QUESTION OF THE DAY:
Are property owners still doing 1031 tax deferred exchanges in Greater Seattle’s current real estate market? Yes, if they have adequate equity in their investment property.
Loan rates are super low. If you’re blessed with stable employment, a good credit score, have some money in the bank, don’t have a lot of debt, and have a downpayment this may be a ripe opportunity to start thinking about buying yourself a home or condo.
Wanna dish Seattle life, real estate, traveling around Western Washington? On Twitter you can find me @urbantweeter
Have a blessed day.
The DOT has now closed State Route 20 which crosses 5,477-foot Washington Pass. It’s closed from seven miles east of Diablo Dam on the west side of the mountains to nine miles west of Mazama on the east. If you need to get across the pass, you’ll need to take the long way for awhile.
Guy Nelson of KUOW’s The Conversation talks with Jon Talton and Tim Ellis about the Seattle Foreclosure Spike. Listen to the segment of the October 28 show.
A fun and timely Q&A: In the State of Washington, if a property is thought to be haunted, or someone was murdered on the property, or someone killed themselves on the property is the seller required to disclose this stuff on the Property Disclosure Statement (Form 17)?
Form 17 allows a seller to make “… disclosures of material facts or material defects to buyer based on seller’s actual knowledge of the property at the time seller completes this disclosure statement.”
Questions like the ones posed above are considered negative stigmas not material facts. Can negative stigmas affect property value? What do you think?
Then there’s questions like can an agent represent in good faith and hide/omit information at the same time? Is a seller obligated to disclose things that aren’t on the Form 17? What if the buyer says knowing such negative stigma would have affected their decision to buy — can the buyer sue someone, anyone, everyone?
Sellers and agents are only obligated to disclose material facts or defects. According to the Law of Real Estate Agency in Washington material fact is described as: information that substantially adversely affects the value of the property or a party’s ability to perform its obligations in a real estate transaction, or operates to materially impair or defeat the purpose of the transaction. The fact or suspicion that the property, or any neighboring property, is or was the site of a murder, suicide or other death, rape or other sex crime, assault or other violent crime, robbery or burglary, illegal drug activity, gang-related activity, political or religious activity, or other act, occurrence, or use not adversely affecting the physical condition of or title to the property is not a material fact.
Assessed value lags the market and this Assessor’s Time Frame chart shows you how that works. I’ll be adding more information about King County assessments to this post over time. If you have a specific question about the assessment of your King County home you may contact:
Ms. Barbara Sbisa Alsheikh
Assistant Tax Advisor III, Office Supervisor
King County Office of Citizen Complaints/Ombudsman
Barbara.Alsheikh@kingcounty.gov
A Seattle girl who loves her Chais and Americanos becomes overwhelmed with guilt about the number of paper cups, plastic lids, stir sticks, and straws she has used and decided to do something about it.
Hong Kong architect Gary Chang has been inspired to raise the bar on minimalism and functionality to new heights and in the process created for himself an ultra efficient and stylish home. By creating a system of moving walls he’s transformed his 340 sf apartment into 24 different rooms that provides everything needed for daily living (icing on the cake is a screening area complete with hammock). Uber Impressive Innovation!
My Neighborhood Map is a Seattle.gov resource you can use to read police reports and see what kind of criminal activity (by category) is going on in a given area.
 Here’s a simple formula from one of Kristal Kraft’s ActiveRain posts that illustrates how to calculate what the absorption rate is for any area you’re interested in. Think of the results as an approximation (not empirical data) for trend tracking.
Buyers with high credit scores may be less likely to default on their loans than buyers with low credit scores but why would lenders not generalize and assume that people with higher credit scores would indeed default with purpose, intent, and financial strategy? I mean sheesh, seems common sense to me. Here’s Kenneth Harney’s July 2 Seattle Times story The vexing case of strategic defaults on the topic.
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