Lake at Home

Summer, when a person's fancy turns to - Energy Savings?

2011-07-25T18:53:39Z

Yes, yes, and Yes, again! What's a better feeling than knowing you've cut energy costs and made your nest more energy-efficient?

You can do It Yourself!

The City of Seattle's downloadable brochure, Do It Yourself Home Energy Audit - A Step-by-Step Guide for Identifying and Improving Your Home's Energy Efficiency, delivers what it promises. You don't need any fancy equipment, and the savings can be significant.

There are Professional Energy Audits

Seattle City Light is sponsoring a program where, for $95, an auditor certified by the Building Performance Institute will visit your home and conduct a thorough assessment for you.

And, there are Energy Performance Scores

Seattle Public Utilities has a program called the Home Resource Profile where customers can fill out a 20-minute survey that will result in a report with easy-to-read charts and graphs showing your billing history, how your usage of water and electricity compares with the average Seattle household, and tips on how to reduce your energy bills.

With a little planning today, you'll be reducing heating and cooling costs and saving energy tomorrow! So, why wait - get started today!

A Casual Shrub Border

2011-05-22T20:25:36Z

(Written by Cynthia Creasey)

Nothing beats the casual shrub border when it comes to easy of maintenance and creating a beautiful, year round, dynamic garden element that creates a powerful impact via a variety of scale, form, color, scent and flowers!

A shrub border provides visual separation and a physical barrier that is far more subtle, long-lasting, and varied in possibilities then mere fencing. Shrubs create shade below, minimizing the spread of weeds, and with the addition of yearly mulch and/or the planting of carefree, mat-covering ground covers, the chore of weeding can almost be entirely avoided! Also, shrubs maintain their health and beauty without pruning.

First, measure or pace off the ultimate size of the plants you're considering. Resist over-planting! You'll want to avoid having to move, or take out the plant in a few years! If you think you can "prune it into shape," remember the Plant Amnesty adage: "Death before torture!"

Secondly, consider the aspect and soil of your site. Large or medium shrub foundation plantings are a no-no! Shrubs, like all plants, will do everything possible to grow to fill their space, reaching for light and/or water as needed. Planting under the eaves and against the house, the shrubs have no place to grow except awkwardly out and up, often becoming scraggly looking at the bottom (and doing a darn poor job of covering the foundation) while blocking windows and cutting into light and views above.

Third, choose your plants. There are many garden books to help you. Consulting with a professional gardener or at a local nursery could save you a lot of time and failures. Professional gardeners also have access to wholesale nurseries and are experienced at choosing the healthiest plants. Take pictures when you see shrubs you like showing their overall form and close-ups of leaf, flowers or seeds form.

You can do the design work on site by placing labeled stakes in the ground, or you can do a scale drawing. Consider curved borders for a more natural look. Even if you're planting along a fence or sidewalk, the front edge may still be a curve. Be careful not to plant too close to the fence if it's the property line or your border will be encroaching on the neighbor's property and they may choose to hack it back. Likewise facing the sidewalk, allow enough space (without having to prune) for the shrub's maximum spread to not encroach on the sidewalk space. For a deep bed, plant the largest shrubs at the back and medium and smaller ones nearer the front of the border. A shrub border could easily be 25' wide and one under 6' will limit your choices. Consider planting in odd numbered multiples to create repetition and a more coherent look.

Maximun Seller Contribution to a Buyer's Loan

2011-05-02T20:10:09Z

What is the maximum Seller Concession for a Buyer's Loan?

Well, that depends, and it's always best to consult with the Buyer's lender before your offer includes promises your lender can't keep. When you are negotiating for a buyer, keep the following in mind.

Type of Loan	LTC/CLTV	Maximum Seller Concession Allowed
Conventional Primary and 2nd Homes	Over 90%	3%
Conventional Primary and 2nd Homes	75-89.99%	6%
Conventional Primary and 2nd Homes	Under 75%	9%
Conventional Non-Owner Occupied	N/A	2%
FHA	N/A	6%
VA	N/A	4% Maximum for prepaid closing costs, funding fee & debt payoff

This information provided by Eileen Burke with Cobalt Mortgage in Seattle, a preferred lender.

Eileen also counsels that Seller concessions can not be paid in cash to the buyer, so if you are leaving money on the table, apply it to future home owner's insurance, property taxes, or *HOA dues.

We are in a very unusual market. For listings where the Sellers properly prepare the home and agree to list at a price the market recognizes as current, we are seeing very short market times and multiple offers. The other half of the market consists of homes that were priced too high originally and/or the Sellers are unwilling to lower them. It's this homes that the seller is often willing to assist the buyer in making the loan more attractive and sometimes just possible.

Representing a Buyer involves getting the best deal possible and this is one avenue to explore.

Representing a Seller and suggesting a Seller contribution in a counter offer may just be the ingredient that makes for a happy transaction.

Previously published on Active Rain

Common Ways to Hold Title in WA

2011-04-28T16:31:04Z

At some point in the process of buying a home you are going to be asked how you want to "hold title".

Here are four common ways to hold title to real property in Washington State:

1) Single Individual - A person who is not married or a registered domestic partner.

2) Separate Property - A person who is married or a registered domestic partnership who holds title without a spouse or registered domestic partner. A quit Claim Deed will often be required by the title company from the spouse of partner not going on title.

3) Tenancy In Common - Two or more people have interests (not as community property or joint tenants) in the property. The individual interests do not need to be equal, but the sum total of the interests must equal 100%. The interests of each tenant-in-common pases to his or her heir(s) upon death.

4) Joint Tenancy - Two or more people have equal interests in the property and the deed by which they take title must specify that the property is "held as joint tenants, with rights of survivorship". Unlike tenancy-in-common, when a co-owner dies, his or her ownership interest automatically passes to the other co-owner(s).

Choosing how you want to hold title is an important detail to figure out prior to closing. Be sure to have a conversation with your agent, Title Company and/or an attorney if you have any questions or concerns.

On Clutch, a book by Paul Sullivan

2011-04-25T16:01:36Z

Clutch, a book by Paul Sullivan is all about the ability to do under pressure what you can do under normal circumstances. The concept applies constantly in sports events as athletes who have practiced for years suddenly need to excel in real time under "other" circumstances. Those in the military discover who can and who can't perform in combat sometimes with dire consequences.

How does "being a clutch player" pertain to real estate? What traits do clutch players have and how do you recognize them as you decide which Realtor to use when buying or selling a Seattle home or small business?

The five traits are focus, discipline, adaptability, being present, and the awareness of the push and pull of fear and desire. Without all five character traits, will your selected agent stumble through the preparation, searching, marketing, negotiating, inspecting, and closing steps involved in the typical transaction in the very different market we now face?

The well-developed ability to focus, to concentrate like a laser, on the client's needs is the first and most important of the five traits. Solid discipline keeps the Realtor on track. Adaptability allows your agent to recognize trends and keep you advised to slight as well as major changes in the market. Being present involves meeting the market where it is today. Past successes are nothing but ego strokes for the agent. Today's market is substantially different from anything seen over the past 30 years. And lastly, is your agent keyed into your desires, and is he aware of the consequences of failure? Are you?

Overconfidence and pride are enemies of a clutch player. If anyone tells you that making a move and successfully completing a transaction in the current market is going to be easy, they are missing or ignoring many important factors that they cannot control. Loans and appraisals are very uncertain elements these days. Buyers remorse is frequent. Sellers okay at one price may be coming up short at the offered price.

Choose a Realtor® wisely. Choose a Lake and Company agent to help you find success in real estate.

Understanding Negotiations

2011-03-09T18:47:04Z

Not one real estate agent in the country has ever admitted publicly to being a poor negotiator. We all claim to be experts. And most of those claims are based on agent experience developed between 2002 and 2007. Everything sold, no matter what. Boasts like, "I averaged 12% over listing price for my sellers," abound. Buyer agents claim that, "I got it for my buyers over 8 other offers," were pretty much the norm. But I don't think that this had anything to do with negotiating skills. A pleasant, professional appearance, a pre-inspection and a strong offer usually carried the day.

Let's take a rational look at negotiations to understand the process see if real estate agents are even in the game these days. There are two ways to negotiate. You can negotiate from a position or you can negotiate from merit. If, as buyer, you want to negotiate from a position you are essentially saying that you won't go over $xxx,xxx for that house. Your reasoning might be comps or condition. But you take a stand and see if the seller rolls over. If your agent has to deliver that message, or a message that contains the clause "only if," then you are in a fixed position and decrease your chances of making a deal. The message is, the buyer doesn't really care about the house; only care about getting a deal. The same rationale applies to sellers. On the other hand, if the offer has merit, if it explains your needs, your financial abilities, and if it assesses the situation rationally, then it's worth trying to find a way to understand the merit of the other party and determine if the needs of each can be attained.

Once you've established how you and the other members of the negotiation are looking at the situation, you will need to determine the style of each person who has something to say. The five basic negotiation styles consist of defeatism, accommodation, compromise, withdrawal and collaboration. Non of these styles is necessarily wrong, and it is important for an expert negotiator to recognize how these various styles are being used an any conversation.
Someone who uses the defeatism style is often perceived of as aggressive and as a bully. It is often used successfully when that negotiator discovers a weakness in the other party and tries to use it to their advantage. If such a person has a habit of using the technique, at some point they may make an error in evaluating the weakness of others and destroy the negotiation progress.
If, at the beginning of a negotiation, one party adopts an accommodating posture, the others may see that as a weakness. This type of person, a person who doesn't want to make waves, would be wise to have a skilled negotiator on his side to help him keep his original objective in mind.

Some negotiators are compromisers. It often works well for each party to to give up something in exchange for something else. In some cases this can get confusing and again, one or both parties may loose sight of their original objectives.

For offers that are too low to start with, or counter offers that don't seek resolution other than in price, and usually the original price, some parties to a negotiation will just withdraw. Nothing stops a discussion faster than one party refusing to speak to the others. The final style of negotiating is for the parties to collaborate. It stakes a skilled negotiator to sincerely ask and discover what the opposing party really wants, and yet be confident enough to disclose the prime objectives and goals on his side. The result, when successful, will have one negotiator finding ways to teach the other to collaborate so that both parties reach their objectives.

My next post will deal with the emotional side of negotiations. When choosing a broker to work with, it is important for you to determine how he interacts with you. It may be a good indication of how he will represent your interests in the purchase or sale of a property.

2010 Census - How Has Your Neighborhood Changed?

2011-03-04T20:39:08Z

With the release of the statistics form the 2010 census you can now explore how your neighborhood has changed. The U.S. Census Bureau has just released population, race and age data for Washington. The Seattle Times has several tools for seeing how the region and neighborhoods have changed over the last 10 years. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/census2010/ There is an interactive map and a fairly interesting dot map in pdf format.

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When The News Gets Old

2011-02-27T16:36:29Z

Newspapers and television keep talking about the housing recovery. Hello? The housing industry has recovered. If you've ever had a serious disease, major surgery, or been significantly injured in an accident, you long for recovery. You endure physical therapy, medication, and rehabilitation processes to, one day, get back to being your old self. But then one day you are old, and you've always been yourself, but you know that where you are now is not the recovery you hoped for. The housing market went through a period of drug induced euphoria between 2002 and 2007. Place the credit or blame where ever you want. I call it financing on crack. Investors wanted to make big money fast. Wall Street was doing anything to get bundles of loans they could then sell to investors. Lenders were going to 70% ratios (the norm always was, and is again 30%) on stated income (not anymore) just to make loans because Wall Street was buying. And the American public just had to buy a bigger and better home because next week it would be worth 50% or 80% or 100% more and we would have money to spend, spend, spend. Granted: Not everyone thought his way. But in retrospect, it should be obvious to all that the values reached in the real estate industry were not sustainable. They were not true values. In Seattle we have drifted back to the prices of 2005, and we linger at this point. That seems like a good thing to me. Prices on well kept homes are inching up. Prices on fixers are still trickling down. Why down? Because there is little upside for most DIYers in this market. The "it's fast money, honey" days are over for now. Look at any graph and you will see that we are in a stable market. For example the second and third graphs on the SeattleBubble Website show the decline percentage from the peak in many areas of the country has stopped. In Seattle, the price of homes sold over the past 36 months has changed only 3%, while in the 20 months before that it fell 23%. Lenders are being extra cautious to only make loans to people who can

Pay them back
Avoid default in the event of unexpected expenses
Demonstrate financial stability

This is the market. The recovery is here and we are living it. Throw away that crack pipe, you're not addicted any more. Buying a home is not for everyone. Only do so if you want to, and if you are able to. You don't need to wait for verification from all of your friends. You don't need to wait for the newspaper to tell you that it is okay. You only need to see value, and move forward.

Also published on Seattle Real Estate with Glenn and Marjie

Some Seattle Times Articles Miss the Mark

2011-02-23T16:22:44Z

Okay, Admitted. A little more Times bashing for today. The Wednesday Seattle Times has two articles in the business section. The feature is headlined "U.s. Home Prices fall, more declines seen." This article is datelined Washington (and they mean D.C.). It's from information released a week or so ago put out by Case-Shiller, a company that claims to follow same house resales over long periods of time.

Two things about Case-Shiller's information.
1. It is always two months old based on closed sales which are also two months behind the current market. So, figure 4 months stale.
2. In following the sale of the same house over time they don't, as far as I know take into account remodeling/deterioration. Back between 2002 and 2007 home improvement stores were booming because people were pouring money into their homes and re-tapping them for equity. Houses were getting improvements so the values should have gone up. Essentially they were not the same homes that sold two or three years earlier, even though they had the same address. And from 2007-present, most people stopped putting money into their homes and many of them have deteriorated, resulting in a home of less value. Same address, but now a fixer/shortsale/REO. Selling for less: No DUH!

Despite their cachet as a national authority, the model of the American Home has changed. Think about it. A spreadsheet model devised back in the 2000 is no model for today.
Article #2. An enlightening article given by Froma Harrop datelined Providence. I'm assuming that's Rhode Island and not some ethereal point of wisdom. Her article is based on Zillow.com statistics which by Zillow's own admission have a median error of between 8.5 and 15.4%. Median would mean that half of the estimates are above and half below, so some can be pretty far off.

Ms Harrop continues her article in the political vein and advises elimination of any government incentives which encourage home ownership, citing Canada as a model. Harrop likes to write about everything from where ever her apartment is.

Her article is not in the online Times edition so I can't link to it. John Talton regurgitates the same Case-Shiller information as above in his piece about the American Dream. Apparently the Seattle Times can't afford local writers for most of their work and one would do just as well to read the pulp in USA Today. Or maybe local writers won't write articles with messages they are instructed to convey.

I'm glad to see the Times' prices rising. It will make it easier for me to stop the subscription come April 1st. No joke.

Also published at www.glennaroberts.com

Cost Verses Value on 5 Home Projects

2011-01-25T03:35:00Z

Realtor Magazine just published a story on cost vs. value in a sale for 5 different home improvement projects. Interesting in some ways but hard to apply. These are averages from input by realtors from 80 cities across the USA. Markets are different in each area. What the basic inventory is, make a difference. For example, in Seattle we have a mix of homes from the teens through the nineties and a smattering of townhouses built in the last 15 years. And just 20 miles away you can find communities that were second growth forest until the 1980's and other areas that were developed in the 60's and 70's.
A kitchen remodel in a 1927 Tudor is a whole lot different that a redo of a 1980's northwest contemporary. But anyway, here is the table comparing the 5 projects, their costs and value.

Project	Cost	Resale Value	Recouped
Entry Door	$1,218	$1,243	102.1%
Garage Door	$1,291	$1,083	83.9%
New Siding	$13,382	$10,707	80.0%
Kitchen Remodel	$21,685	$15,790	72.8%
Deck Addition	$10,973	$7,986	72.8%

Before you rush out and do something, do some more reading, go to a few open houses and above all, talk to your favorite Realtor®. You might even want to take him to lunch and pick his brain. If you are going to sell, you want to do the things that make the most sense for your home, in your market, under current conditions. And the best way to insure that is to get the opinion of someone working in the trenches every day.

If your Realtor® is still in the business after the last three years, then he knows what he is doing.

The realtor magazine article: Cost vs. Value.

Picasso show sets attendance records at Seattle Art Museum!

2011-01-17T19:51:01Z

Pablo Picasso. The greatest artist of the 20th century, and the Seattle Art Museum was host to a massive show of over 150 of his iconic works, on loan from the Musée National Picasso in Paris. More than 400,000 visitors came out for the exhibition, with some visitors having waited six hours or more on line, in the rain, to gain admission to the show.

"Picasso" broke the attendance record of 316,000, set by the show, "Impressionism: Paintings Collected by European Museums," back in 1999.

Over the last week, the Seattle Art Museum used Facebook and Twitter to inform visitors of waiting periods and strategies to minimize line times.

The "Picasso" show featured works that were part of the master's private collection, carefully reserved by the artist to shape his own artistic legacy, and spanned seven decades of drawing, painting, sculpture, prints, and photographs.

Next up? Nick Cave: Meet Me at the Center of the Earth, March 10-June 5.

How Do You Negotiate?

2011-01-11T14:44:18Z

Glenn Roberts | Ravenna Park | My Seattle | Lake & Co Real Estate

How Do You Negotiate?

I got an email from a buyer a while back. I had met him at an open house I was holding. It wasn't my listing and he acted like he knew more about the listing than I did. Maybe so. There is a lot of information out there. I asked if he wanted to look at some comparable properties. He said maybe.

I got an email from him a few days later. "How would you negotiate for me?" he asked. I could tell from talking to him at the open that he had read about the bubble and then the shadow inventory, and he was sure prices were going down more. He told me about how much less than asking other homes were selling for. So I pretty much guess that more than anything, he wanted the deal of the century.

I wrote back: There are two ways to negotiate. you can negotiate from a position or you can negotiate from merit. If you want to negotiate from a position you are essentially saying that you won't go over $xxx,xxx for that house. Your reasoning might be comps or condition. But you take a stand and see if the seller rolls over. That would tell me that you don't really care about the house, you only care about getting a deal. On the other hand, if the house has merit, if it meets your needs, if you can afford it, if there isn't any other property that meets your needs as well, for the same price, then it's worth trying to find a way to make the purchase work so that the seller's needs are met as well.

He wrote back: No, I want to know how you will make the seller sell at a lower price.

I knew the seller had received an offer at a lower price and it didn't work out. It might now and I would help the buyer with it, but it had to make sense.

I wrote back: It sounds to me like you are trying to defeat the seller. That is one style of negotiating. It will work if the seller and his agent are both accommodaters. They may just roll over, and give you the house for what ever you want. But they didn't to the last person. If both the seller and you were compromisers, we might reach agreement, but you would have to give up some of your desired features. I really don't know what they are other than a lower price than the home is currently listed for. On the other hand, with an offer too low, as you suggested you might make, the seller might just withdraw. We would go no where with this if the other party will no longer speak to us. I suggest we try to collaborate with the listing agent and the seller. We'll need to negotiate more after the inspection and possibly after the appraisal. Some how we can tweak their needs with ours, once I know what yours are. I need to know why you want this house so I can build a case for you. Or maybe, there is a better house somewhere else that will work as well.

Apparently this buyer, a buyer who wouldn't sign a buyer's agency agreement, a buyer who didn't seem to have needs other than to get a house for way less than the listing price, a buyer who is perhaps, not a buyer at all, didn't like my idea that we try to work with a plan that would accomplish the goal of closing a sale. He seemed to want a negotiator who would help him make it fail. I didn't hear from him again, nor did I pursue him as a client. I don't think he really wanted to be a homeowner. I think he only wanted a deal.

Is there such a thing as a "too small house?"

2010-11-26T18:05:59Z

The wonderful architect Sarah Susanka has done a lot to bring the notion of "living small" to American homeowners; not so much making do with less as making what you have do more.

The leading gold medal contender for "making what you have do more" has to be architect Gary Chang, who has managed to stuff twenty-four rooms into his 344-sf Hong Kong apartment! You can see it all in this four minute video, read more about him in the New York Times, or visit his website. We're impressed!

The Cy Young Award comes to Seattle!

2010-11-18T22:39:24Z

We want to congratulate the 24-year-old ace of the Seattle Mariners' pitching staff, Felix Hernandez, on winning the American League Cy Young Award today!

The vote for baseball's highest honor of individual pitching performance went: 21 for Felix Hernandez, 4 for David Price of the Tampa Bay Rays, and 3 for C. C. Sabathia of the New York Yankees.

Congratulations, Felix Hernandez! Seattle is very proud to have you!

Two Seattle baseball players win awards!

2010-11-10T01:35:32Z

This week, two Seattle Mariners won the Rawlings Gold Glove award: Ichiro Suzuki and Franklin Gutierrez!

For Ichiro, this is his tenth Gold Glove award, behind only Willie Mays and Roberto Clemente who have won twelve each, and tying Ken Griffey Jr and Al Kaline for third place among outfielders since 1959.

For Franklin, this is his second award; he led American League outfielders this year in fielding percentage: a perfect 1.000 with no errors and 413 putouts.

Congratulations, Ichiro Suzuki and Franklin Gutierrez!