Pickett Street Properties Team joined Keller Williams associates across America on May 13th – and took the day off!   But it was hardly a day of rest.  Over 25,000 associates across the US and Canada spent their day giving back, as part of the company’s community service initiative called RED Day. Short for “Renew, Energize, and Donate,” RED Day was created to unite Keller Williams Realty office and associates in an international day of service.

Andy and our team coordinated the activities for our Keller Williams Realty Bothell – and it was an incredible and very rewarding experience. We ended up with 60+ associates and several vendor/partners volunteering, serving in several projects throughout the greater Bothell area:

Home Renovation: We scoured our community for a home that needed some work, and approached several owners to see if they’d be interested in our help.  It took a while to find someone who would accept our “no strings attached” offer. Once we started working – they were thrilled.   The family home we served had not been touched in over 30 years.  Our team of volunteers gave it an entire “exterior makeover”, including:

1. complete house scraping, sanding, cleaning, and painting (with colors chosen by the owner!);
2. extensive roof & gutter cleaning;
3. tree and branch removal;
4. yard weeding, clearing, and leveling of the front of the property;
5. laying two pallets of sod across the entire front, making a lovely front yard;
6. landscaping – including two truckloads of bark

Food Bank – soliciting donations & goods:  we had a team of volunteers sit at a grocery store for the entire day – promoting HopeLink (a local food bank).  Our fantastic team collected over 1300 pounds of food donations, plus $300 in cash!

Senior Center Visitation – at Vintage Park, a local senior center in our area was thrilled to have a caring, fun-loving and guitar-toting group of volunteers share several hours of conversation and friendship with their residents. Our team made new friends and touched many lives.

Park Cleanup Project – Centennial Park: We worked with the City of Bothell to find two parks that needed help. Centennial Park had extensive cleaning, clearing, trimming, branch cutting, and weeding done by a great team of volunteers.

Park Painting Project – Blyth Park: The City of Bothell was also thrilled to have one of our volunteer teams paint a bathroom building in Blyth Park. Park regulars couldn’t help but come up and thank our team for enhancing their favorite park.

It was an incredible RED Day 2010!  We look forward to partnering with ALL of the Keller Williams offices in our region next year – to raise the bar even higher, and see how many projects we each can do all over the Puget Sound region. Stay tuned for more information about other upcoming service opportunities.  And make sure to join us next year!

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2. And the winner is…

If you decide to experience some authentic Irish celebrations – here are a few local Irish Restaurants and PUBs:

Seattle area:

Kell’s Irish Restaurant and Pub – Pike Place Market, 1916 Post Alley, 206-728-1916 (come early!)
The Dubliner – Fremont, 3405 Fremont Ave N, 206-634-3161
Fado Irish Pub – Downtown, 801 First Ave, 206-264-2700
Paddy Coyne’s – Lake Union

Northend:

Mick Finster’s Pub & Grill – Edmonds, 24001 Hwy 99, 425-775-2121
Shawn O’Donnell’s Rest. & Pub – South Everett, 122 128th St SE, 425-338-5700
The Irishman – Downtown Everett, 2923 Colby Ave, 425-374-5783

Eastside:

JJ Mahoney’s – Redmond, 8932 161st Ave NE, 425-558-1866
Wilde Rover Irish Pub – Kirkland, 111 Central Way, 425-822-8940
Celtic Bayou – Redmond, 7281 Sammamish Pkwy NE, 425-881-0704 (shuttle bus from Marymoor Park every 15 mins from 4pm to 2am)

Or you can stay home and cook up this fine Irish feast.

May your blessings – outnumber the shamrocks that grow And may trouble avoid you – wherever you go.

P.S. Do leprechauns get angry when you make fun of their height? Yeah, but only a little!

Happy St. Patty’s Day, Andy

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5) Everything but Bourbon Street – We got to our hotel at about 1:00am on Friday night, and while our initial intention was to find a blues club and a glass of wine, I thought our late arrival would surely shelve these plans. One of our friends had arrived earlier, and in waiting for us, had brewed himself a pot of coffee, and there wasn’t any way he was going to let us go to bed without a quick walk down Bourbon Street. Our hotel was two blocks from Bourbon Street, so within a couple of minutes we were introduced to New Orlean’s most renowned destination.

I won’t get into everything we saw, smelled, or stepped on, but we all left a little wide-eyed. The street is woven in debauchery, and the seams are stitched with alcohol and waste. If you’ve been to Bourbon Street, I don’t need to describe it. If you haven’t been to Bourbon Street, you probably don’t want me to. I’m thankful that we were in New Orleans for several more nights, and that our experience of the city wasn’t defined by this one late night walk.

4) Architecture – Bourbon Street is located in a neighborhood called the French Quarter, and if you go on either side of Bourbon Street, the appeal of New Orleans grows considerably. The French Quarter is the oldest neighborhood in New Orleans, although not necessarily the most well-built. Most buildings share a wall with the neighboring building, and they don’t necessarily match in size, color, or style – which makes for an interesting study in contrast. Many walls aren’t square, nor are their floors level – but the exacting nature of the engineering is not what generates the appeal. These buildings give visitors a sense of history, and begins to impart a silent understanding of the city to its visitors. This city is resilient, as are its people.

3) Music - I told everyone that asked me about my upcoming trip to New Orleans that I was most excited about finding a blues club and enjoying the music with a glass of wine and a smoking cigar. Many of the clubs on Bourbon Street did have live bands, but they weren’t what I was hoping for. I thought for sure that off of Bourbon there had to be a place where I would recognize a familiar riff off a steel guitar, the warble of a harmonica, or the haunting melody of an organ. On Monday night, despite my exhaustion, Andy and Dennis talked me into delaying sleep to continue our search, and it resulted in the most memorable night of the trip.

We ended up on Bourbon Street, right at its start, at a watering hole called “The Blues Club.” We had had our doubts on previous visits, but when we walked in on this night, it was obvious that more locals than tourists were there, and they had come to hear “Rooster and the Chicken Hawks.” I don’t know anything about Rooster, and the club was dark, but I’m guessing he’s no younger than 75, and he was dressed to the 9′s in a powder blue, pinstriped, luminescent suit and pristine white leather ankle-high disco boots. My wine might have been in a plastic cup that night, but we were drinking the blues from a hose. If you’re ever in New Orleans, “Rooster and the Chicken Hawks” rock The Blues Club most Sunday and Monday nights.

2) Food - Andy should probably write this paragraph Andy is about 150 lbs and eats more than anyone I’ve ever seen. This was never more obvious than when we were in New Orleans. We ate gator sausage and crawfish remoulade  at “The Gumbo Shop” (although a couple in our attendance have had better gumbo elsewhere), we drank coffee and ate beignets at “Cafe Beignet“, filet blange and bananas foster at “Brennan’s“, pizza and calzones at “Angeli’s on Decatur“, and key-lime pie at “Crescent City Brewhouse.” All in all – the food here is decadent, and worth every one of the three-plus pounds we’ll all have to wrestle off at the gym.

1) The best part of New Orleans – the people. I have to think that the average living wage in New Orleans is far less than that of Seattle, but you can’t tell it from the faces of  the inhabitants. There are exceptions of course, but the people of New Orleans are either well-medicated or genuinely happy. There’s a sense of community here that we haven’t seen in other large cities – even more than what we’ve seen in most small towns. The cabbies all wave to each other, and you can’t walk down the street without seeing “Who Dat?” on a t-shirt or as graffiti on the wall. I have to imagine that enduring through an event like Hurricane Katrina and it’s aftermath will give an entire town perspective, and that a collective celebration of a recent Super Bowl victory might bring that same town some unity, but I think that what this town and its people share transcends an event or two.

Thank you New Orleans for being such gracious hosts to a bunch of real estate agents. Who dat?!

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Welcome to Yellowstone National Park!

Always a lot of elk at Mammoth Hot Springs.

Bison on the way to the cabin.

My family's cabin - 1 mile north of Yellowstone Park.

View from the patio of one of our cabins.

Selah with my grandfather's 75-year-old wagon

Kami and David.

Selah turned 3 while we were gone.

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After an intense (and fun) Pickett Street Properties retreat, I needed a bit of mind-numbing TV. In my search for something to watch, I came across the Food Network show called “Food Detectives.” It’s a show that does experiments with food—sort of an Alton Brown meets MythBusters.

On the night of my respite, they did an experiment on food and how it tastes based on presentation and flowery descriptions. Two groups of diners were told they were going to be reviewing a new restaurant and after their meal they were given a survey to fill out.

The first set of diners’ menus said they would be having “Green Salad, Fish, Green Beans, Potatoes and Chocolate Cake.” They were sat at tables with plastic table cloths, served New Jersey red wine in plastic cups, and their meals were presented on rather dated plates.

The second set had “Crisp Mescluin Seasonal Greens, Succulent Panko encrusted St Peter’s Fish, Hericot Vert, Potatoes au Gratin and Belgium Double Chocolate Cake.” They were sat at tables lit by candelight and adorned with linen table cloths. They were served a red wine from Nappa valley and the meal was presented on a classic plate.

Did I mention that the food itself was from a warehouse store and aside from the presentation, the food was the same?

The hypothesis is that people will be biased based on expectations and will seek to verify their expectations. In other words, if you think it’s going to be crispy or succulent, you will look for that. While I anticipated the results would show the better presented food would be the “winner,” I was surprised at the  difference in perception.

Plain Jane customers rated the food on average at 3.5 (out of 10) and would pay an average of about $10 for the meal. Some of the people were interviewed on camera and the comments were very critical. One person even said that they couldn’t finish their meal.

The second group with the better fancier menu names and nicer presentations rated the food an average of an 8 and would pay $38 – nearly four times as much as the first group!! One of the interviewee’s said that the fish reminded her of her childhood and it brought back lots of fond memories of eating dinner with her mother. Same frozen fish – many very different opinions.

The same is true in real estate. A home sparingly adorned will be thought of simply and sell for less money – the same home, once staged by a professional, can change the entire experience for a potential buyer. The results from Food Detectives reinforce the Pickett Street Team’s belief that a home should be professionally photographed, staged and promoted with excellent marketing copy.

Successful marketing is no more than managing perception. Choosing a real estate agent that understands this can mean the difference between a frozen fish and a memory of mom. Perception is a powerful thing – if Food Detectives is any indication, it might be more powerful than reality itself.

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I just went through it in a minor way this weekend, as I was forced to deal with the assorted detritus of several years worth of projects. The last one, a bunk bed for my daughter, resulted in a fine coating of wood dust on every surface of the garage, and enough wood scraps to build a small barn.

My parents have been in town for several weeks now and Grandpa, being retired and a restless woodworker, was ‘inspired’ by his granddaughter (my 7-year old) to ply his skills in her employ. They both got what they wanted; I got another project. Namely, the disassembly of the old bed, reassembly of the new one ( 2 flights of stairs, 2×6′s, and MDF panels, anyone?), and the subsequent cleanup and disposal of said debris.  

Both cars are  now back in the garage (a result of  the persistent voice in my head that sounds remarkably like my wife), and I’m feeling almost restored. BTW, just in case you haven’t tried it lately, Craigslist is the killer app. Within 1 hour of posting the old bed as ‘free to the first taker’, I had 4 responses lined up to drag the thing away. Now that’s an effective purge tool!

I’ve been emailing this weekend with a new acquaintance who’s going through a similar, but completely different, process as she comes to grips with being cast off by our current economy. Say what you want about statistics, no matter how slim the odds may be, somebody IS one of those numbers.

In this case, Keri is one of the recently laid off Microsoft employees who, in coming to grips with her new reality, has taken the philosophical ‘purge’ approach- laying bare her newly unemployed soul with the wry black humor of the freshly jilted. She may be lining up a new career in comedy, which the current economy could certainly use; we need more reasons to laugh now than ever before! Note: due to language and some adult concepts, the above link may not be appropriate for all ages. 

Speaking of the economy, here’s one for you: 

Q. What’s the difference between a pigeon and an investment banker?

A. A pigeon can still make a deposit on a BMW.

here’s another-

I went to buy a toaster; and came back with a bank. 

See, you can still smile. 

If you have sorrows that still need drowning, may I recommend chocolate? Quality is the key. No point putting Hershey’s on your hips when you could have the good stuff. We’ve found the chocolate holy grail- handmade custom chocolate truffles, (We recommend the orange) paired with a tasty sweet wine. This is where sorrows come to wallow!

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It’s with great pleasure that I announce that two members of the Pickett Street team have been selected by Seattle Magazine as 5-Star Real Estate Agents, Best in Client Satisfaction for 2008. My business partner, Jesse D. Moore, and our fellow associate, Lisa Bender, have both been selected among this year’s honorees.

What exactly does this mean? Seattle Magazine says it best:

Experts say that at least 90 percent of homebuyers rely on real estate agents for advice and guidance. But with more than 14,000 Seattle residents holding real estate licenses, how do you find someone who knows the market, represents your interests and operates with an emphasis on integrity and service? Seattle magazine can help. For the fifth year, the magazine has formed a partnership with Crescendo Business Services, an independent research firm, to find out which real estate agents have most consistently wowed their clients. This past May, Crescendo surveyed by mail and phone, 29,000 Seattle area residents who had recently purchased homes. An additional 250 surveys were sent to mortgage and title companies, who are often best able to judge a real estate agent’s technical skills and knowledge.

On the surveys, recipients were asked to nominate only real estate agents whom they knew through personal experience. They were asked to evaluate them based upon nine criteria: customer service, communication, finding the right home, integrity, negotiation, marketing the home, market knowledge, closing preparation and overall satisfaction.

By June, stacks of surveys had arrived, and Crescendo began carefully scoring and screening each nominee with the Washington State Real Estate Commission’s database to make certain that licenses were up to date and that no disciplinary actions were pending.

Then, before finalizing the list, nominated real estate agents were reviewed by a blueribbon panel of local industry experts. The panel consisted of realty company executives, professional and trade association officers and others directly involved in housing-related businesses. The resulting list of FIVE STAR Real Estate Agents is an elite group, representing less than 6 percent of licensed agents in the Seattle area. Only 758 of the top-scoring real estate agents made this year’s list.

Congratulations Jesse and Lisa!

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