Back to top

MENU

Real Estate Around Seattle | For Sellers

Gerhard Ade Listings & Blog

You are here: Home / Archives for Gerhard Ade Blog Posts

Gerhard Ade covers Real Estate around Seattle and more.

For the past five years, Gerhard Ade has published the "View from the Street" a monthly newsletter he writes for his clients and friends. Appearing at the end of each month, Gerhard covers not only real estate but other topics that are close to his mind and heart. To reach a broader audience, Gerhard posts each newsletter on ReSeattle.com. Don't miss what Gerhard has to say and subscribe to his "View from the Street" right here!

Real Estate Commission

by

Real Estate Commission
Real Estate around Seattle

Real estate commission changes and a class-action lawsuit

If you are ever going to buy or sell a home again, you need to know this. The way real estate business is done will change twofold on October 1, 2019.

Real Estate Commission: The Status Quo

To grasp the significance of the two changes, we must understand the status quo. Please bear with me. Reading this now will save you time later.

When a real estate agent showed you homes have you asked yourself how much the agent is getting paid if you buy a home? Have you asked the agent? Was the answer, “my services are free since the seller pays all the real estate commissions?” Or was the answer, “I will be paid from the Selling Office Commission (SOC) as stated in the listing?” Did your agent explain that “the SOC amount is a percentage of the purchase price?”

How did your agent know this? The SOC is stated as privileged information with every listing that’s entered into the database of the Northwest Multiple Listing Service (NWMLS). The SOC could be a percentage like 2.5% or a dollar amount. [Read more…] about Real Estate Commission

Signing Before Closing

by

Signing Before Closing
Real Estate around Seattle

Remember: Signing before Closing.

signing before closing
Often, buyers and sellers think that signing and closing are one and the same. They are not. Signing is a prerequisite for closing. Signing and closing are handled by the escrow company.

What’s Escrow?

You may have seen wording like “the transaction is in escrow.” It means that buyer and seller have entered into a mutual agreement and the contract is now with the escrow company. Escrow is a neutral, disinterested party that directs and coordinates all activities from contract to closing. So if it’s signing before closing, what happens between the signing and the closing? [Read more…] about Signing Before Closing

Real Estate Bubble?

by

Real Estate Bubble
Real Estate around Seattle

Real estate bubble? The dot-com kind.

Is a real estate bubble about to burst? I was still new to Seattle when the dot-com bubble went bust.  The crash lasted from early 2000 into 2004. Internet euphoria had infected investors who put big bets on anything that ended in .com.  They lost billions on overvalued companies. Hundreds of dot-coms disappeared while a few survived and flourished.  The most notable survivor: Amazon.

real estate bubble

Technology Candy

It appears that the same scenario is playing itself out again. Only this time it’s happening in the real estate sector. This real estate bubble is the investment kind. The candy that’s irresistible to investors is called technology. “We are a technology company. We are not a real estate company anymore,” Keller Williams co-founder Gary Keller declared recently. [Read more…] about Real Estate Bubble?

Celebrating 100 Months

by

Celebrating 100 months
Real Estate around Seattle

Celebrating 100 Months

100 months ago puts us into the year 2011. That’s the year Seattle voters approved the Highway 99 tunnel, Oprah Winfrey aired her last show, and the unemployment rate was 9 percent.

I published my first View from the Street newsletter on Thursday, March 31, 2011. Since then, I’ve written about rats, listing lingo, and legal matters. I covered topics outside real estate, such as travel, type, and life events.

Gerhard Ade Blog

 

100 months of The View From the Street: 12 reader favorites

 

0️⃣5️⃣.2️⃣0️⃣1️⃣1️⃣
Oh Rats, I didn’t know this!

Seattle rats and vermin of any kind are a common problem in the Seattle area where water features prominently in the geography and trees make perfect “jumping-off points” for many kinds of rodents.

1️⃣1️⃣.2️⃣0️⃣1️⃣2️⃣
Fingerspitzengefühl

Presenting any listing client with that many offers takes Fingerspitzengefühl, especially when the seller is 90 years old. The offers had only one thing in common. All buyers were prepared to pay more than list price.

[Read more…] about Celebrating 100 Months

Bad housing news

by

Bad Housing News
Real Estate around Seattle

Bad housing news? The sky is not falling.

bad housing newsReal Estate is one of the most frequent topics of the daily news. Naturally, I pay attention to it, so a story headlined “Housing collapse 2.0 continues…” caught my eye. I found the story’s statistics suspect and disagree with the notion that real estate will lead us into the next recession. This is not 2007 when mortgage loans were handed out like cheap candy. In the next recession, real estate will be a victim, not the cause.

Data is not the same as information.

To keep informed about the Seattle area real estate market, I follow and study the numbers reported by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service – NWMLS.  To that end, I have set up location and price-specific searches that are of interest to my clients. One of those reports showed a home that had been listed for $17,750,000 and sold, after only 65 days on the market for a mere $8,350,000. At first glance, this seemed to confirm the national news that luxury homes were sold at much-reduced prices.  That’s bad housing news. Upon closer examination, it not only proved that all real estate is local but that each transaction has its own story. [Read more…] about Bad housing news