Very recently we were home buyers looking for a decent house in Seattle. Just a family of 3, new baby and a dog.
Our search took 3 years.
We sold our house in 2005 prior to the market downturn. We rented a downtown condo while we looked. We toured hundreds of homes. We used up 3 agents. Our modus operandi was to find the houses on Redfin, set up searches that emailed us results, drive to the houses and have the agent open the door. Hardly worth 6% of the sale in my opinion. Windermere agents were the laziest and least earnest in our quest. Homeowners were still wildly optomistic about the value of their homes. Sometimes we’d tour open houses without an agent and usually the showing agent wouldn’t give us the time of day. All told we put serious offers on 9 houses over 3 years but found egregious problems with all but our final choice. Our troubling search went something like this:
1. Phinney Ridge: remodeled to death by a resident architect this house had patrolling barking dogs all sides of backyard, access to front door only by unsafe stairs,no permits, view of Cascades. Sold for $925,000.
2.Bryant: rats living in walls, huge gaping hole to outside under kitchen addition, no garage.
Sold for $705,000.
3.Greenlake: dangerous stairs, leaning walls, tons of renovating, no permits, high car theft area, no garage. Sold for $920,000.
4.Broadview: odd bi-level backyard could not be fixed, remodeling would cost more than asking price, fair view of Cascade Mountains, noisy school bus passings, neighboring house with dozens of cars coming and going, schools so-so. Sold for $618,000.
5.Greenlake #2: owner declared oil tank removed but could not produce permit, fire district had no record of removal, huge oil smell in soil under dining area, steep dangerous stairs, high car theft area, 1 car garage. Sold for $875,000.
6.Broadview #2: nice house, private community club, remodeled, no permits, no view, outbid. Sold for $805,000.
7. Laurelhurst: very nice house, remodeled with permits, great neighborhood. Owner sold house twice, to us and one other buyer. We were awarded damages but not the house.
8. Windermere: owner loved house for over 30 years but didn’t love maintaining it. Rats, ants, wood rot throughout, failed plumbing, ancient electrical wiring, flooding under foundation. Not in Windermere proper, so no access to beach club. A total tear-down. Sold for $750,000.
9.The winner. We overpaid. Time will tell by how much.
From what I’ve seen of the homes I’ve toured I really think the best ones were when owners hired an architect and spent money renovating down to the studs during the ’90′s. These homes have a sweet position in the market. The owners have already done the remodeling at least several years ago and have hopefully recovered from those costs and can recoup further with their sales price. The buyers aren’t paying top dollar for a new home with bling-y current upgrades. Owners will get a fair price for their sweat equity and buyers can expect some negotiating unlike builders/flippers who are sitting on their development loans going broke. Bonus if the house is in a nice neighborhood with a fenced backyard and close to top schools.
Still it’s mostly a strange climate for home buyers. A lot of owners are finding it far cheaper to stay put than sell and hope to upgrade to the next level of house. Of course there is always opportunity with the occasional job transfer, divorce, aging parents moving to a retirement home. But for the professional home flipper shilling out $20,000 for aesthetic updates and expecting a $200,000 return, those times have gone the way of the dinosaur. And still a lot homeowner remain oddly optimistic about the value of their home in this down market.
I’ve noticed all the homes that have come back onto the market after being UNSOLD for two or more years. They go contingent but come back on the market. Contingent status appears less and less as home buyers are unable to secure the tony loans of the past. Owners are seeing the days of 30% profit on a house owned for four years of less with no updates come to an abrupt end. 200% returns on cheaply remodeled Ballard, Green Lake, Magnolia bungalows are gone, gone.
What is selling in today’s market? Well, exactly what sells in ANY kind of market. A house with a decent floor plan, enough square footage to turn around in, and a yard for Fido or Baby. Being close to excellent schools or near parks are also plus but being on a major street or intersection within these areas may mean less of a return on asking price. Good neighborhoods are marked by the absence of whispering neighbors spying on open houses as they speculate about the value of their own home. But if there is any doubt about the security of the neighborhood you could call the local precinct for statistics ala due diligence.
Homes that sell have buyers that expect some updating (like 2 full bathrooms or a kitchen that doesn’t have a backdoor that opens into your refrigerator) but at least start with a foundation free of cracks, support posts free of water damage and rot, plumbing free of duct tape (you’d be surprised what people will do to avoid calling a plumber) a basement, attic or crawl space free of rodents, pests and asbestos. Basically a normal house, right? Well apparently in earthquake prone, rodent infested Seattle this is a tall order.
Sure, you may not expect a house with a fah-habulous view to have as many updates as a house of the same price without a view. But human hands should have touched at least touched the plumbing in the last 50 years. Likewise that relic of an electrical panel pulsing at 125 watts should be replaced with a 200 watt panel from this century. That abandoned oil tank you claim was removed years ago but have no documentation for ~ yeah, that’s gonna be a problem. It takes one half cup of oil to pollute a entire swimming pool worth of ground water. You will spend $65,000 in cleanup costs only to be put on the EPA probation list for 2 years during which you are not allowed to sell your home. So homeowners do check into some PLIA insurance is you are still believing your trusty oil tank that hasn’t seen the light of day in 25 years is a safer (cheaper) alternative to modern gas. Likewise make darn certain the yokels who converted your oil furnace to gas got better than passing marks at the Gas Furnace School of Installation.
If you are still in the dark about your home’s ability to sell without losing the crapload of money you paid for it here’s a few pointers (aka Caveat Emptor):
1) If I step out of my car onto your curb in front of your home and put my foot into dog poo ~ you don’t have a nice house.
2) If I trip over broken pavement, uneven stairs and the handrail or doorknob comes off in my hand ~ you don’t have a nice house.
3) If I have to wrestle garbage and recycling bins out of the way to reach the front door at the top of several sets of stairs (with a stroller in tow) – your house sucks.
4) If I open the front door and see stairs, a brick wall, the dining area, or basically anything other than a foyer, hallway or coat closet ~ your house sucks.
5) If you only spent money painting each room a different “hip” color – your house sucks.
6) If you put your kitchen in the basement or attic or anywhere I can’t waltz into with a bag of groceries steps from my car – your house sucks.
7) If I find no room bigger than my car joined by series of twisting narrow hallways and your agent mentions “good flow” – your house sucks.
8 )If you converted your attic into a “stunning master suite” and shoehorned a bathroom and wardrobe into the crawl spaces a microbe couldn’t stand up in without bumping their teeny biomorphic head – your house sucks.
9) If the opposing walls of your house lean inward – your house sucks.
10) If you put the window into the master bathtub/shower overlooking the neighbors – your house sucks.
11) If the floorboards don’t quite meet the walls and the plaster on the ceiling that your agent listed as charming period detail falls in my eye – your house sucks.
12) If I have to take my life in my hands traversing a narrow set of steep stairs to a low ceiling basement to retrieve my laundry – your house sucks.
13) If the next door neighbors have installed a permanent basketball court with floodlights behind your house – your house sucks.
14) If your neighbors are senior citizens who spend a lot of time drinking and plotting against you – your house sucks.
15) If the neighborhood teens like to steal your lawn ornaments – your house sucks.
16) If your house is positioned onto the far back corner of your lot and the exposed yard is prey to passing cars throwing beer bottles onto your lawn – your house sucks.
17) If those “mature garden” trees and plants are filling your sewer lines with roots, lifting your foundation and pinching your gutters shut – your house sucks.
18) If your gutters empty out onto a concrete block 6 inches from your foundation –your house sucks.
19) If you spent $10,000 installing storm windows over those “charming” single leaded glass panes but ignored the frayed sash cords and crumbling sills – your house sucks.
20) If you’ve never fixed anything broken in your house (e.g. leaking plumbing) but live a fabulous neighborhood and want to retire to California – your house sucks and I hope you can never afford more than a yurt in San Jose.
21) If I stand outside and hear I-5, 520, 99, or your house fronts a major traffic artery please understand that delightful water feature you installed (but never cleaned) or that “Zen” outdoor room with Trex deck studded with rare potted plants – won’t save you.
22) If I stand outside and catch the diesel breeze of a passing freight train – your house sucks.
23) If you built your house in a slide zone but your never built a retaining wall or fixed that hinge crack in your basement or never heard of pin piling – your house sucks.
24) If you are a developer or builder and bought a shoehorn or transitional lot and constructed a $400,000 Craftsman on it that looks into every neighbor’s backyard down the entire block and you are asking $1,000,000 for it – your house sucks.
25) If I feel better standing outside your house than standing inside of it – your house sucks.
Thank you,
Tired of Looking at Crappy Houses in a Down Market for 2 Years Running
bumper stickers. Yep, we’ve seen ‘em. Love it you may, but from 7-9am and 4-7pm the Alaska Way Viaduct becomes a parking lot. It is well known that Alaska Way Viaduct is a crumbling anachronism that needs to be torn down and replaced with a thoroughfare that allows safe and attractive access to Seattle’s greatest asset – our waterfront. But the voters who don’t use it don’t want to pay for a replacement. And those who commute over it to reach their homes in Seattle’s bedroom communities enjoy the water view too much. But replacing it must happen, and can be done well. I refer you to Seattle’s new Sculpture Garden which has successfully joined pedestrian with waterfront access. People are even holding their wedding receptions at the Sculpture Park ~ though it’s difficult to ignore the blasts of the train horns passing below. Ultimately this park is successful in conquering the eyesore and danger of the Burlington Northern freight trains bogarting our city waterfront.
Today the Discovery Channel aired an episode of “How It’s Made” covering the topic of chicks. A midwest commercial hatchery reveals how it “raises” (in no sense of the word) chicks from fertilized eggs for meat or egg production. Odd. The show had never ventured into realm of Living Product before. It begins with thousands of fertilized (how, they never said) eggs hermetically sealed in a chamber with automatic heat and humidity. Each egg rested on a metal prongs which rotated and tipped the egg at intervals to a 45 degree angle. This was supposed to simulate the way a mother hen turns her eggs. But the gears were not gentle. Thousands eggs turned and rotated on the metal prongs like a Pachinko game.
