Gerhard Ade covers Real Estate around Seattle and more.

Eventful is the word that best sums up the year 2022.

Over the past 47 years, I have lived in Montreal, Chicago, Cleveland, Greensboro, and Seattle. After 23 years in the Emerald City, my wife and I decided to move on.

We considered Ohio, the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, and Houston. Ohio because Cleveland was home for sixteen years, and my wife hails from Columbus. Florida because I had fallen in love with Sarasota a year earlier, and Houston because my wife has family there.

May 21 – June 23 – Exploring

We flew to Houston, where we spent a week exploring different areas. Then we took off in our Touro rental car toward Jacksonville.

We made the trip in three days, crossing through Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. We stayed in Jacksonville for a week with excursions to Ponte Vedra, Fernandina Beach, Flagler Beach, Ormond Beach, and St. Augustine, the oldest town in the United States.

Eventful
The word that sums up the year 2022.

We flew from Seattle to Houston, stayed there for 7 days, then drove from Houston to Jacksonville, down to Ormond Beach, across Florida to Sarasota, and back to Houston from where we flew back to Seattle. The pictures are in chronological order.

Click on any picture for a slideshow where icons allow for more options.

Questions? Use the green chat button.

Having packed and with the moving truck departed, we drove our 1997 Honda Odyssey across the country.

Click on any picture for a slideshow where icons allow for more options.

Questions? Use the green chat button.

Yes, the home inspection contingency is back. Seattle home sellers are no longer expecting offers without any contingencies. Where markets never reached the Northwest fever pitch, inspections remained part of most contracts.

Such was the case with the purchase of our home in Houston. We had not one but four inspections, a general and three others for pests, the pool, and the stucco finish.

The general inspection revealed nothing too problematic. One of the other inspections did.

I tell my Seattle home buyers that it is the inspector’s job to find all deficiencies, however small. First-time buyers often are taken aback by the sheer number of findings.

Mind the unsafe and the expensive.

My advice is to concentrate on safety and big-ticket items. For example, electrical outlets near water sources must provide ground-fault circuitry interruption (GFCI) to protect from potentially deadly shock. It’s significant but an easy fix.

In contrast, remedying a poorly insulated attic takes more time and money. Sadly, such big-ticket items, should the buyer refuse to correct them and the buyer proceeds with the purchase, are often forgotten after closing the transaction.

My point here is that a home inspection is more than a tool to get concessions from the seller. Remember that you can terminate the transaction by simply disapproving of the inspection results without giving any reason.

However, once you have agreed with the seller on the inspection’s outcome, the report remains valuable. Remember, you paid for it.

While the monthly electric bill may be an occasional reminder, the inadequate attic insulation is out of sight. Like the poor drainage along one of the walls, many buyers will likely ignore it in favor of home improvements with more visible value.

It’s about time you meet Walter.

For nearly two decades, Walter Powers has been my good friend and for ten of these years, he has assisted me in marketing. He also is my official unlicensed real estate assistant with access to the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.

Walter had prior Real Estate Experience.

Walter describes himself as a radio guy. Following the Great Recession, he found work with a broadcast production company that aired a weekly radio show owned by the National Association of REALTORS© – NAR. It’s still running as the number-one real estate show on the radio, heard on hundreds of stations. His role was to be mostly a technical one but somewhere in the mix, they needed a writer… someone to write the scripts for the weekly guests featured on the program. In this role, he had access to many of the world-class resources at NAR. That taught him a lot about housing economics, assessments, legalities, staging, showing, moving your home, online presentation, how to make your home more livable, and more agent advice than I ever thought I’d know.

Color influences our mood.
Think of a cloudless day at the beach versus the threatening clouds of an impending hurricane.

Color has meaning.
Traffic lights tell us to stop and go. A map showing the states in red or blue show party affiliations. The orange rim of the carafe signals that the content is decaffeinated.

Color is a matter of trend and taste.
Currently, hairstyles are more colorful than ever. Shades of grey are meant to signal superior taste in interior design. The business of color shapes taste.