Windermere Woodinville Blog

If you live in Woodinville you realize the city is a traffic hub, a transportation nexus, and a magnet area for tourism and commerce. 

Woodinville is a cross roads for those just passing through to other destinations, e.g., Redmond, Duvall, Monroe, Snohomish, and Kirkland/Juanita.  Certainly there will be a major rapid transit station at Woodinville when that blessed day arrives.

Woodinville’s  “nexus” status is good for commerce and vital for community energy, but it makes for heavy traffic at times during the day.

It comes as welcome news that a couple of road projects are going to provide relief to central Woodinville. Thanks to the Woodinville-Wire and Justina Tate we can report on a couple of bottle neck removers.

  Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re thinking of buying a home, have small children, and hold a sensitivity about living near sex offenders, there’s an on-line service for you. 

Check out the neighborhood for offenders by going to The Washington State Sex Offender Information Center.   The site will provide you information about offenders living in the area.  They must register.

In most Washington State residential home purchases the Buyer will want to do a structural inspection.  Your agent will tell you that the inspection contingency form (Northwest Multiple Listing Service Form 35) provides for a “Neighborhood Review Contingency.”  

Pursuant to this contingency, you may take a look to make sure the neighborhood meets your subjective satisfaction.  This is a good time to, among things (schools, proximity to bus lines, shopping, traffic patterns, noise, etc.) look into the sex offender question.

The existence of a registered sex offender is not a material fact that, under most circumstances, needs to be disclosed to you as a Buyer under the real estate agency statute.  RCW 18.86.019(9).  Here’s another handy site, LegalWa.Org  for you to read State laws, like RCW 18.86.019(9).

You need to check the sex offender question out yourself.  The information is readily ascertainable at places like the Offender Information Center.  The law says the existence of a registered sex offender does not effect the value or the title to the property.  

The Form 17 - Seller Disclosure Statement - says:

“Notice to the Buyer, Sex Offender Registration Information Regarding Registered Sex Offenders May be Obtained from Local Law Enforcement Agencies.  This Notice is Intended Only to Inform You of Where to Obtain this Information and is Not an Indication of the Presence of Registered Sex Offenders.”

Thank you for reading this Blog.

Buyers ready to buy may, nonetheless, sit on the fence, waiting for home prices in the real estate market to fall.  They read the national press; they think the “bottom” hasn’t been reached.  Their thinking is that they will save money on that house they want if they wait.

Of course by the time the “bottom” is reached the buyer will only know it when prices start up again.  Few people ever catch the bottom.  Most all will end paying more than the bottom prices and lending rates may have gone up by then, making the monthly cost of the home more for the “wait-and-see” buyer.

Do people only buy at bottoms?

Read the rest of this entry »

A new law goes into effect June 12, 2008 that will change the way real estate agents behave.

The “distressed properties law“ (HB 2791 - 2007-08) was intended to protect vulnerable property owners from scams to steal the property owner’s equity.  A consequence (intended or unintended) of the law makes many real estate agents and brokers “distressed home consultants.”

Eighteen other states have the law, but Washington is the first where real estate professionals have been classified “consultants.”   Real estate practice just became even more complicated. Read the rest of this entry »

Bill Gates (shown above in the 1980s) recently gave a speech at a High School about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school.

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!
Rule 2 : The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
Rule 3 : You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.
Rule 4 : If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
Rule 5 : Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called any chance to work an opportunity.
Rule 6: If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’ s generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.
Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.

• Real estate remains a good investment.  A $250,000 home purchased in the Seattle-Bellevue-Everett area in 1997 would be worth $360,100 in 2001 and $624,400 in 2007.  Check the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight: Five Year Appreciation Tables.
• Above you see appreciation rates in the Seattle-Bellevue-Everett corridor compared with the State and the Nation.   We thank Kevin Doran & Angelina Cardona for this chart [www.kevindoran.info; www.angelinacardona.com]. 
• Buying and selling homes in Washington State remains a good investment and financial decision.

Amid reports that home values in the Nation and the Seattle-Puget Sound area are decreasing, we find the facts indicate otherwise for our neck of the woods.

Data supplied by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service show only in Redmond, Sammamish and Mill Creek did average home price decrease.

Average home prices in Woodinville (up +08.74% over 2006) and other communities  were on the positive side comparing 2006 and 2007.   In fact, Bellevue, Bothell, Duvall, Lake Stevens reported double digit improvement.

We thank realtors Kevin Doran and Angelina Cardona for this chart [www. kevindoran.info; www.angelinacardona.com].

The May 10th, 2008, issue of the Economist reviews America’s Housing with a view to forecasting if home prices will drop further, how much, and in what areas of the country we will see a sag.

How to Read Ben Bernake’s Map

The map is the Federal Reserves means to track America’s house-price situation.

The map color-codes price declines for every state and county.  Red colors mean more trouble and most likely high foreclosure rates.

Notice, Washington State is in the “green,”  showing a House Price Increase of above 5.471%.  We’re going in the right direction and out of the hot colors.

Hardest hit? Bubble States: California, Nevada and Florida.

The big question: How Much Further Will the Market Decline?   According to the Economist review we may not be on the bottom, yet.  Here are the arguments.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Sammamish River Trail at Woodinville

The Seattle Metropolitan Real Estate Guide for 2008 give a great market review for Woodinville.

Some home owners in our great Woodinville neighborhood have lamented a trend toward a flattening of home values.  With  worried brow they say are homes aren’t appreciating in double-digit figure as they were a few years ago.

Good point.  But if your home happens to be worth the same this year as it was last year (that actually shouldn’t be true as we still see home appreciation in the Woodinville area), what was it worth when you bought it?  How much value increase have you realized since you bought it in 2004? Read the rest of this entry »

Count the Black Dots

What do you call two straight days of rain in Seattle?

A weekend.  (Okay you’ve heard it, but it’s true, but not this weekend.)

Looks like Starbucks Coffee was on Mars first.

A leg to stand upon … but how many?

Celery has negative calories. It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with. It’s the same with apples.

From wonderful (sunny!) Woodinville … we wish you a wonderful weekend.