Buying Seattle Real Estate, Seattle WA Homes

Mary works, all the time, for her clients. She has a spooky, I mean spooky in a nice way, detailed knowledge of houses, and neighborhoods where she works. She told me a story about a house where she recounted the buyers, and sellers over the span of forty years. It was a detailed history of the home, going back to when it was built, and why it changed hands. It never got remodeled, it was a move up buyer home that was in a perfect location.

She told the story with a matter of fact point that the value of the house was solid, it is what it is, and some one should buy it for the price it was listed for.

That makes it sound like Mary’s a big talker when she is actually too busy for chit chat, or preoccupied. Constantly moving forward with great attention to detail she engages her day with the tasks she has to do for her clients. Mary is absolutely brilliant.

This is the agent you want on your side. When working for you she keeps track of what your goals are. As she moves through her day of working with properties, being in the field, keeping track of her geographic area, she’ll call you when she has results.

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.