Adrian Willanger's Blog

We’ve all have heard the expression “when buying real estate its location, location, location.” Intuitively we get a sense of what makes a good neighborhood,  well keep streets and homes, low crime rates, good schools and close to shopping.

I tend to look at neighbors and communities in a circular or radius patterns.  A good example of this is with my new listing in Magnolia, 1911 31st Avenue W.  I tend to look at the location of the home in terms of how close are the  community resources, transit, open spaces and how walkable is the neighborhood.

When I asked the sellers what attracted them to this house, they previously lived just north of Dravus, and they mentioned that “a larger home was needed but the main attraction was its location.”  The 4 bedroom, 3 baths home is a five minute walk to “Magnolia Village” home to many specialty stores and professional services, some of Seattle’s top restaurants, and industrial and marine services. The amenity rich community also has strong connectivity to schools, parks, churches and public transportation.

Homes in this sought after  “walkable” area of Magnolia are blessed with many tree lined boulevards, open green spaces and fresh salt air breezes coming off Elliot Bay and Puget Sound.

Currently they’re 21 homes for sale with ½ mile radius of Magnolia Village prices range from $519,000-$5m.

New Listing

911 31th Avenue West, this 1950s home has its roots deeply embedded in a “new urbanism” theme, built in an extremely walkable community. The architecture design offers some subtle features from its counterparts, large inviting covered entry, natural daylighting from well thought out window placement, “BIG” rooms and an abundance of storage.  Extremely well maintained with some updating, a rare 2-car garage and 3 bathroom daylight-rambler located just east of Carlton Park in South Magnolia. Open Sunday May 20th from 1-3pm. Offered at $639,950.

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If you thinking about buying your first Seattle home in a few years, you have to work out a budget plan to make sure that it happens. It’s hard to reach a goal when you don’t have a plan put in place first. If you’re serious about becoming a homeowner you’ll take the time necessary to make a realistic plan that you can stick to.

Budgeting for your 1st home

The problem that most people make when them putting together a budget is they ignore the small extra things that really make a difference. For example, if you stop to get a coffee every day and pay $3 for it, this is $90 per month that you could put towards a new home. While $90 per month isn’t going to get you to your end goal very quickly, there are probably a lot of other small expenditures that you make every day or weekly that you could cut out.

If you are dining out once a week you can reduce it to once every two weeks. If you are spending $50 for a meal for you and your partner, that adds up to a savings of $100 per month. When you add that onto your $90 that you have saved by preparing your own coffees and bring them along in a thermos, you are already up to $190 monthly. This is almost $200 and all you have done is stop buying coffee every day and only dine out twice a month instead of four times.

Instead of dining out on those certain days you can replace it by asking friends over for a potluck dinner, a movie on your Blu-Ray player and a bowl of popcorn. You don’t really need to miss dining out at a Seattle restaurant every week if you decide not to. There are a lot of options you can put into place for any type of things that you want to take out of your budget to save money.

You don’t have to go without food, shelter or utilities to save money. Often it comes down to the little things that you are spending money on every day or weekly that add up. If you’re serious about purchasing your first Seattle home in a few years take a look at the small things too when you’re making your budget. If you can put away an extra $200 just by doing the things mentioned above, think about what an effect you can make by addressing your budget for the next few years to finally reach your goal.

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 Related posts:

1. 3 Strategies for Saving for a Seattle Home Mortgage (13.5)
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3. Coming Up With A Down Payment For Your First Seattle Home (10.4)
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Northwest Seattle Market Report

You heard it before and you’ll hear it again – stay neutral to sell your home. If you’re painting your house to get it ready for the market look at neutral colors so that you’ll attract the most potential buyers. In a world where it’s common to try to please everyone, this can work. There are, however, reasons why you shouldn’t make everything neutral since a Seattle home for sale needs to have some color show some kind of life in at.

It has been proven time and time again that bright colors can lift your mood. You would think that a person that is walking in your home would be affected by the colors that surround him and will react to them. Therefore, you want to make sure that you can lift a buyer’s mood by offering some bright colors without overdoing at. You don’t want buyers to feel humdrum about walking through your home and seeing neutrality almost attacking them. A Seattle home for sale should be a balance between neutral colors and some bright contrasting colors that lift the mood of the viewers that walk through the home.

Here are some interesting facts about colors and how they may influence your Seattle home for sale.

Yellow

Adds happiness and brightness to any room and is known to be the optimistic color. An optimistic buyer will think positive thoughts about your home when he sees the color yellow.

Red

Red is a strong color that brings out the emotions in a person. If you’re potential Seattle homebuyer is looking at your house and likes it, adding some red to the environment may make him love it by the time he leaves.

Blue

This is a relaxing and calming color that will make your viewers be more at ease and comfortable in your home. When you’re trying to create a warm and homey environment for your Seattle home for sale this is the color that you should be adding to the different rooms in your house.

Had a bit of spark to your Seattle home for sale and don’t keep everything neutral. Neutrality is good to a limit but when it is over done it may just put your potential buying customers to sleep.

Sign up to have FREE WEEKLY UPDATES on the latest Greater Seattle real estate market activity e-mailed to you weekly.

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1. Staying Neutral To Sell Your Home In Shoreline (15.7)
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Have you taken a good look at your bathroom lately since you’ve put your Seattle house for sale on the market? If not, you may be missing something that others are picking up. The bathroom is the place where people will be inspecting the cleanliness and you’ll need to make sure that it is tidy as well. If you have kids you know that this can be an enormous feat but it is necessary when your Seattle house is on the market.

One of the easiest things that you can do yourself is to make a schedule for bathroom cleanups. Get everyone in the house involved and have a set time where someone visits the bathroom and makes sure that it is clean. This is only important if you have a family since if you are a single person you’ll be able to take responsibility for the bathroom yourself. When kids are involved, however, it becomes quite a different story. 

Make sure that the paint on the bathroom walls still looks good and do any spot cleaning where necessary. Take a look at the lighting and see if the bathroom is bright enough. If not, you might want to pick up a cheap bathroom light fixture that can take high wattage bulbs. People love to see a well-lit bathroom when they are looking through your Seattle house is for sale.

Check for any mold around the bathroom tiles. Mold has become quite an issue these days as more and more health studies are revealing that it is dangerous. Black mold can easily develop in a bathroom and it is very easy to handle. There are cleaning products sold in grocery stores that can break down the mold between your tiles for a quick and easy cleanup.

The flooring on the bathroom should be checked as well. Make sure that the area between the baseboard and the floor is totally clean. This is often a place that is overlooked when you are anxious to get your home ready for a viewing. It will definitely stand out, however, if somebody is looking at your bathroom and inspecting it for cleanliness.

Does your bathroom pass the clean and tidy test? If not, take a few moments to make it look like it is a bathroom fit for the fussiest buyers.  When you have a Seattle house for sale every little thing counts.

Sign up to have FREE WEEKLY UPDATES on the latest Greater Seattle real estate market activity e-mailed to you weekly.

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If you are one of the many people that has found that their family has outgrown their home and are thinking about converting your garage into a part of your home, here are a few things to consider. While it may seem like a brilliant game plan, you’ll need to also consider the effects it will cause if you list your home for sale.

In most cases the square footage of your garage may or may not count as a part of your Seattle home since it has been turned into a limited space. Many people use this garage space as an added recreation room and it will be difficult to turn this area of the garage into anything else really. The original design of the home did not incorporate the space into its planning and there will be issues with keeping it well heated or cooled.

In most cases adding an addition to your home is going to be a lot more valuable in terms of selling your Seattle real estate property later. A home appraiser will definitely take into account that the garage was converted and will base the price of your home on other houses in the area that did the same. For the most part, you can’t expect the price of your house to rise substantially by converting your old garage into a room that makes up a part of your home.

You’ll also want to consider other aspects as well. If you plan on staying in this home until you retire, you may not be interested in the Seattle real estate aspect of the conversion at all. You need more room in your house now since your family is growing and it would certainly be nice to have an extra room where people can gather without feeling too clustered. Maybe you don’t have a basement in your house and have always dreamed of owning a pool table and the only way to get one is to fit it in your garage and make a nice recreation room out of it. There’s nothing wrong with that if you are planning on staying in your home for a while and not worried about what will happen down the road later when it’s time to sell.

Turning your garage into a part of your home should be a personal choice that is based on both short-term and long-term goals. As far as Seattle real estate goals, however, you’d be better off adding an addition to your home if at all possible.

Accessory dwelling houses in Seattle

How’s the Seattle real estate market?

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If reducing your Seattle utility costs has been on your mind lately, here are a few tricks you can use to reduce them pretty quickly.

Turning down the thermostat in your house can have an immediate effect on your bills, if only by 1% for each degree, over a period of 8 hours.  If this small action is carried out every day you can see the savings piling up in a matter of weeks. If you are leaving the house, try to get into a good habit of turning down the heat or cool air while you’re gone, since it won’t matter what the house feels like anyway when you’re not around.

Another smart idea to save yourself some money would be to have you heating programmed to turn off during the night or simply being reduced. This can save you a load of money, even though it may not seem like it at first.  Even if you are only renting, the difference these small changes can make on your monthly budget can be staggering.

Utility costs are continuing to increase, due mainly to the doubling costs of fossil fuels. It really makes a lot of sense to start cutting back on energy usage, to reduce the amount of money you are spending every month. If you can cut down on your heating, cooling and electrical costs, these three small savings can add up to one large one.

If you have an old furnace, for example, updating it to an energy-efficient newer model will probably save you hundreds of dollars in utility costs per year. Something as simple as getting a digital thermostat to hang on the wall will also be a worthwhile investment. One of these can be picked up at a very affordable price at a local Seattle home improvement store.

While it is necessary to heat and cool your home, your Seattle utility costs may be affected by your assessment of what is cool and what is hot. It wasn’t too long ago when air conditioning didn’t exist and people survived okay in the heat. That is not to say that you need to totally disregard air conditioning, it just means that setting it a few degrees cooler really isn’t going to kill you now, is it? 

Sign up to have FREE WEEKLY UPDATES on the latest Seattle real estate market activity in specific zip codes we follow e-mailed to you weekly.  

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