Our Thoughts | Pickett Street

All the things short sales are. And those that they are not.

Jul 28th, 2010 by Pickett Street Properties Team

DISCLAIMER: This was initially published as part of an email newsletter to my clients. It made the rounds, and I was asked to post it on the blog to make it more accessible.

I wish that there were more short sale jokes – in the same way that there are lawyer jokes, blonde jokes, or jokes about North Dakota. This would mean that there was at least a level of understanding about short sales that was shared among a large group of people. And it would mean that there was something humorous about the process…

I’ve had a couple of painful weeks with short sales. Most real estate agents don’t handle short sale transactions because they (1) take a long time (2) pay less money and (3) are frustrating beyond measure. When some of my own clients were faced with the possibility of having to short sale, I decided to educate myself on short sales to ensure that they received the same measure of customer service as my other clients. Negotiating short sales is a lot like navigating a minefield…only it’s on a giant treadmill where the environment is constantly changing, and the threat of danger has to be reassessed and evaluated on a constant basis.

Having a good real estate agent that is familiar with the short sale process is important, but sometimes that’s not enough. Banks have policies and procedure, and no amount of reality will get them to change these. Because many real estate agents list short sale properties too low, banks have been forced to have values confirmed by at least two other real estate agents, sometimes even an appraiser or two. If even one of these evaluations comes in unrealistically high, there is nothing that can be done to convince the bank that the home you have listed for $230,000 is not worth $260,000, nor has it been worth that much since 2008.

I spoke to a real estate agent recently that was doing an evaluation on one of my short sale listings. He told me that he did over 2,000 of these evaulations in the past year. I did some research and found that this agent hadn’t sold a single home in 12 months. As far as I’m concerned, he doesn’t really know what it takes to sell a home in our current market, yet the bank is going to give his evaluation more weight than anything I have to say, even though our team has sold 40 homes in the last six months.

Point is – short sales aren’t funny. Or logical. In most cases they are a better option than foreclosure, and even though I’ve never had any of my short sale not sell before foreclosure, the bank’s unmoving resistance to reason is going to result in more foreclosures and fewer successful short sale closings.

So how does a real estate team embrace this certain change? By adding an auction service to their repertoire. Acknowledging that more and more properties will be going to auction, we have added a member to our team that will allow our buyers and investors to buy homes at the county auction. Because homes at auction have to be purchased with cash, most people are restricted from taking advantage of the opportunities that can be found on the courthouse steps. John McCants is the newest member of Pickett Street Properties, and he’s been helping people grow their wealth for years by purchasing properties at auction. With his addition to our team, and the partnerships that he brings with him, our clients too will be able to buy properties at auction with John’s expertise and experience behind them. If this is something that you’d be interested in learning more about, or if you know someone that would be interested, drop me an email or give me a call to set up a meeting with myself and John.

Keller Williams & Pickett Street give back: RED Day 2010

Jun 10th, 2010 by Andy O'Shea

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:

complete house scraping, sanding, cleaning, and painting (with colors chosen by the owner!);
extensive roof & gutter cleaning;
tree and branch removal;
yard weeding, clearing, and leveling of the front of the property;
laying two pallets of sod across the entire front, making a lovely front yard;
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!

Signs of a stabilizing market? Neighborhood indicators and trends emerge…

May 11th, 2010 by Jesse D. Moore

There was a time when real estate agents helped people buy and sell homes. Then the market changed, and now we do a lot more counseling, some financial advising, negotiating short sales with banks, and on the flip side – evaluating properties for banks as they liquidate their foreclosed assets. Regarding the latter, banks ask real estate agents to complete BPOs (broker price opinions), to give them an understanding of the local market and an evaluation of the property’s value. Banks do not pay agents well for this service, but agents (including myself) do them in the hopes of listing bank-owned properties.

When completing BPOs, I have enough experience that if I’m familiar with the neighborhood I have an intuitive idea what the price of the home should be before I go about the work of proving it. My intuition is not enough for the banks though, so I have to complete a fairly rigorous form that goes over statistical averages for the neighborhood of the home that I’m evaluating.

I hate BPOs – but the truth is, doing them on a regular basis makes me a better agent. It’s easy to take what’s true for a majority of neighborhoods and assign the same market symptoms to every neighborhood. For instance, when evaluating most markets in Snohomish County, it’s easy to say that home values dropped 8-12% in the last year, or almost 1% every month. Here’s a graph to prove it (click on graph to load full scale PDF report):

If it’s a little small to read, here’s what you need to know. For all residential properties in Snohomish County, the average price has dropped 7% and the median price has dropped 8%. I’m not a statistician, and better people than I can explain the variables involved in a comparison like this, but the sake of brevity, let’s accept these values and move on (smile inflected).

So now, if you’re a homeowner in Snohomish County, I’ve just taken the wind out of your sails. Most people are hoping that we’re at the bottom, but with drops like these, that doesn’t seem to be the case. I’ve been saying for a long time that I don’t think that we’re at the bottom of anything, and until we get rid of the short sale and bank-owned inventory, it could be awhile until will do. But I would be in error if I led people to believe that this is the case everywhere.

Case in point: I recently had to complete BPOs in the Silver Lake / Silver Firs / Gold Creek / Cathcart neighborhoods, and I have two upcoming listings in these neighborhoods, and what I found was surprising (click on graph to load PDF report):

Compared to a year ago, the average price of homes in this neighborhood went up 7%, and the median price of homes sold only came down 1%. I do quite a few BPOs, and as I mentioned, I’d grown accustomed to seeing depreciation in almost every neighborhood in Snohomish County. I’ve run these stats on different sizes and styles of homes, but the emerging trend that I see in these neighborhoods (Silver Lake, Silver Firs, Gold Creek & Cathcart) is that maybe – just maybe – we’re seeing signs of a stabilizing market.

No one will know for sure for several months, and just because we see some markets stabilizing doesn’t mean that the trend will continue. No one really knows what the impact of the tax credit expiring (eligible buyers had to be under contract by April 30th) means for the real estate market, but I can tell you that just about every neighborhood saw unusually high sales activity in March and April, and based on the trend for May thus far, activity will probably fall far short of those numbers. Even then there’s a trend – if you’re a homeowner in the Silver Lake, Silver Firs, Gold Creek & Cathcart neighborhoods, or if you’re a home buyer considering how much a neighborhood effects values, consider these graphs (again, click on either graph for a full PDF report). Let’s look at all of Snohomish County first:

So the red bar is the inventory of homes available (which is down 2% from last year), the blue bar is the number of homes under contract (up 33%) and the green bar is the number of homes sold (up 36%). Good news right? Anytime supply drops and demand goes up it’s a good thing.

Now consider the Silver Lake, Silver Firs, Gold Creek & Cathcart neighborhoods:

In comparison, available inventory in these neighborhoods dropped 1%, homes under contract rose 292%, and homes sold went up 88%!! So while it seems obvious that the expiration of the tax credit inspired home buyers to get in the game, it seems as though these areas are generating more sales activity than surrounding areas.

Overall, this is good news. I’ve gotten so used to seeing negative trends in our market that it took me a little while to recognize a positive trend. Do I think that that this means that we’re through the worst of it? No. Can I pause and enjoy the respite that a positive trend brings? Yes.

We’ll be doing further statistical posts regarding neighborhoods in Snohomish and King Counties, but if you need an analysis of your neighborhood in the meantime, please let me know.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day – from the Irishman of the Pickett Street Team!

Mar 17th, 2010 by Andy O'Shea

St. Patrick’s Day is always a special celebration for me – even though I’m a few generations removed from actually being very Irish. But I do know that my O’Shea family originally came from County Cork and County Kerry in Ireland. I also know that I’ve been saving money so that my wife and I can go tour castles in Ireland on our 20th wedding anniversary!

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

Lodge-Style Custom Log Home in Snohomish County

Mar 12th, 2010 by Dennis S. Pearce

Embodying everything ‘Lodge’, at 4500 square feet, with 3 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms and 3-car garage, on 1.75 wooded acres located midway between Bothell and Snohomish, off Highway 9 in Cathcart, this home offers refuge from the hustle and bustle.

There is a primeval connection between humans and nature that makes it impossible for us to step through the door of a log home without acknowledging the union of beauty and emotion that occurs when nature’s raw materials are rendered skillfully into architectural bliss. Only the blackest of hearts could remain unmoved by a tour through a home this exceptional. Even if your bell is only rung by the sleek chromes, blacks and whites of Modern architecture, or your heart simply sings at the sight of a freshly reworked turn-of-the-century Craftsman, I defy you to resist the tug of that portion of the human genome that has no memory of plastic.

Inhale the spruce and cedar scented air, slide your stockinged feet on the gleaming maple floors, and gaze into the open-beamed log rafters 21′ overhead as you melt into a chair in the living room, heated by that most primal of all elements- fire; held captive in the Bitterroot Granite and slate gas fireplace that stretches gracefully upward through the cedar tongue and groove ceiling.

Finishes and Construction Details include: Clear finished Engellmann Spruce Swedish-cope logs, Maple hardwood floors with Brazilian Walnut border inlays, Cedar-wrapped double-pane windows, SIPS insulated roofing panels under architectural composition roofing tiles, Granite countertops, Hickory Cabinets and built-ins, Cedar Tongue & Groove ceilings throughout, tile kitchen floor, 1500 square foot entertainment deck with hot tub, R/V Parking with 50A service, Built-in 10KW backup generator, Approved 4-bed septic system, Additional basement storage with roll-up door, 4′ height crawl-space with concrete floor for additional dry storage, Abundant storage throughout.

List Price: $850,000
MLS#: 34200
Address:8828 172nd St. SE Snohomish, WA 98296
Bedrooms: 3
Bathrooms: 2.5
Square Feet: 4,500
$/Square Ft: $188.88
Lot size: 1.75 Acres
Year Built: 2004
Taxes: $7,962.70
School District: Snohomish
Property Flyer: Log home flyer

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Pickett Street goes to New Orleans

Feb 26th, 2010 by Jesse D. Moore

We recently returned from a business trip to New Orleans (and before everyone asks – no, it wasn’t during Mardi Gras!), which was host to the international convention for Keller Williams Realty International. The trip yielded many new ideas and philosophies for our business, but I won’t bore you with that right now. Instead, we want to share with you our five favorite things about The Big Easy.

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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