In the current economy, we constantly come across more information and news regarding the volatile housing industry. According to Amy Bohutinsky, VP of Marketing and Communications for Zillow.com, it could take some time for Puget Sound to recover.

Bohutinsky says that as far as the recovery goes, the Northwest is about a year behind the rest of the nation. According to Bohutinsky, home prices in the Northwest peaked in the middle of 2007, in California, home prices peaked in 2005, and across the country in 2006. What this means is that since we were late to reach our peak, we’ll be late to stabilize as well.

Despite sales being up, home values are still dropping. The problem is the excess inventory of homes.

As more foreclosures hit the market more houses will be added to the housing inventory. Until the months of housing inventory starts to deplete, home prices will continue to decrease.

One thing to keep in mind is that certain areas or counties are hit harder than others. For example, year-over-year declines show Seattle down 11.5 percent, King County down 9.6 percent, Pierce County down 7.9 percent, and Snohomish County down 13.3 percent.

In this market, there are a few simple things to keep in mind.

If you’re a homeowner, it only matters to you if you’re going to move right now or you want to refinance.

If you’re a buyer, it means that homes are more affordable than they’ve been in many years, coupled with historically low mortgage rates, it can be a great time to buy.

If you’re trying to sell your home, be realistic about pricing. An overpriced home will sit on the market indefinitely unless the price is comparable to others homes on the market.

To see the full article and interview with Amy Bohutinsky, please see the King 5 website.

There’s a good reason about 80 percent of homes are sold with the help of a Real Estate Agent. Below are some of the ways that Real Estate Agents help the buying or selling of a home be a straightforward and manageable process.

Setting the right price. One of the very first things a Real Estate Agent presents to a home seller is a Comparative Market Analysis or CMA. The CMA is a report that analyzes the current market trends and recent sales prices within a given area. This report is an important tool that helps the agent determine a fair and reasonable price. Setting the right price is absolutely crucial in home sales, especially in this market. Sellers who utilize a Real Estate Agent, on average, receive 20 percent more for homes compared to those who sell on their own.

Neighborhood knowledge. A Realtor has a better understanding of what buyers can get for their money in the neighborhood they want to buy in. The agent will have information available about the neighborhood and be able to offer guidance and advice to their clients. Agents have information about the neighborhood including noise levels, schools, shopping, property taxes, local amenities, and demographics. For sellers, these details are equally important as they affect the value and marketability of the home.

Marketing expertise. Along with the CMA, a Real Estate Agent will typically present sellers with a marketing plan that details what they will do to sell the home. This may include open houses, internet exposure via large home search sites, fliers, brochures, placing ads in various media including social media, and showing your house to potential buyers. Agents also have access to two extraordinary resources that are critical to selling a home: other agents, and the Multiple Listing Service (MLS).

The MLS and the other agents. The multiple listing service (MLS), is a database of all the homes for sale by Real Estate Agents in a particular region. Once a home is listed, information about it can be accessed by those Real Estate Agents and matched to buyers. You are engaging the efforts of not just one person, but hundreds to sell your home. According to the National Association of Realtors, 82 percent of homes are sold through an agent’s contacts.

Objectivity. When selling, a Real Estate Agent can provide an unemotional analysis of the home and what needs to be enhanced to make it more appealing to buyers. Buyers who choose to utilize a Real Estate Agent will benefit from the agent’s objectivity. Real Estate Agents can provide an unemotional analysis of a home. They will determine any enhancements, modifications or remedies that might be needed to efficiently buy or sell a home.

Efficiency. With the expertise of Real Estate Agents a transaction will be more efficient. Buyers will be shown homes in relation to their needs and qualified loan amounts. Sellers will be best served by Agents objectivity in preparing their home for the market.

Contracts. Realtors can complete the purchase and sale agreement and are knowledgeable about the correct forms needed to accommodate the transaction.

Negotiation and closing assistance. A Real Estate Agent can provide advice for both buyers and sellers about whether to accept an offer, or counter-offer. Real Estate Agents know what a home is worth and what a fair price to offer or to accept is.

Good photographs of homes are essential in the process of selling a home. Imagine when a buyer goes to their favorite home search engine and starts looking for homes. They will more often then not be taking one look at the first picture of a listing and deciding whether it is worth investigating further. Below are some do’s and don’ts to check that ensure your agent is representing your home the way it should be.

1. Do Not List Without a Photo. – Listing without a photograph is almost suicidal to the listing if at the very least extremely counter productive. If people can’t see what it looks like, it can be swiftly ignored. In a market where there are so many homes available, don’t sell your listing short even before you get started. Remember, people are visual creatures and images invoke the strongest emotion and leave a lasting impression.
2. Have Multiple Photo’s. - Now you have one picture. Great! Now interested buyers will have one image to look at and then they get to imagine what the rest of the home looks like! The saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words” is true especially in this case. Some buyers may think that you’re trying to hide something by not having enough photographs, or that your agent is inexperienced. Multiple photographs allow the potential buyer to have a good idea about what your home has to offer, and you end up generating interest from the buyer to read more, and people’s time isn’t wasted.
3. Ensure Quality. – You have a number of images for buyers to look at. You have to be sure that the photographs taken are good quality. This means the content of the photograph is relevant to what a buyer needs to see or know about a certain room. A picture of a wall is not helpful. Put yourself in the buyers’ shoes. What would you want to see? Aside from the quality of the content ensure that the actual digital quality is good as well. If you’ve re-sized the picture so many times that it resembles a Jackson Pollack painting, go back to the original and take the time to size the image properly.

Always keep in mind that when a buyer is looking for a home, especially in our current market situation, they will be confronted with hundreds of homes to choose from. They will usually only pick a select few of those hundreds. The easiest way to narrow their search is to exclude homes with no pictures, not enough pictures, or with poor quality pictures. Keep your property in the running and take the extra time to have great, quality images that showcase the features of the home.

When buyers look at a home, one of the first questions they ask is how long its been on the market. The thought process is that, if a home has been on the market for long time, there must be something wrong with it, right? Not necessarily. Below are some common reasons a house has been on the market for an extended period of time.

1. Overpriced: When the home was originally listed, it may have been way above what the market would bear, and hence, no interest in it. Overpricing of homes is one of the most common and often one of the main reasons some homes are on the market for so long. The tenet of real estate that we’re so used to hearing is, “location, location, location.” Now it’s more along the lines of “pricing, pricing, pricing.”
2. Difficulty Showing: If a home has occupants living there it may be difficult to coordinate times when people can come and look through the home. In some situations tenants may be unwilling and even Sellers may make it difficult to show a property.
3. Inflexible Sellers: Even if a price may be relatively reasonable, some sellers will not budge from the price they’ve set. This inflexibility can turn a lot of buyers away especially if a reduction in price is to accommodate something that may require repair with the home.
4. Down Real Estate Market: In a buyer’s market, which is our current situation, it can take longer to sell a home just due to the fact that there are so many properties available. It’s supply and demand.
5. Little Exposure: If the home received little to no exposure on the internet or the MLS then that will translate into larger cumulative days on market. This is hard to verify but is still quite common. For example, a listing with one or no pictures is unlikely to generate any interest. No pictures or description equals bad marketing.

What Does This Mean To You?

If you’re a home buyer or an agent representing a buyer, cumulative days on market is important. If you take quick look at how long it’s been on the market and making a decision based on that, you may miss some opportunities. Especially in the current housing market situation, homes being listed for much longer than usual is becoming the norm. As a buyer, consider the above and make sure you are evaluating the home on more than just how long it’s been listed. Sometimes, the longer the home is listed, the more motivated a seller is to sell.

If a home has been sitting vacant for a long period of time, that can also mean that it has gone without maintenance, heat, and general care.

As a seller, if you’re home has been on the market for an extended period of time, it may be time to reevaluate your listing. If it falls under any of the common reasons above, take action to resolve it.

Happy new year! As the new year begins, so do the resolutions for the upcoming year. As an agent, there are some things you can resolve to do that will not only increase your business, but will increase the success rate of your buyers and sellers.

Social Media

Utilizing social media to help advertise and expose your listings will not only help your sellers but it will also attract buyers looking for a home. If you haven’t already started using social media, ie. Facebook, Twitter, and others, you’re missing out on one of the fastest growing, and most useful tools you have available to you.

Newsletters

These may seem old-fashioned and out of date, but the fact is they’re great for staying in the minds of your constituency. People that you’ve done business with before will have you in mind when they recommend an agent to their family and friends or when they themselves are in the market for a new home or need to sell theirs.

Taking Pictures

This seems obvious, but if you’re searching for a home on the MLS or other home search tool, and you come across a listing with absolutely no pictures, or just one, what do you do? You ignore it. Don’t let this be you. It is doing a disservice to your client if you don’t take the time to take photographs. If you’re serious about selling the client’s home, you need to demonstrate the features of the home. And the best way to do that is through photographs.

Tidying The Property

As a agent listing a property, your responsibility is to get the home sold. There are a plethora of things you can do to ensure your listing gets seen. One of the best ways is to communicate with the seller about what the expectations are for the home. This also relates back to taking pictures. Make sure your photos are appealing and demonstrate the special attributes of the home inside as well as outside. Laying bark down in flowerbeds is a great way to add a landscaped and clean look to a property. Make sure that during the picture-taking process that the home is clean and uncluttered and that before potential buyers come to investigate the property, that it gets picked up and tidied.

If you’re already doing the above, these are just a few less resolutions you’ll need to make. For those that aren’t, working on the above will improve your exposure, and will help advertise yourself, and your listings.

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the office,

All of the attendants, were somewhere amiss,

Papers were stacked on the desks with care,

In hopes that when they got back they’d still be there,

The agents had gone home, and nestled in their beds,

While visions of closed deals, danced in their heads;

And my cat in his pajamas, and I in my sweater,

Were both poking fun at who ‘looked better’.

When out in the den there arose such a sound,

I lept from my chair, and flung the cat to the ground.

Away to my computer, I flew like the dawn,

I wiggled my mouse and turned the screen on.

The login screen appeared, and I typed like the wind,

As it processed my password, I happily grinned.

I searched for what, the sound had been,

Ho! Instant Messenger! A new email came in.

I opened my inbox, and to my eyes did appear,

A tiny digital sleigh, and animated reindeer,

With a little old driver, pixelated and thick,

I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick!

With animated vibrance, his coursers they came,

He whistled and shouted, and called them by name;

“Now Dasher! Now, Dancer! Now Prancer and Vixen!

I would have brought Cupid but didn’t know how to fix ‘im!

To the top of Matrix! To the top of the NWMLS!

Don’t let the down market keep you depressed!”

So navigating my browser to Matrix they flew,

With a sleigh full of .pdf files and St. Nicholas too.

And in a twinkling, like a candle against gold,

They showed me the house that I’d listed just sold!

And the digital Santa with his mouth drawn like a bow,

And the beard of his pixel chin as white as the snow;

He gave me a wink, and sprang back to his sleigh,

And with a whoosh he was off and away.

And as I waved farewell, my lip did quiver,

I knew for a fact he had more emails to deliver.

But I heard him exclaim, ere he disappeared from my sight,

“Happy Holidays to all, and to all a good-night.”

Happy holidays everybody!

The first snow of the season has come and gone. It’s cold and will be getting colder. There are many families who will need help this winter staying warm. That is why Puget Sound Energy has a partnership with The Salvation Army to help provide qualified low-income families with heat and natural gas this winter. Puget Sound Energy’s customers, employees, and the corporate giving program contributed over $700,000 to the Warm Home Fund last year, providing assistance to nearly 4,000 families. Contact your local Salvation Army unit for more information.

In addition to the Warm Home Fund, Puget Sound Energy’s HELP Program provides additional bill-payment assistance to qualified PSE customers. Eligible customers can receive up to $1,000 per year in credits to lower their electricity or natural gas bills. Depending on the county in which you live, the maximum household income for eligibility ranges between 125 percent and 150 percent of the federal poverty guidelines. HELP assistance is offered year-round to eligible customers.

For more information, please visit Puget Sound Energy’s website.

It’s that time of year again. The winds are picking up, storms are brewing, and it’s getting colder. We’ve all been told it’s going to be a La Nina year, meaning wetter, and colder than normal years. Sitting next to a window and watching the clouds race by makes you marvel at how amazing nature is.

Since it is that time of year, it seemed only appropriate to reflect on the season, and things you can do to prepare for the inevitable blusteryness.

Clogged Storm Drains

The wind and the cold makes the leaves fall, and the leaves plug up drains like toy army soldiers plug toddlers’ noses. To reduce or prevent erosion and flooding in your neighborhood, make sure that storm drains are kept clear so that the rain water has a place to go during our classic Seattle winter rain storms.

Wind and Rain

As our rain storms come rolling in, so will the high winds. The ground, saturated with water from heavy rain can often cause instability for trees. As the high winds thrash the trees, some may lose their footing and fall. Check trees around your property and if you see one that already looks like the Leaning Tower of Piza, that may be something you’ll need to address.

Wear warm clothing, use umbrellas, and have some nice warm socks. Use ‘em and wear ‘em, you’ll be glad you did.

Be Prepared for Power Outages

The chance of us not losing power at some point this winter is about the same as the chances of winning a game of hopscotch with one peg leg (if you happen to be one of these people I don’t mean to offend you). It’s likely that we’ll lose power, so be prepared with extra food stuffs like crackers, canned foods, peanut butter and other non-perishable items that can be used in an emergency. Have a small stock of bottled water that you can have on hand in an emergency as well.

Have candles and flashlights ready and stock up on batteries. For those that have lived in the Seattle area long enough, you can recall some of the storms we’ve had. If/when it snows, be prepared with extra blankets and warm clothing as well.

If you keep all these things in mind, hopefully you’ll have a happy blustery winter. If you don’t prepare, Winnie-the-Pooh will knock on your door at some point and say, “Told you so.”

Efficiency for Fall and Winter

Save money and stay warm through the winter months:

• Check the condition of caulking. Any breaks in the seal can let in cold air or water. Look for air and water leaks around windows, doors, and anything else that goes through walls, such as pipes and vents. Ensure that door and weather stripping is in good shape. You may also want to consider installing a storm door (tax credits may be available). For complete air-sealing guidelines you can visit www.energystar.gov.
• Make sure that bathroom and kitchen fans are installed and vented properly to avoid and minimize moisture buildup.
• Assess home insulation and add more if needed.

Get Rebates!

Appliances

• New-appliance rebates from the state include $75 for Energy Star dishwashers, and $250 for energy Star heat pump water heaters. Rebates for qualifying clothes washers have increased to $150. This means you’ll get back $250 back when you combine the state’s rebate with the City Lights Wash-Wise rebate: www.seattle.gov/light/conserve/resident/appliances.

In-room heat pumps

• Ductless heat pumps are more efficient than baseboard heaters or wall fans. For a limited time, Seattle City Light offers a $1,200 rebate when a ductless heat pump is installed. You may also be eligible for a $750 rebate from the state and may qualify for federal tax credits.

Tax rebates

• The IRS offers tax rebates on home improvements such as windows, insulation, duct sealing, heat pumps, furnaces and furnace fans, and heat pump water heaters when placed in service before Dec. 31, 2010: www.energysavers.gov/financial.

For more information about any of the Seattle City Light’s conservation and renewable power programs for residential and business customers, visit www.seattle.gov/light/conserve or call 206-684-3800.

Deciding whether or not buying a home is right for you can be a difficult decision. While a home can be a great asset, it can also be a large burden as well. The below list of advantages and disadvantages should help sort out what will be right for you. Consider the following.

Advantages of Buying Your Own Home

1. Tax Deductions: Most of the interest you pay on your home mortgages (a majority of the monthly mortgage payments is interest) is tax deductible.

2. Equity: Over time, and as you continue to make your monthly payments your home’s equity will increase. It will increase as the value of the home increases. You can even borrow against the equity in your home in the form of a home equity loan.

3. Asset: A home is generally an appreciating asset. The home’s value is likely to increase which means if you hold onto it for usually longer than five years, you’ll be able to sell it for a profit.

4. You Own It: The House is yours. You don’t have to ask someones permission on whether you can change the color, remodel, landscape, or have pets.

Disadvantages of Buying Your Own Home

1. Maintenance: All the maintenance required will have to be done by you, or you’ll have to pay someone else to do it.

2. Taxes: You will have to pay property taxes, which will be included in your monthly mortgage payment. These are not tax deductible.

3. Risk: The property value of your home could decline or you may be unable to sell it later, causing you to lose money on your investment.

4. Opportunity Cost: A home is a fairly large investment. If you could put the money down into an investment like stocks or mutual funds, or go back to school to earn a degree, you could be losing an opportunity.

If you’re considering buying a home, the first thing you’ll need to do is determine how much you qualify for. Contact your lender to see how much you can pre-qualify for.