It is getting to be "That" time of year after all, so I thought we would kick things off with some "True" frightening tales from real estate professionals from around the country. You might want to think twice about reading these before heading off to an Open House though! Wahhhhhhh…….

 

Real estate professionals are a brave bunch. You walk into unfamiliar homes every day, prepared to deal with whatever lurks inside. Hopefully, the scariest thing you find is a seller’s outdated sense of style. But some properties have more insidious issues that staging can’t fix.

No strangers to haunted houses, many practitioners have real-life horror stories of dealing with creepy, ghostly circumstances in the course of their daily work. With…

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Are your sellers ready for a buyer's market?

  • Inventory increases by 22.9 percent throughout Western Washington
  • King County leads inventory gains with 78 percent year-over-year increase.
  • Buyers could choose from 19,526 listings nearly double the inventory from February of this year

KIRKLAND, Washington (October 4, 2018) - Housing inventory continued to improve during September while the pace of sales slowed in many counties served by Northwest Multiple Listing Service. "Balance is finally returning to the market, and with it, slowing home price growth," stated OB Jacobi, president of Windermere Real Estate.

A new report from Northwest MLS shows double-digit increases in inventory in several of the 23 counties it serves, led by…

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Are your sellers ready for a buyer's market?

  • Inventory increases by 22.9 percent throughout Western Washington
  • King County leads inventory gains with 78 percent year-over-year increase.
  • Buyers could choose from 19,526 listings nearly double the inventory from February of this year.

 KIRKLAND, Washington (October 4, 2018) – Housing inventory continued to improve during September
while the pace of sales slowed in many counties served by Northwest Multiple Listing Service. “Balance is
finally returning to the market, and with it, slowing home price growth,” stated OB Jacobi, president of
Windermere Real Estate.

A new report from Northwest MLS shows double-digit increases in inventory in several of the 23 counties it
serves, led by a 78…

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Posted by Hailey Miller on Tuesday, October 2, 2018 

As the median age of the U.S. owner-occupied housing climbs higher, analysts believe it signals growth for the remodeling market. Old structures normally require new amenities or replacement and repairs of older components, they explain.

"Rising home prices also encourage homeowners to spend more on home improvement," noted Na Zhao, senior economist at the National Association of Home Builders. Aging-in-place boomers are also expected to bolster spending on home improvement.

Citing data from the 2016 American Community Survey, the National Association of Home Builders noted half the homes in the U.S. were built before 1980. The median age of owner-occupied homes is 37 years,…

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Over 37% Of Seattle Area Homes Take a Price Drop In Past 30 Days

In King County the number of homes for sale surged up 66% in the past year — and 86 percent just in the city of Seattle — the biggest rise in more than a decade.

Meanwhile, the share of homes with price drops has been posting year-over-year gains consistently since late March. Currently in just the past 30 days starting with September the 26th, 37.2% of Seattle area homes taken a price drop totaling the largest percentage in more than a decade for this statistic as well.

Note: “We define a price drop as a listing price reduction of more than 1 percent and less than 50 percent.”

After years of strong price growth and intense competition for homes, buyers are taking advantage…

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10 tips for guiding sellers through the choppy waters of a market correction

 

https://www.inman.com/2018/09/19/are-your-sellers-ready-for-a-buyers-market/

 

 Carl Medford, REALTOR, CRS

 

This year’s market is not the same as it was last year at this time. Here in the Greater Seattle Area, a region renowned for extreme inventory shortages, short days on the market, multiple offers and contracts way over asking price, everything has suddenly changed.

 

Everything, that is, except seller expectations.

How do you manage clients when the market suddenly develops into something they had not anticipated? Here are our top 10 recommendations for managing seller expectations when the market enters a correction.

1. Memorize the…

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  • House-hunters in Western Washington can choose from the largest supply of homes in three years.
  • New statistics from the MLS show prices appear to be moderating.
  • King County Housing Inventory has a 74.3 percent increase.
  • Mutually accepted contracts drop 14.8% as buyers adjust to more options.
  • For Buyers: “This is the best time in three years to be aggressive in the marketplace”

KIRKLAND, Washington (September 7, 2018) – House-hunters in Western Washington can choose from the largest supply of homes in three years, and they are facing fewer bidding wars, according to officials from Northwest Multiple Listing Service.

New statistics from the MLS show prices appear to be moderating (up about 6.7 percent overall), but brokers…

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Posted by Hailey Miller on Thursday, August 30, 2018 .

For the first time in nearly two years, the Seattle area no longer leads the nation in home price increases. The monthly Case-Shiller home price index, released Tuesday, showed Las Vegas now claims the title as the nation’s hottest housing market.

The Case-Shiller numbers don’t reflect the full scope of the slowdown however, do in large part to the fact that it includes a three-month moving average through June (things have cooled even more since then), and also because it reflects the entire metro area (Pierce and Snohomish counties haven’t slowed down quite as much as King).

A new analysis from Zillow, using more recent numbers, showed Seattle had the biggest slowdown in…

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For the first time in nearly two years, the Seattle area no longer leads the nation in home price increases. The monthly Case-Shiller home price index, released Tuesday, showed Las Vegas now claims the title as the nation’s hottest housing market.

The Case-Shiller numbers don’t reflect the full scope of the slowdown however, do in large part to the fact that it includes a three-month moving average through June (things have cooled even more since then), and also because it reflects the entire metro area (Pierce and Snohomish counties haven’t slowed down quite as much as King).

A new analysis from Zillow, using more recent numbers, showed Seattle had the biggest slowdown in housing prices in the country, falling to the 12th hottest housing market…

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Posted by Hailey Miller on Wednesday, August 22nd, 2018 at 9:05am.

Want to create wealth through homeownership? Build equity. 

Home equity is the percentage of your home’s value that you own, and it’s key to building wealth through homeownership. Let’s take a closer look at how to build home equity without blowing your budget — and how to access it when you need it.

How much equity do you have?

Equity is easy to calculate when you first buy a home because it’s basically your down payment. For example, if you put $11,250 down on a $225,000 home, your down payment is 5 percent and so is your equity.

From 2016 to the first quarter of 2018, most first-time home buyers in the U.S. started with about 7-percent equity, according to…

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