017 may be in the books and for many members
of Northwest Multiple Listing Service it was a memorable one with December’s activity being no
exception. Brokers reported historic lows for inventory and year-over-year price gains in most areas.

  1. Historic lows for inventory
  2. Inventory down 19 percent
  3. Lowest level of homes for sale in a decade
  4. King County prices up nearly 16%
  5. System wide prices up 11.4%

“I’ve never seen inventory this low in Kitsap County in 27 years,” remarked Northwest MLS director
Frank Wilson, branch managing broker at John L. Scott Real Estate in Poulsbo. That county’s number of
active listings last month plunged nearly 40 percent from year-ago levels.

At month…

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Establishing purpose, fearlessness, and determination.

When you look at businesses across the real estate industry, you see the ones that succeed all share a common trait: they have purpose. The idea of establishing purpose is absolutely critical to any entrepreneur’s journey if they plan to grow their business. Without knowing what you want and why you want it, you can’t formulate the goals you need to achieve in order to succeed.

Courage is refined, renewed and revealed in ordinary everyday living. Courage is never the preserve of the heroes or the powerful. The choice to choose courage for daily living is life-altering. How about choosing the word “courage” as your daily word for 2018?

Now is the time to start setting the “Table” for your…

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If there’s one thing most early forecasters agree on, it’s that home prices will continue to rise. Where they differ however, is how much they will rise.

The median price of a home across the Seattle metro area has now soared 80 percent since bottoming out five years ago, and its up 20 percent over the old pre-bubble peak a decade ago.

As Seattle marks a full year as America’s hottest housing market, with no end in sight, recent predictions from housing analysts suggest that the Seattle real estate market could continue to outpace the nation well into 2018, in terms of home price appreciation.

 

Seattle is now a full year into its reign as the hottest housing market in the country, an unusually long surge that doesn’t look likely to end…

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The Following is from Ed Irwin a Broker here at The Cascade Team:

Nice summary. One question for you: the way the article is written (and, who knows, perhaps the law itself) it states While homeowners could, up until now, deduct interest on a home loan of up to $1 million, that cap will be lowered to $750,000 come 2018. Now if you have an existing mortgage, you don't need to worry about this change, but if you're applying for a new home loan in 2018, you should know about the impending cap.

 

It states the homeowners can deduct interest on a home loan of up to $750k. 

 

What if a person gets a new mortgage of $800k. Does that mean that interest on that loan is not deductible at all, or is 75/80ths of that interest deductible? 

…

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First of all I want to make it clear that this blog is intentionally working to be nonpolitical and non-partisan. We're just going to directly state the changes to the current tax policy, how they are projected to affect the average home owner or buyer and of course those of us in the Real Estate profession. And while countless Americans will be impacted by the new laws, both for better and for worse, homeowners in particular will see a number of key changes take effect in the very near future. If you own property, here's what you can expect. 

At the bottom of the page is a little more detail on three of the most important changes and how they affect Real Estate Transactions and Buyers and Sellers:

Increased standard deduction: The standard…

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