Brad Inman hosted an interesting webinar just a few days ago on the Best Broker Business Model. Participants were Glen Kelman, Redfin; Sam DeBord, real estate writer and broker; Ben Kinney, Keller Williams; OB Jacobi, Windermere; and Vikram Deol, Coldwell...
Read More

Toll Brothers is offering a ‘Fly and Buy’ program for potential buyers traveling to a new town. In some cases, consumers get to try out a new home in one of their communities. At the least, Toll will reimburse for...
Read More

SKCAR hosted their annual Battle of the Barristers a few weeks ago, and it was the largest attendance ever. The Barristers in this 3 clock-hour course/event were moderator Mike Spence, Helsell Fetterman; Lars Neste, Demco Law Firm; Chris Osborn, Foster...
Read More

While publicly traded homebuilders own more than 65% of new home subdivisions in Orlando, Las Vegas, Riverside, San Jose and Denver, the public builders are in the minority in many other markets. This is an interesting chart from the John...
Read More

Last week I was whining about Washington State’s lack of leadership in pushing through a construction defects bill, like Vancouver B.C. and now, possibly, Colorado. Jan Rohila from the Building Industry Association of Washington (BIAW) just sent me a link...
Read More

My goodness! March was the second best March since the year 2000, only bested by the incredible year of 2005. The news release from the NWMLS stated that “Buyer anxiety is rising as the pace of home sales is faster...
Read More

Construction-defects reform just passed its first big test in the Colorado legislature, winning bi-partisan support in the state Senate Committee. This bill has some similarities to the Vancouver, BC bill passed several years ago. Basically, it requires mediation or arbitration...
Read More

This is good chart sent to us from Bonnie Muraoka at Wells Fargo. It shows a decline in February, due mostly to snow and weather, but overall a slow but sure growth in starts. Our year is off to a...
Read More

The Puget Sound Business Journal reports that nearly 65,000 now live in downtown Seattle, almost a quarter million people work there every day and fifteen million square feet of office space is under construction. Wow. “Downtown” is defined by the...
Read More

So, speaking of downtown, when are condos coming back? A great panel including Suzzi Moris from Lowe Enterprises, Paul Zeger from Polaris Pacific, Randy Daniels from HomeStreet Bank and David Herman from Cairncross & Hempelmann just made a presentation on...
Read More

Multifamily Executive magazine just published a study that shows many new buildings include a large share of studios and one-bedroom apartments. That is sort of understandable, given that Millennials are a prime target. Having said that, if the developer is...
Read More

I love Millennials because they are going to buy a zillion homes from us in the coming decade. A recent Google Consumer Study revealed that 30 percent more Millennials (born 1980 – 1995) visited real estate websites in 2014 compared...
Read More

Sales in February were the strongest since 2005, even surpassing 2006 numbers! Wow. Some sources cite pent up demand, the consensus around our office is the lack of availability, especially in the more desirable areas. On a related note, 68...
Read More

The U.S. Census has just reported that home ownership has reached its lowest point at 64% since 1990. Washington State is 63.2%. As the chart shows, this number has reached as high as 69%, and the desire for home ownership...
Read More

Having just returned from London, I am so grateful we have a title insurance system in our state. It just makes our lives so much easier. There’s an old/new player about to hit town in a big way. A group...
Read More

10,000+ adoring acolytes attended Keller Williams Family Reunion in Florida a few weeks ago and watched and listened to an amazing 157 minute presentation on the state of the real estate industry in our country. Here’s just one slide of...
Read More

This chart represents where people currently living in each state were born. In our state, 47% were born here, but a substantial number emigrated from California (the yellow-gold) and the darker grey indicates a large number of people from outside...
Read More

Zillow recently reported that rents have increased by 21% over the last five years, while wages increased by 10.4%. “Lots of people have this rule of thumb – that you shouldn’t be spending more than 30 percent of income toward...
Read More

A new year started with the best January in the 16 years represented on this graph. Wow! “The current inventory of homes available for sale has never been lower in my 22 years as a real estate broker,” lamented MLS...
Read More

What are the three most important words in real estate, you ask? Location! Location! Location! For a mere $1.1 million, you could purchase your very own trailer. It’s only 48 years old, has 700 sq.ft. of living space and sits...
Read More

Forbes just came out with their analysis of fastest growing cities. Forbes says that thanks to horizontal drilling and fracking, Houston has added a whopping 667,800 jobs since 2005! Other factors Forbes looked at included population growth, year-over-year job growth,...
Read More

Are you creating beautiful new homes, then relying on substandard photography? Tessa Rowe at MainVue doesn’t. Check these out. These photographs measure up to the quality of the homes and start selling the moment they are viewed online! www.MainVueHomes.com/home.
Read More