Seattle

The value of a home is arrived at individually by a buyer and a seller when they agree upon a price and, incidentally, when they are able to close the sale at that price. There are many situations where the sale price is not the listed price and is not the offered price. “Arms length” means that there are no other influencing factors like family ties, distressed sellers or bank ownership etc.

The best way to determine if a home is the right price for you, the buyer, is to educate yourself in the neighborhood where you would like to live. Gathering information from friends and family and the internet is a good start but we will all have different (and sometimes confusing) opinions of what is right. Websites like your county web site , Cyberhomes.com or Zillow.com have to be interpreted by someone who uses those sites all of the time. Zestimates rely on county data and owner input, both of which are just not accurate for YOU! Assessor values are far more complicated than being 20% below “market value.”

I find that not everyone can learn value in previewing just a few homes, and that it may take months to learn what your values are. I’ve had clients rent in a neighborhood for a few months and visit every open house while they are there. Pretty soon they discover that this neighborhood is affordable or not; that a 2 bedroom usually sells for X and a 3 bedroom sells for Y. You learn how people take care of their homes and how they upgrade them. What does it do to the value if there is a new bedroom, kitchen, bath or deck?

You learn what is valuable to you; “And that’s all that counts.” I agree with this. It doesn’t matter what we think.

I’ll use the term Realtor, which refers to a person who belongs to the National Association of Realtors. Their website is Realtor.org. You can find some great questions to ask your agent there.

Realtors can use all of this information to estimate the market value of a home because they are immersed in it all day and every day. They use this information to advocate for your opinion of value. They are supportive of your learning curve and can provide as much time and information as it takes for you to understand what you value in a home.

Have you ever traveled to a place where you’d like to stay for a while? Have you ever traveled and thought that; this might be a nice spot to learn a little more about? Would you like to get involved in this community? Could you see yourself becoming a local?

For seasoned travelers the thought of putting down roots may come from many experiences in a number of different countries. For others these ideas may come from the family holiday that took place throughout childhood and that now hold a certain charm in adult life. In both ends of the spectrum they involve an adventure into unfamiliar territory which can be tremendously rewarding.

The soul-searching that it takes to initiate the adventure is seriously personal: too personal for our forum. So let’s make the first assumption and believe that your soul has been searched and it agrees that you know a place where you’d like to spend some quality time.

In the next few articles I’ll share some information with you that should demystify some of the issues of purchasing property in a remote or international location. I’d also like to take this opportunity to express some of my own soul-searching results and narrow the discussion a little bit. I don’t have much patience for time-shares; their value rarely appreciates and I believe that part of that comes from their transient nature. There are some options that are just as cost effective and so if you have your heart set on a time-share condominium, I won’t be much help. Now that we have cleared the air on that issue, let’s move on to who will be your advocate.

True story; I’m an old skier.  And what does that have to do with the NAHBR?  And what does any of that have to do with deciding whether to stay in your home as you age, or sell it and move in with a group of people you hardly know?

Tens years or so ago I met a man who was also an old skier.  We’d both spent some of our youth living in the Rocky Mountains and devoting our time testing our balance while in frictionless motion sliding down steep hillsides covered in snow.  We were working together now on the renovation of a commercial building on the shores of Lake Union.  Mike was the project manager representing the general contractor.  Mike travels in a wheelchair.  I have this memory of him negotiating over a debris covered jobsite that’s probably more romance than reality.  His people knew better than to impede the progress of his chair.  His was the only chair that I saw on a jobsite in thirty five years of my experience in that industry.  He makes an impact.

Imagine my surprise today when I saw his name as a speaker at our weekly CBBain real estate forum.  I was fascinated to see the article that was written about him on the NAHBR website: Selling Universal and Green Remodels.

The forum is entitled “Designing for Life”.  You’ll see from Mike’s website at Stewardship Remodeling that he believes that home design should be for life and that if it is done correctly, it should allow us to live out our lives there.  When you understand this approach you can see that one of the paths that it leads to our interest in the impact of aging on real estate.

Is it fair to ask an elder to leave the home that they’ve grown to love?  Is there a way to recognize our own concerns for the safety of our elders and the possibilities that may exist for them staying home?

Welcome to a site for people who are connecting real estate to current changes in their lives; or trying to.

Do you know an elder who you think should make a move to a senior care facility?  They want to stay where they have lived for the last 40 years; it’s a familiar environment with a lifetime of memories.  Is it fair to intervene?

You have a life insurance policy. Can you use it to help pay for some of the costs of senior housing?

You’ve heard a little bit about reverse mortgages but they sound as complicated as one of our senior’s health care plans.  How can one ever come to understand these tools?

Have you come to a point where you think that you’d like to live in another part of the country or another part of the world?  Retirement funds are reasonably secure but this doesn’t seem like a good time to sell our primary residence.  The real estate market is so depressed; is it a good time to sell our home?  If we buy a home in another country, how do the currency exchange rates affect our investment?  How much have we really made on the investment in our home in the last 25 years?

This forum should be a powerful resource for exchanging information about one of our largest personal investments.  People are always saying that real estate used to be one of the best investments that they ever made.  That has changed in the last 18 months rather dramatically.  What is the real estate market like on Capitol Hill in Seattle Washington?  Let’s be honest; who knows where this will end up?  Let’s talk about it!