360Digest

I love it when those employed or investing in the web or real estate 2.0 industry, supposedly with 100′s of high-tech options available to them, choose traditional methods to buy or sell a home. Their actions underline the importance of traditional marketing and the MLS.

Rich Barton, Chairman and CEO of Zillow has his home listed with Gordon Stephenson of RPA, and now Kristin Acker, VP, Product and Design at Zillow found her new home and is selling her present one with Gordon too.

Mr. Barton has been quoted saying “major change in home selling is inevitable over the next five years or so because there is an unsustainable disconnect between the commissions charged by most agents and the value of their services. But, I’m glad to see he’s paying a 2.5% commission on the sale of his $2.8M home.

When Zillow was first launched, Barton was more frank about his intentions, or perhaps his business model has changed or he’s got better handlers or PR, but now he’s claiming Zillow is just a media company and a partner with Realtors and not a competitor.

Since they just hired Greg Schwartz as Vice President, Advertising Sales, to Zillow, perhaps we’ll see some new features and advertising opportunities rolled out soon for Realtors, agents and brokers.

Here’s a bit of nonsense from Slate: “Why home ownership causes unemployement” by Tim Harford. The article, while entertaining, draws erroneous conclusions. We want to encourage homeownership and not try to make tenuous ties or correlations between homeownership and joblessness.

In a study by Denise DiPasquale of the University of Chicago and Edward L. Glaeser of Harvard University, they provide evidence that owning a home appears to build a sense of community and make people better citizens. Using survey data, the researchers found that homeowners are much more likely than renters to work to solve local problems, or know their local congressman by name.

Some folks are against mortgage tax breaks and government efforts to promote homeownership, however, there is proof that owning your own home provides indirect benefits or ”positive externalities”–benefits that extend to the welfare of society as a whole.

Using survey data and controlling for age, race, gender, income, marital status, having children, and other variables, the two economists find that homeowners are much more likely than renters to work to solve local problems. They’re also more likely to vote in local elections, attend church, garden, and join nonprofessional organizations.

Predictably, homeownership also affects the shape of local government spending. The researchers report that homeowners tend to favor lower overall budgets and welfare outlays but higher spending on schools and highways.

Interestingly, the positive effects of homeownership appear related to its negative impact on mobility. The longer people live in their own home, the more likely they are to engage in activities that improve their communities.

National Bureau of Economic Research, “Are Homeowners Better Citizens?”

Nine reasons why Irish real estate might be right for you.

Mad Season, a book by Nancy Means Wright, about Colm Hanna, a pun loving Irish realtor who doubles as the town mortician

Lovely Irish ballad with video

My Irish Realtor

Killarney Realty in Irish Hills, MI

Fantasy Ireland

Irish Castles for sale

St. Patrick’s Day celebrations around the U.S.

But interesting, nevertheless….

On April 16, 1970, a federal grand jury indicted the Seattle Liberation Front (SLF) leaders for conspiracy to riot in planning a February 17, 1970 demonstration in Seattle.

One of the members, Jeff Dowd, went on to be a big Hollywood agent. He goes by the name “The Dude”.

The Coen Brothers made a film about him called “The Big Lebowski”.

It become an underground hit. Now it has a cult following and a group of fans have festivals and film screenings and bowling and costume parties all based on the film.

The next “Lebowski Fest” is coming to Seattle March 9th.

And Jeff Dowd, the actual real live “Dude” and one of the original Seattle Seven, will be in attendance.

Grow-a-Brain loves The Big Lebowski

It was reported in the PSBJ that Donald Trump and Wood Partners LLC, a multifamily developer based in Atlanta, are in negotiations to find a site in Seattle for a hotel/condominium project.

Is this the beginning of the end for Seattle as we know it?

Years ago, when California buyers were cashing in their equity and moving into the Pacific Northwest, we used to pray for one of those “California Buyers” to walk into our Open House and plop down cash for our properties. Then when that happened too often, we’d put “Seattle Native” on our license plates and mutter “Don’t Californicate Washington” under our breaths.

What’s the East Coast equivalent to this sentiment? When I was growing up here, people used to complain about Seattle being an unsophisticated backwater. Now, they’re complaining that it’s losing its character with all of the unbridled development.

I hope that enough people will treasure our short history here and our town doesn’t become interchangeable with every other American city, with it’s chains and franchises. I hope that developers can fight the urge to fill their condos and developments with mammoth retail spaces and, instead, make the shop spaces smaller and cheaper to encourage quirky boutiques and small businesses. And I hope they don’t turn a “blind eye” to the street when adding that retail space, allowing the stores to board over the sidewalk-facing windows just to pack in more shelf-space in the stores. That makes for a very unfriendly streetscape.

Achieving density of the sort that makes attractive and lively places does not need not be at the expense of privacy, of overcrowded houses or of increases in traffic and noise. Building types and lot arrangements, though, must be chosen or invented to maintain the character of our city. Ostentatious displays of wealth are not in character with Seattle’s self-made and humble fisherman and lumberjack origins.

Vancouver B.C., our neighbor to the North, has been undertaking a mammoth experiment in urbanism, making over a city in concrete and glass, unlike anything that’s been done in Canada. As the skyline of Seattle changes in tandem, we stop, pause, and wonder what we’re becoming, where we’re going, and what we’ve become.

In Vancouver, ninety percent of the nine million square feet of new towers approved in downtown during this decade have been condos.

In Seattle it’s pretty much the same story. Last year, the Seattle City Council cleared the way for sweeping changes to the downtown skyline when it repealed the height limits voters set on downtown buildings in the 1989 CAP Initiative. According to an article by Bob Young, High-rise boom coming to Seattle? this change could bring as many as 2000 more condo units to downtown Seattle in the coming years.

According to an article in “Canadian Architect” by Trevor Boddy Downtown’s Last Resort, one-third of Vancouver’s head-office jobs left the city during the past six years and the city is becoming a playground of the super-rich and a repository of international funds, parked there as a hedge against global unrest. Critics decry the shift to a downtown future as a “resort,” not a true metropolis and compare the condo glut to “vertical gated communities.”

Then there are questions about the nature of these new downtown residents. Planners portray them as mountain-biking software and computer game developers, walk-to-work denizens of the postmodern economy–but there is just as much contrary evidence that many of the new residents are a golden global class temporarily parking their investment dollars, linked with a huge cohort of Canadian baby boomers planning to spend their final years in Vancouver.

Will downtown Seattle also become a playground for the rich and the elderly? Who will inhabit our new downtown? It won’t be families. There doesn’t appear to be a huge influx of jobs to the downtown area. How many empty-nesters and suburban couples will want to live out their years in a high-rise Trump-style retirement community called Downtown Seattle?

1000 condos planned for Qwest Field

Downtown living works in Vancouver, B.C. — but will it translate?

New condos: Which one’s the tallest of all?

How We Can Make Our Streets More “Pedestrian Friendly”

I was scolded by Glenn Kelman in the comments of my last post for attacking Redfin’s integrity, and I wanted to apologize if I gave the impression that Redfin’s calculations were incorrect. If you read the last post carefully, I did concede that their calculations were probably accurate, but I did not agree with their assumptions based on the calculations and I offered conflicting data from the NWMLS contradicting their numbers.

They claimed that Redfin King County customers paid on average 99.329% of the listing price, but now, Kevin Boer found a miscalculation, so they actually were incorrect, however slightly. To their credit, Redfin was quick to issue a public apology and explain their methodology. In the meantime, the NWMLS has pulled some charts from their 2006 analysis, so now the accuracy of the NWMLS statistics are called into question, which could again impact the year-end stats.

It appears that Redfin is comparing their 126 residential sales to the 27,216 residential transactions that occurred in the same time frame. That being a ½ of 1% compared to the whole, it may be too small to have any statistical weight.

As others have pointed out, if you look at all the offices that had a sale during the time frame that Redfin is using you will find that 951 offices had a selling side transaction. If you ordered those 951 offices by list price/sale price ratio you would see that Redfin falls in at 351 from the top. That means that approximately 1/3 of all companies that sold properties during that time frame had a better list price to sale price ratio for their buyers then Redfin did.

Further investigation shows that 50% of Redfin’s sales sold for 100% of list price or above

So, though Redfin’s basic figures are correct, what they call their “Redfin Advantage” is not quite what it seems.

There may be more interesting statistics available if the NWMLS releases new or updated numbers for 2006.

Greg Tracy has more about the “Redfin Advantage” with some interesting questions and Greg Swann has his own doubts, questions, answers and postulatons.

So, again, sorry if there was any misunderstanding. But I’ll let the statistics stand for themselves.