Buying Seattle Real Estate, Seattle WA Homes

I had a long talk with an agent from North West Group, a personal concierge residential brokerage. For them business is very good.

The agent’s point is that people need help today more than they did in the past. There is a lot of information on line, but I’m also finding people call me to ask for an opinion about the property they own.

If you have a portfolio set up for price appreciation, or rental income, great, hold on to it. This is also a good time to position yourself for rental income. 

What I’m addressing are the number of people who got the idea Real Estate was a good investment ten years ago and today they need some guidance. There is also a growing group of people who have planned for retirement that want help navigating the changing Real Estate landscape.

Some agents are equipped to handle the market place today, others are stuck in a distant past. Brokerages can have both kinds of agents. I’m finding that some Brokerages are dominated by two or three agents who have put together teams.

It’s important for you today to find the agent that will bring you the highest level of personal service. Just because you hear the name of the brokerage, it is better for you to interview the agent.

I met Jim Stacey at an over priced listing he had on 65th, and about 14th NW on a sunny afternoon. The house is a victorian style that had been completely renovated by the seller. It was all ginger bread, and front porch. The interior was cute, but functional. Everything had been done.

Jim is an easy going guy who was not at all apologetic about the price of the property. He held his Open Houses, and the property eventually sold, for about asking price. 

For me as a new agent Jim became a topic of conversation. I was told that he was that guy who was OK, but not universally accepted in the Real Estate community. Jim Stacey was a Buyer’s Agent before any one knew what that was, so if it’s not normal it must be bad.

He plowed ahead and started giving classes in Real Estate at the North Seattle Community College. He must have published his book by then because my fiancee at that time had a copy of it. She took his class so she could relate to me better about Real Estate.

He took them on a field trip to show them what was a bad Real Estate purchase. It was a marblecrete exterior house on the corner of 92nd, and Wallingford. It still has the white picket fence, but is still ugly. It’s extremely functional, but ugly.

After what is now 25 years, the over priced listing I met Jim at, and the ugly marblecrete house, still look the same. Jim’s over priced listing is still a sought after property, while the marblecrete is still ugly. For me it’s an indication of the value of a good eye for property.  

We need more savvy Buyer’s Agents in todays quirky Real Estate market place.

This site was inspired many years ago by Jim Stacey who made Buyer’s Agency a cause here in Seattle. This domain name was the direct opposite to www.SellingSeattle.com which was owned, at the time, by another agent I know.

The idea Jim Stacey was promoting is that people needed to know they could rely on him to work in their best interest when buying a property. At the time the sellers were the only one’s who had a contract to pay a Real Estate commission.

Chuck Cady, who was new to the business about the same time, was also smart enough to agree that as a listing agent it was hard to turn around, and represent buyers. Ann Babb-Nordling was working with Chuck, and they agreed she should work with the buyers while he concentrated on listing properties.

Ann, ultimately, inspired this site. She was the first person I asked when I converted this site to Word Press. Since the mid 1980s she has consistently represented buyers in a wide variety of transactions.

Other business models have come, and gone over the past twenty years, and this idea of Buyer Representation continues to be a controversy. Through all of the debate Ann Babb-Nordling has become the very best of that skill set.

Since starting this blog it has been hard to remember all of the great Real Estate agents there are in Seattle. An obvious choice for mentioning is another Real Estate team that works which is http://www.maiderknowles.com/

Working in teams is something hard to explain. In this particular match up all team members work for Windermere close to the Windermere neighborhood. They are life long residents of the areas of Laurelhurst over to Montlake. It was natural to form an alliance rather than compete. In some cases a team can deliver much more, and that is the case here.

This is a group of people who have lived, and worked in the communities they represent. It is the most grounded example of the very best type of representation you can get from a Real Estate professional. It’s small town booster meets high powered negotiator, in a nice way.

I should write about clout some time. It’s more than a big stick, because all of the Maider Knowles team are the nicest people you would ever want to meet. It’s the confidence you can have when they are involved. They bring the highest level of integrity to deep rooted industry knowledge.

In the State of Washington we have what is called Buyer Agency. That means an agent can represent a buyer in a Real Estate transaction. What confuses people is that in the past all agents ultimately represented the seller, and worked in the best interest of the seller. The reason for that is that the seller signs the Listing Agreement which gives the legal right to pay agents a commission.

On the HUD1 statement the buyer’s agent commission is still shown in the seller’s expense column so many people want to claim that the seller is paying both buyer, and listing commissions. The fact is a HUD1 is a mortgage industry form that is going to be hard to change. The law however is fairly clear to me. Buyers have the right to be represented. http://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=18.86&full=true

Phew!!! that was a lot to say about something that should be very clear. Another fact is that I have been in discussions about Buyer Agency with Real Estate Brokers for the past two weeks. My opinion is that brokers want to keep buyers from being represented. Most brokerages feed off the free agent buyer who gets passed from online searches, to other agents, to shopping open houses then one day they find what they want, or an agent shows them what they will buy, and they hire the agent who is closest, at that time.  

It’s a game.

In the next post I’m going to talk about the Buyer Agency Agreement most brokerages want you to avoid. Most buyers also want to avoid being tied to an agent for an extended period of time. I have my opinions though about how a property search could be better handled.

This site was set up to be a resource for consumers to find properties of value. I deliberately included local businesses, because with them, by shopping locally, we build a stronger community. Communities are what contribute to property values.

I have a lot of online discussions about schools, or job centers at places like Ballard, or Fremont, but The Public Market, the village in Magnolia, or Wallingford’s walkability play the added role of making a community desirable.

My absolute favorite of local business lore is the Honey Bear Bakery which is now out in Lake Forest Park. It was near Green Lake, and the location is now a bar called Tangle Town. Home buyer’s still refer to the area by the business name. Real Estate agents will put in marketing comments that a home is near Tangle Town.

These nuances to a Real Estate market are why there is the phrase “Real Estate is local.” When looking for a property, or when marketing a property, it helps to know what makes the community valuable. There are more than statistics that make up market trends, and great agents are involved with the community, many times helping change happen.

I have posted the names, and some stories about agents that are great resources for the consumer. In following posts I’m going to explore more of that.