I've been watching market trends for 25 years now as an active realtor in Ballard / Greenwood and beyond. There is always a flurry of activity between Martin Luther King day in January and Mother's Day in May. That's when the number of buyers always seems to outweigh the amount of available inventory. The past two years have been a little crazy here in Seattle because of the huge number of...
Selling
Is there really a "best time" to put your home on the market? The old saying about selling in May does not ring true in our current market. Today home buyers are looking throughout the year, with January pulling in as many brokers and buyers as a home listed in the Spring or Summer. During our winter months the weekends are key for getting buyers through the home. The gardens are not yet...
Getting your home ready to sell and preparing for the first open house can be a little overwhelming. I have found that having a theme for a home really helps to pull together "the look" that you are presenting to potential buyers, and often the theme ties in nicely to the architecture of the home. I recommend that you keep the color scheme and the presentation simple, from how garden pots are...
How's our real estate market? Well, honestly, there is no inventory around here. All of these business cards were collected in 48 hours at my new listing at 5807 6th Ave NW - the house is wonderful and tons of agents should come see it and show it. When there is a more balanced real estate market, this is about how many cards we would be seeing at the listing after a week on the market, so the...
After years of hosting open houses, I've seen what buyers want more than once. Be it their first place or not, nearly all buyers are looking for open and light layouts, and rooms that allow you to converse and entertain, without feeling closed off or visually distanced from other activities. That can be the simple things like seeing what's happening in the backyard from the kitchen, or being able...
One thing that sellers often ask me as we talk "market ready" is what can they can do to jazz up their kitchen to get their home ready to sell. Paint goes a super long way in creating a new image in a kitchen or elsewhere. This cutie near Green Lake is fresh & crisp with painted cabinets and a little accent color around the sink, nothing like the 1950's kitchen it started out as, in...
Springtime is a great time to be selling your home in Seattle. The inventory generally hasn't caught up with the number of buyers out looking, as is the case this year, and things just seem positive as sunny days start to reappear. The best advice I can give sellers looking to sell in the Springtime is to clear out the debris in the garden from the winter and add some color and life to the outdoor...