Elizabeth Rhodes seems to relish the exposure whether her articles are news worthy or not. Imagine, the little real estate reporter gets the front page of the Seattle Times……..on Sunday! Well let’s take a close look at that article:
1. The young couple trying to sell their Redmond Ridge home for the last 2 weeks….yes, you heard right, a whole two weeks! are stressed because they’ve received only one offer, and it was less than full price.
2. Take a close look at the photo accompanying the article. Hmmmm……dead lawn around the feet of the owner at the base of a tree. Behind the owners we see uncut, undefined planter areas with untrimmed, overgrown non-descript bushes. Planter areas are poorly treated with el-cheapo red bark from a bag, possibly from Safeway, carelessly spread. Sort of looks more like a rental than a home for sale.
3. Here’s the good part: waaaaaaay back on May 2nd, the owner fired MLS 4 Owners and hired a full service agent, Nancy Backman from John L Scott. So this story is almost 3 weeks old?!?!?[NOTE: We have had the pleasure of closing 2 transactions with Nancy and we think she is one of the best, nicest, most professional Realtors we’ve ever met.] The property sold “subject to inspection” [“STI”] just this past Friday, the 18th. We didn’t have a chance to view the property, so we don’t know if Nancy and the owners made any improvements to the marketability/condition, but the price was reduced $5,000 from the prior listing. Here is a link to the entire history of this listing from the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.
So if this story is to have any credibility, should it not include kudos for Nancy Backman getting the job done when the do-it-yourself approach failed? Could it not have at least been updated to include the fact that they had switched to a full service company waaaay back on May 2nd?
Real estate is a big deal. People talk about it all the time. The Seattle Times is the most prominent source of written news in the region. So why is it too much to expect that the real estate news reporting at least be current, if not always accurate.
By the way, besides our nitpicking of the dates and facts, the gist of the article was that the local market is cooling. 13% annual appreciation is cooling??? Aside from the 16% anomaly that was last year, 13% is still a torrid, unsustainable rate. So don’t be surprised when appreciation cools to a respectable 8%. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.
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