Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 8, Issue 7, July 2004
Copyright 2004 Seattle Sun. Please feel free to use the article below in your research. Be sure to cite the Seattle Sun as your source.
A home with a view on the Internet
By SUSAN PARK
The first time my husband, Clayton, and I bought a home in 1997, we did it the old-fashioned way. We found a real estate agent, told him what we thought we wanted and how much we could afford to pay, then set him loose to look for that first starter home.
It was a frustrating experience as we watched numerous homes get snapped up by others before we ever stepped foot in them. The majority of the problem was caused by our agent who only sold homes on a part-time basis and had a full-time job in another field. He insisted on "checking out" the houses by himself first before letting us see them, which usually ended up being a few days later.
We vowed to not let this happen again when we began house hunting this past February.
The second time around, we chose a professional Realtor with decades of experience, Alida Fretz of Excel Properties. Armed with a much larger down payment, we were prepared to buy the "home of our dreams."
We set our sights on North Seattle: a larger home with a view and a large yard, preferably in Broadview. Alas, we quickly found that the prices had climbed much higher than we anticipated. We happily settled on a four-story split level in the Olympic Hills neighborhood that didn't have a view, but did have a large lot.
But on the very day that we were to sign the papers and place our offer, Clayton was given the news from his employers that he was being transferred to Kent! It was critical that he have a reasonable commute - and North Seattle to Kent every morning wasn't going to cut it.
We decided to look towards the south.
The problem was, none of us knew much about the neighborhoods in the South End. We had several cities to choose from: Kent, Maple Valley, Renton, Des Moines, Burien, Normandy Park, Redondo, SeaTac, Skyway, and of course, the southern half of Seattle.
That's when I began looking for our next home on the Internet.
Like all professional real estate agents, Alida has access to numerous records online through the Northwest Multiple Listing Service (MLS), a home sales tracking database self-regulated by the real estate industry. Not every house on the market is listed. Homes listed for sale by owner and homes listed and sold on a weekend may not ever make it to the "for sale" database. However, the majority of available properties are.
Real estate agents have always had access to the listings, first in paper form, then by an extensive computer network, and now by the Internet. Realtors can access far more data than the general home buying public the name and private number of the seller and the seller's agent, whether or not the house is a rental, if it's empty or occupied, the property tax records and past sales history of a specific property.
Now, through the magic of the Internet, home buyers can also see what homes are available.
Because the Internet is still a relatively new technology, not all real estate agents have Web sites. Most of those that do include a customized link to the MLS listings. Although all the listings are the same, the way they are presented and the amount of information available to the viewer is different on each Web site. Through my house hunting, I personally found the two best sites to be: www.chuckcady.com and www.peder.com, both created by local Realtors in North Seattle.
After spending hours on the Web sites every few days, I was able to find a great view home in West Seattle in my price range by May. Alida took us to see the house in person, opened the doors to let us in to look around, and negotiated a winning deal which made the sellers happy. Now, I can stretch out in my lawn chair and watch the ferries float by!
Navigating the Web sites
For the purposes of writing this article, I have performed searches for homes in the $300K range today, June 21.
When searching for available homes in North Seattle, I found www.chuckcady.com to be the easiest to use. Chuck Cady is a local Realtor through Remax. After finding his link to the MLS, I bookmarked: http://chuckcady.com/cc-ocean.htm for fast access.
To use the site, you first select the geographic region you are interested in: For instance, I'm choosing North Seattle for this demonstration. After clicking on "Search Area," a list of homes for sale pops up along with a general price range. You can customize the search by choosing "residential" under type (single-family homes), the price range, the number of bedrooms, bathrooms, square footage, lot size, and my favorite, "New properties." You then click on "Refresh List," and, voila!, You have your choices.
In my example, only eight 2-bedroom houses are available in the $200K to $300K price range in North Seattle. This is also a great way to figure out how much you might be able to get for your home if you were to sell it. But, be especially careful to pay attention to that famous variable: Location, location, and location!
If you see a house you like, you can click on it to get even more details on the property. Although it's been sold and is now being inspected, I want to look at the house at 6527 35th Ave. NE because I want to see what's wrong with this house since it looks far too large to cost only $299K! I'm right it's a townhome that had been incorrectly listed as residential and which shares walls with its neighbors. I click on the pictures and see the microscopic yard.
Once I began looking in the South End, I found there were far too many homes in my price range of $300K. For instance, today, the city of Kent alone has 22 new listings compared to only eight in North Seattle.
Multiply that by all of the cities where we might live and we would be driving around for days to see them all.
I began looking on the more detailed Web site operated by Peder Nielsen of Windermere Real Estate. It's more difficult to use and has some bugs when you try to back out of a search, but it was perfect for narrowing down the criteria for finding our dream home.
Enter www.peder.com and click on "Home Search." A map pops up of Western Washington. Here, you can enter detailed specifics about the house you might like to buy. You can even specify that you want a view of Puget Sound, something my husband and I could not easily afford in North Seattle.
On my first search today with no other criteria specified, 281 homes pop up claiming a view of Puget Sound, all for under $300K.
I narrowed down my search to the 98146 zip code. Only two homes pop up, making the choices much easier. Neither home has a very nice view, so I redo the search for 98136, closer to downtown Seattle. A message pops up, "Your search did not return any properties. Please modify your search parameters," which basically means I am probably in too low of a price range for that particular area.
I redo the search with a higher price range, up to $350K. Three cute homes pop up and I look at each of them in more detail. The middle one, at $309K, is only slightly off the budget. The description says the view is from the kitchen and the photos don't lie it appears you can only see Puget Sound if you stand in a certain spot at the sink. It's amazing what people call a view these days!
I redo the search for under $350K in the 98166 zip code and hit the jackpot three great homes, all with decent views.
With both Web sites, you can also check out maps and calculate payments based on your down-payment and current interest rate. Both give a list of schools for the area. Peder.com goes further to show you a map of area schools and zip code statistics.
If the prices seem daunting to you, this will help put it in perspective. My husband Clayton and I visited Vancouver, B.C., last weekend where homes start at $700K.