360Digest

Houses made of bottles

The Bottle Houses on Prince Edward Island

House made out of bottles in Rhyolite, Nevada, a Ghost Town about 100 miles outside of Vegas

Doc Hope’s Bottle House in Hillsville, VA, built in 1941

Anna’s Bottle Home in Tucson, Arizona

Why is there an airplane (with runway) on 77 Water Street Building in Manhattan?

What was it like to live on a Utah farm in the 1920’s? How were homes different then? Take a look through my grandparents home in Leamington, (Millard County) Utah

ArchInfo’s World’s 12 Best New Buildings

Who wouldn’t want to live in a Tree House?

The Cedar Creek Treehouse in Ashford, WA

Hiroba, the Sapporo Dome Stadium with the world’s first “hovering soccer stage” (Including a QuickTime movie, showing how the full soccer field is being transferred in & out the dome)

“Raw concrete” of the Brutalist architecture

Barbara Ciurej and Lindsay Lochman’s Age of the Domiciles

Lincoln Toe Truck, a pink landmark south of Lake Union, and other Seattle Icons & Roadside Attractions. Also, Seattle’s “Hat ‘n’ Boots” and other Unusual homes

This is a post that I am “co-blogging” with Hanan Levin, a real estate agent from Southern California who blogs at Grow-A-Brain and who provided many of today’s links. Thank you, Hanan! You can view other co-blogged entries of Hanan’s HERE. If other bloggers are interested to share the forum here on any other topic, please contact me for details. If you’re interested in Hanan’s site, check out HERE for his incredible list of topics.

(Photo above from NW Links.) Many More of Hanan’s Unusual architectural Links Here

There are several TV opportunities filming this summer. If you have an interesting home or cool project, you should contact them.

4 TV shows are filming, “ReZoned”, “Offbeat America”, “Small Space, Big Style”, and “Look What I Did!”. Click HERE for more details.

If you don’t live in Seattle, but have an unusual home, please send me photos too, so I can feature them on this blog. I can also feature you on Seattle Dream Homes, as I am setting up a special page to showcase unique and unusual homes across the United States. Unusual Homes, strange places and unique people will also be featured in Unusual Life..

Who found this picture of my office and posted it on the internet? I’m so embarrassed.

Luckily, there’s a Home Office from Hell contest I’m in the running for. Winner gets a real (and I’m presuming clean) office elsewhere for a year.

Home Office from Hell Contest

In a press release today, Cendant, Coldwell Banker’s parent company, announced to Wall Street and the industry, Cendant’s Real Estate Services Division new name under which it will operate as a standalone, publicly traded company - Realogy Corporation. The name change will take effect upon the completion of its previously announced spin-off from Cendant Corporation, anticipated during the second quarter of 2006.

Cendant was the world’s largest real estate brokerage franchisor, and the world’s largest provider of outsourced corporate employee relocation services; and leading providers of travel information processing services worldwide. It was also one of the world’s largest hotel franchisors, the world’s largest vacation ownership organization, and one of the world’s largest car rental operators.

Cendant owns Coldwell Banker, Coldwell Banker Commercial, ERA, Century 21 and Sotheby’s International.

I’m just a cog in the wheel….

These were my fingers before I started selling real estate and biting my nails. Lovely Fingernail Art.

Open Nail Art Championship

Forum for Men who have long fingernails.

Long fingernails might spread infections.

Guinness Book of World Records for the longest fingernails in the world.

It’s at Pacific Galleries this week, on 2/21 & 2/22. Dozens of taxidermy and sideshow items for sale, including a full size giraffe head, a complete lion, and sideshow freaks such as the “Peruvian Wolf Boy” mummy and a shrunken head under glass made of monkey skin.

Also available for sale are some “rogue taxidermy” items such as 6-legged rabbits and other such sideshow gaff made to imitate a mysterious find from the natural world. It’s hard to believe, but there are actually several artists currently working in this field today. Roadkill Artist

Couldn’t make the auction? Have a burning desire to own a dried turkey head, punk-rock squirrel, a boar hear under glass or Mummified Magic Mystery Hand Box? Check out Custom Creature Taxidermy.

Wanna Mouse Torso, Evil Eye, or Exploding Frog? Liquid Fish

How about an Aligator Boy, 3-Clawed Scorpion or a Baby Dragon? Fiendish Curiosities

UPDATE: Steve Bard jus sent me this link…. a guy who dresses up taxidermy in human clothes……Well-Dressed Dead Animals

It’s official.

Zillow has applied and been accepted as a member of the NWMLS.

They are a licensed real estate brokerage in the state of Washington. They fit the DOL requirements for a brokerage, so NWMLS has no ability or right to bar a licensed Broker from joining NWMLS because they have a unique business model.

At this point NWMLS has no intention of singling Zillow or any other member out as unacceptable. They have said that should there be violations of NWMLS Rules, they will handle the circumstance just as they do all of their member violations.

As has been spectulated on Rain City Guide and in Dave Chase’s Market Velocity blog, there has been some question as to whether or not Zillow could make it on advertising alone. As Dave points out, finding out what your house is worth isn’t a sticky feature, it’s not enough to get people to come back time-after-time. But listings just might be. Especially if clicking on those listings brings you in contact with an agent who is either paying Zillow for the right to advertise on the site or paying Zillow a percentage of the commission.

UPDATE: Zillow’s Broker is Bob McNamee, and there are 2 other agents listed, Macy Cross and Jennifer Wilson, neither of whom show any sales or listings, so they must be newly licensed.

I wonder what happened to Gorden Stephenson, managing Broker of Real Property Associates and a member of Zillow’s board. I thought if Zillow was going to go move ahead into referrals, they were going to partner up with them. It looks like they’re heading out on their own, instead.

Slate had an interesting article today, …..Twilight of the Blogs, a discussion of whether or not they’re “over” as a business. They’re not, of course, but writing about it was an excuse to discuss the cute Magazine Cover Indicator. That’s a term coined by Barry Ritholtz, a blogger and hedge-fund manager. He says that being plastered on the front of a national magazine is fatal for certain trends or fads.

New York Magazine isn’t a national magazine, but the article Blogs to Riches was on the cover and discusses the haves and have-nots of the blogging boom, breaking it down for us about the A, B & C lists and discusses the “network theory” in depth, a mathematical model of how information travels inside groups of loosely connected people, such as users of the Web.

I started this blog in 2004, but only posted infrequently, and used it to augment my main webpage SeattleDreamHomes.com. But in the last few months, the moon and stars have been aligned in such a way as to make me reconsider my past hesitance to join the fray. And Dustin over at RainCityGuide said just today “It seems like a no-brainer to me that agents should start blogging… “ So how could I not?

Blog Overkill: The danger of hyping

Are Blogs changing our culture?

What a lovely sentiment.

How many people can wish their loved ones Happy Valentine’s Day like this? Hairshirt? Sacred undergarments? Italian sweater? Flak Magazine’s Essay on Back Hair.

Just like long hair in general? The Long Hair Site

Wunderland Long Hair Index

In Korea, there’s a government campaign against long hair. It stressed the “negative effects” of long hair on “human intelligence development”, noting that long hair “consumes a great deal of nutrition” and could thus rob the brain of energy. North Korea wages war against long hair.

How many new real estate blogs just popped up this week? First we had ZillowBlog from Zillow chairman Rich Barton, now we have Glenn Kelman’s from Redfin. Glenn made an interesting comment, that Redfin may even consider advertising on Zillow. It’s all getting so, uh, ….. incestuous. Zillow’s reading Curbed, Matrix, Freakonomics and Rain City Guide, Redfin’s referencing Zillow, the New York Times blog is referencing both, and there’s a slew of lesser-known real estate and business blogs blathering on about all of them. Oh, and that includes me too, I guess…….

Paul Kedrosky’s blog “Infectious Greed” has an entry entitled “Zillow is Data Porn”, where he likens the new website Zillow to pornography for middle-aged people. He figures there might be more time spent on that site than on some porn sites…

Marjorie Garber has written a book entitled Sex and Real Estate: Why We Love Houses. Her premise is that real estate has become a form of “yuppie pornography.” Hopes of summer romance have given way to hopes of summer homes, and fantasies of Romeo have been replaced by fantasies of remodeling. Even real estate ads are flirtatious in their offers of bedrooms that are sensuous and sinks that are seductive. Thus the house you live in, like the partner you choose, can be everything from your beloved to your dream to a status symbol trophy.

The Stranger had their own take on this, surmising that houses, apartments, and businesses provoke fond sex memories and mortifying regrets. Sexual Real Estate from The Stranger

That reminds me of an old joke around our office: Sex is like real estate, get a lot while you’re young.

Update, as noted in Brad Inman’s Blog, quoting the The Arizona Republic: “Exploring others homes is an increasingly popular pastime, a Grand Obsession. The article notes, “In her provocatively titled book Sex and Real Estate, cultural critic Marjorie Garber entertainingly argues - but doesn’t entirely convince - that real estate has become a form of “yuppie pornography.”

Home tours and their cousin, the real estate open house, are, Garber writes, “a flirtatious activity of window-shopping other people’s houses” that offers “a socially sanctioned license to daydream about what goes on behind other people’s closed doors.”

If real estate is the new sex, home tours are peep shows. Pay the admission and you can watch action you can’t get at your own house. Copper-clad doors. Hand-carved limestone entrances. Sixteen-foot ceilings. Whew. It quickens the pulse.”

Zillow Talk

The beta version of www.Zillow.com was launched today. There were so many hits, the servers were overwhelmed for most of the day, which made it hard to view, but when I finally got on to view the site, it was interesting. Lots of work went into that site. I would hate to be the one who had to input all that data. So many numbers!

Dozens of people have much more important and interesting things to say than I do about this new website…..

Wall Street Journal

Wall Street Journal blog “Walkthrough”

John Cook’s Venture Blog

John Cook’s story in the Seattle P.I.

ValleyWag

Curbed.com

Rain City Guide

Business Week

Redfin unveiled its new service today “Redfin Direct”, an online service for making an offer on a house. Redfin refunds a portion of its commission back to the buyer if they use their services. However, they will not show the house to the buyer, the buyer has to go in at an open house or through the listing agent. Apparently, they are making forms available online for the Buyer to write their own offer, though they are not available for review without registrering with the company first.

Redfin is taking the “Buyers Agent” commission, though they do not appear to be representing the Buyer in the writing of the offer, nor offering any advice or assistance beyond presenting the offer to the Seller’s agent.

For an experienced real estate buyer who already knows what property they want to buy, this might be an option to explore. However most regular agents will also offer some special considerations if the buyer doesn’t require a lot of extra services, property showings, neighborhood tours, lunches/latte’s bought, listings previewed and forwarded, research, emails, telephone calls, contract writing, negotiations, advice and general hand-holding.

A concern with this new service of Redfin’s is the property showings. They state in their online FAQ’s, that the buyer is to preview the home first at on Open House or through the listing agent.

Most agents will not, for safety and security reasons, meet strangers at a house. Why would they take that risk? The murder of Mike Emert of Windermere (Bellevue office) is still fresh in most of their minds, and there is word almost every month of some agent raped, threatened or killed at a house showing.

I’m sure no Seller would want an agent to take a risk like that, and, understanding the situation, what Seller would want their agent letting a complete stranger into their homes? Open Houses are still a risk, but, being on a Sunday afternoon with other people constantly coming-and-going, there is less chance of someone peforming a crime of opportunity without getting caught.

Sellers rely on agents enlightened self-interest to only allow qualified buyers into their home for a private tour, for both their safety and the safety of their agents, so I’m not sure how this will work in practice, but it will be interesting to watch and see. This may be a great way for Buyers to go trolling and make a number of lowball offers to see if they get any bites. However, a buyer who makes more than 10 offers in a 12-month period will have to start paying for them.

So trolling for deals might work for a house that has been on the market for awhile, but if the house is competatively priced and it’s a hot market, I wonder if using the Redfin online wizard will be enough to get a buyer the house? This may not work very well in a competative real estate market.

If anyone uses this service, please let us know and give some feedback and if they’re happy with the process.

The Seattle Times article Redfin offers one-stop shopping also offers some additional information.

Though many Buyers Agents just worked on a handshake, agents now would be advised to get Agency Agreements signed with each of their buyers.

The Marine Corp Base at Quantico, Va., is giving away 58 prefabricated, porcelain-enameled steel, ranch-style houses with two or three bedrooms, originally erected nearly 60 years ago to provide homes for returning World War II soldiers.

The homes are available to anyone who can demonstrate the ability to dismantle and move the 11-ton dwellings with their 3,300 parts and 4,000 nuts and bolts.

This is the largest collection anywhere of homes known as Lustrons. Designed by Carl Standlund and manufactured assembly-line style, they are eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. Clark Realty Capital, the developer with a contract to build new base housing, agreed to find a way to reuse the housing as a part of the deal to win the contract.

Applicants should expect to provide a plan, proof of financial ability to pay for the venture, and evidence that they’ve done something like this before. Deadline for proposals is April 12.

Lustrons at Quantico

More free house ideas. Of course, you need to move them and restore them, but still, if you have a vacant lot, here are some great ideas on how to get one of these free homes. Homes for a dollar.

More “Free House” opportunities from a previous post on www.360Digest.com.

Lustron, the Home America’s Been Waiting For, official website for the documentary film Lustron.

Tour a Lustron Home.

Waiting for the Interurban, Fremont’s, no, Seattle’s favorite sculpture, has gone into storage while the city does repairs on the Fremont bridge.

What are people going to decorate if the Seahawks win the Superbowl tomorrow?

Seattle. Metblogs.com/Waiting for the Interurban in storage