In The News

In The News Agent Compensation Court Cases Many of you have likely been hearing about a large class-action lawsuit and decision that came out last week impacting the Real Estate industry and brokerage fees. The current case is the Sitzer/Burnett case but there are others filed and brewing in the background. I wanted to offer some background on this case and the […]
In The News Every Which Way But Loose….?? We’ve been bombarded by divergent economic news events and statistics for the past few years. The forecasts seem just as divergent. There seems to be some consensus that a recession is coming but when? How severe? How long? What can we do about it? There’s no consensus on these answers. We, the general public, have […]
In The News Confusion Is The State of The Market We have data, headlines, whispers and fears running in all directions at this time. It is beyond me, and from what I’ve read, seen or heard, it seems beyond anyone to say they “know” what the market is or will do. Some of our region has prices still up from last year while other parts […]
In The News Redfin Bows Out of i-Buying As our real estate market calms down, another big i-Buyer has closed down it’s program of buying homes directly from home sellers, so called iBuying, for instant and usually internet based home buying. Almost one year ago at this time, Zillow announced they would stop buying homes directly from home sellers as their losses from […]
In The News Crazy Market Whiplash We’ve come out of a market with historic price appreciation, 70-80+% of offers at/above asking price and a record sales pace to now a market with sales  slumping by 20% and sale prices 20-25% off our peak prices of April and May of this spring. Hold on to your head and your hat! We’ve seen […]
In The News Working in Crazy Times To say these are crazy times is certainly an understatement. Many of us have wondered how crazy things could get since Covid arrived. So many directions to go on this but we’ll stick with the real estate world. Certainly declining inventory of homes for sale has occurred. Buyer demand hitting near all time highs has […]
In The News Zillow Bows Out of i-Buying Homes Big news was announced this week when Zillow stated they will no longer be buying or making Instant Offers to buy homes across the country. In early October they announced they were putting the program on hold due to backlogs of homes, labor and material shortages. They had too much inventory on their books. It […]
In The News Why a Housing Bubble Isn’t Our Problem I’ve mentioned in earlier posts that I think the fears of a housing bubble are misguided or more accurately not well founded. The number of people owning their homes outright, no mortgage debt at all, is still quite high, in the 25-30% range. The number of people with 50+% equity in their homes is also […]
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In The News About That Inventory Shortage…. A quick video to discuss the actual state of new-on-market listing levels. While it’s true our “end of the month,” snapshot-in-time, numbers for available homes for sale are at record lows, in the 25-33% range of our historical homes-for-sale levels, it’s also true that our new listings taken each week and month are at or […]
In The News Smile, Hope Springs Eternal For most of us, this past week or so of sunshine has brightened our outlooks dramatically. Yes, it’s just the weather but after 2020 and a rocky winter, it seems we’re all reaching for and clinging to these bright moments of joy. If we can string enough of them together, we can modify our perspectives and […]
In The News Where Is Our For Sale Home Inventory? Some of us likely remember the Johnny Carson show and his banter with his audience of “how crazy is it….” Well, it’s pretty crazy out there. Likely many of you also saw the skit on Saturday Night Live a couple of weeks ago spoofing Zillow searches for homes as today’s dating or other unusual website […]
In The News Is 2021 Already Over? Welcome to 2021? I’ve been trying to figure out how to respond to the events in Washington DC and Olympia this week and it’s hard to encapsulate into a cute message or quick slogan. So, I understand if you don’t want to take a few minutes to consider this message. First, I was blessed to […]
In The News Q3 2020 Gardner Report for Western Washington I am fortunate to work for Windermere Real Estate and one of the benefits I derive is access to a local economist, Matthew Gardner, who monitors various economic details and trends for insights and perspectives on our real estate market. Here’s his latest analysis of the Western Washington market place. It seems we have recovered […]
In The News Finding Balance in Tumultuous Times For most of us the end of March seems like an eternity ago and yet by the end of March, the first of March seemed like an eternity before that. 2020 has presented all of us with challenges we couldn’t have imagined and most of us would like to forget. Sadly life doesn’t allow us to […]
In The News Market Update Amid Uncertain Times Pardon my absence, the market has been running extremely hot for the past several months and I thought I’d offer some insights on the activity levels and sentiments. Contrary to many predictions early in the year, the market took a 4-6 week breath in mid-March but has taken off in a full stroke sprint since […]
In The News Forbearance Impact on Lending and Home Values As part of the Corona Virus response from the Federal Government, the Feds have provided an option for homeowners to not make their mortgage payments, with no need to prove a hardship or inability to pay.This is called Forbearance. There are many moving parts to the mortgage industry, most of which homeowners aren’t aware. I […]
In The News Which Way Is Up For Real Estate? This trek of isolating in our homes marches on. Hopefully some of our sunny days have helped to break the monotony and stress of isolation and lifted your spirits as we stay home to stay safe. The real estate market was put on the essential business/services list just a few days after we were told […]
In The News Covid-19 and Real Estate? There’s no doubt, there’s a lot of fear in our local marketplace. Today we saw our stock indexes drop by 7% and even the good news of great jobs reports from last week, major drops in the costs of oil and record low interest rates can’t seem to win the headlines against Covid-19. So what’s […]
In The News Buying In A Seller’s Market? Our winter market has been exceptionally strong since late November. Homes in most price ranges and geographies have sold quickly with very little competition and lots of demand. This is great news for home sellers, so don’t doddle if you’d like to take advantage of these circumstances. For Buyers this isn’t so great. The stock […]
In The News ULI’s Economic Forecasts Show Stability for US and us Headlines of fear always get more notoriety than good news but here’s the most recent news release from the Urban Land Institute. They surveyed Economists  and analysts on the US Economy. The report shows a persistently stable to robust economic expansion around the country. We have been on a prolonged skyrocketing trajectory that can’t be […]