The Cascade Team Blog - Keenan Porter

30 Fun Thanksgiving Facts to Share Over The Holiday

Before we fill our stomachs with delicious food this Thanksgiving, let's fill our brains with some fun trivia we can share with family and friends!

Thanksgiving is a special holiday for many popular reasons—the food, the family, and the football are just a few. Less well known, however, are the many fascinating facts behind the holiday's history, traditions, and myths. The truth is, for many of us, there's a lot we don't know about the holiday we celebrate every fourth Thursday in November. So before carving up your family's turkey this year, take the time to learn some of the most interesting Thanksgiving facts we could find. At the very least, you'll have some fun (and harmless) dinner conversation to contribute. And for what not do to this…

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Despite Covid restrictions on open houses, brokers, buyers, and sellers employ array of virtual tools to stay safe and fulfill housing needs

KIRKLAND, Washington (November 18, 2020) - Even though in-person open houses are not currently allowed under new and reinstated pandemic-related restrictions, broker-members of Northwest Multiple Listing Service (NWMLS) continue to provide services to home buyers and sellers using several contactless and virtual tools.

Feedback from NWMLS representatives include reports of sales by purchasers who made offers to buy based on virtual and live stream open houses without an in-person tour. One manager noted sellers appreciate being directly involved with their listing broker in establishing limits on the number of visits to their home and the strict use of CDC guidelines for post-showing cleaning/sanitizing.

On November 15, when Governor Jay…

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TALKING TURKEY ABOUT THE 2020 FALL REAL ESTATE MARKET

The Thanksgiving real estate market falls squarely in the middle of, well, fall. And while it’s true the market is usually slower around the holidays; the current market trends of constrained inventory and desperate buyers have in fact made the Holidays an excellent time to put your house up for sale.

The Coronavirus appears to have delayed what is typically a busy summer selling season. Anyone who wasn’t able to buy in summer because of the pandemic is most likely looking to take action sooner rather than later. Pent-up demand, in association with historically low-interest rates, and a severe lack of inventory appears to be stirring up activity. More people are coming off the sidelines to buy with multiple offers and bidding wars becoming the norm…

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13 House Selling Superstitions for Friday 13th!

Friday the 13th is an unlucky day if you’re superstitious. And in case you haven’t noticed, it’s here! But we like to think we are people who see the glass as half-full. We prefer to look at the doomed day as an opportunity to reflect upon some unexpected nuggets of—you guessed it—real estate wisdom.

Do you salute a Magpie? Are you afraid of walking over three drains but will happily walk across two? Cultures are full of superstitions, with many finding their way into the world of Estate Agency. Seeing as it’s Friday 13th today, we thought we’d investigate further and take a look at 13 house selling superstitions from all around the world and through the ages.

The number 13 

The country as a whole appears to be increasingly superstitious, and…

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The 2020 Holiday season may be an even better time than usual to list your home!

During the crazy year that is 2020 the Holiday season may be an even better time than usual to list your home. As we careen at warp speed from Thanksgiving, Christmas, and all of the joyous (read: stressful) festivities in between, you might be tempted to take your home off the market—or hold off on listing it—until after the new year. After all, you’re swamped with cooking, shopping, and decorating, and the last thing you need is a bunch of potential buyers traipsing through your house, right?

Wrong!

Conventional wisdom says people should wait until the spring to get the most from a home sale. After all, inventory normally picks up in the spring when the weather starts to get warmer. This often leads to price wars breaking out in coveted…

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Anxiety among home buyers “incredibly high” as they vie for unpreceded shortage of homes across Washington state

KIRKLAND, Washington (November 5, 2020) – “Finding and buying a home today is more difficult than at any time in the past 40 years of my career,” was how broker Dick Beeson summed up the latest statistics from Northwest Multiple Listing Service.

The Northwest MLS report recapping October activity showed a 40% drop in active listings compared to the same month a year ago, an increase of 16% in pending sales (mutually accepted offers), and a year over-year (YOY) jump of nearly 30% in closed sales. The median price of single-family homes and condominiums that sold last month was $500,000, up 19% from the same period a year ago, according to the MLS summary, which encompasses 23 counties, mostly in Western and Central Washington.

Beeson, the…

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Trick or Treat: The Oddest Contingencies Sellers Are Requesting

Some home sellers are requesting odd contingencies—from maintaining the wardrobe of a plastic skeleton at the front door to caring for their family pets—before they’ll accept an offer.

Contingencies typically involve obtaining financing or fixing issues discovered during the home inspection. However, The Wall Street Journal reports that sellers, who have the upper hand in the market, are feeling emboldened.

“I’m selling a house right now that is being sold with the cat,” Eli Karon, a real estate professional with Karon Properties in Santa Cruz, Calif., told the Journal. The cat has lived there for three years, and the owners don’t want to relocate him. The property attracted six offers and is currently under contract.

In…

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The Cascade Team Presents: Title Terrors - A Haunted Sale

This is a true story of a rather haunted sale...The property was owned by a 79-year-old husband and his wife who was 71 years of age. Title was held in Joint Tenancy. The Husband was deceased. The escrow officer reviewed the supplementary affidavit and death certificate needed for this type of transaction involving joint tenancy survivorship. Everything was in order to close.  

Additionally, the son had power of attorney to sign on behalf of his mother.  

The escrow officer questioned the son as to the reason of the POA and was told his mother was competent and alive but was unable to come to closing.  

The escrow officer left the closing room to check on funding and the son followed her, making a request for the seller's proceeds to be wired…

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Sammamish named best small city to live in America

After topping the list just a year earlier as the "Richest" city in America (See: Sammamish Tops Census List of Richest Cities in America) Sammamish has now been named as the Best Small City to Live in America by Wallethub. 

SAMMAMISH, Wash. -- The Eastside suburb of Sammamish was named the Best Small City to Live in America by a new survey, though it was quite a bit of company from fellow Eastside neighbors near the top of the list.

Wallethub compared 1,200 cities across the nation with populations between 25,000 and 100,000 and scored them against 43 indicators ranging from housing costs to school system quality to restaurants per capita -- even how they are handling the COVID-19 outbreak.

Out of 1,200,…

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Haunted House Hunting Checklist

Looking for something a little “Extra” in your next home? Perhaps bats in the belfries, a strange thumping sounds in the walls, on voices from the basement? Well then you’re in luck… Just in time for Halloween The Cascade Team Real Estate presents our Haunted House Hunting Checklist!  

While some unexpected ghosts may come with a house, most of the surveyed consumers agree on one thing: They prefer to live in a home that is ghost-free. They’re much more willing to live next to a haunted house, though. Nearly 43% of respondents were willing to live next to a house they believed is haunted.

Thirty-seven percent of respondents say they had a feeling the home they wanted to buy was haunted, but they decided to move in anyway, the survey showed.…

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