Seattle Real Estate Guide

I've been updating my new Seattle Real Estate blog at: Rain City Real Estate Guide (www.raincityguide.com).

I've been working hard to develop lots of posts related to moving to seattle, so come check it out!

and while you're there, don't miss my new Seattle MLS Search over Google Maps.

I made the plunge and decided to set Anna up with a hosted website. From now on, you can find us at:
www.RainCityGuide.com
I'm building the site into a great reference for people moving to seattle, people selling a home, or people looking to buy a home.


My plan is to slowly fade out my exising website (including this blog) by including all the useful information in blog format, but that will take some time... Most importantly, I need to add a good MLS search onto her new blog site. I look forward to your feedback, so please leave comments on the new site!

I've been thinking about putting together a set of blog entries that describe Seattle. In particular, I'd like to provide some decent information and a decent set of links for people who are thinking of moving to this area. My first step was reviewing books. My next step was describing all the mapping technologies focusing on Seattle. This entry gives a real broad overview on the transit system. My next few entries will be more difficult as I'll try to focus on different neighborhoods within Seattle.

No matter where you live and work in Seattle, you will rarely be far from good transit service. I've lived in a few different cities, and as much as residents love to complain about lousy transit service (a past-time of downtown commuters everywhere), Seattle's transit is relatively comprehensive and reliable. Metro Transit, Sound Transit and Community Transit all offer bus service in the City. Metro Transit operates all the local routes (and most routes throughout King County, including Bellevue, Redmond and Kirkland). If you are living in Seattle, almost all of your transit riding will be on Metro.

In addition to regional bus service, Sound Transit also operates a train between Tacoma and Seattle and another train between Everett and Seattle. Sound Transit has already begun construction on a light-rail line that will connect the Sea-Tac Airport with Downtown Seattle.

And the white elephant in the room is the monorail. On Nov. 2004, Seattlites voted to keep the monorail development and construction moving forward. The plan is to have the first segment, the green line, completed in 2009.

Is there a major transit component that I've missed? Let me know by leaving a comment!

Appropriate for a high-tech City, there are many digital mapping options. Listed below are some of my favorite ways that I view Seattle (while sitting at my desktop!)

The first not-to-be missed site is Redfin where they give you a birds-eye view of Seattle with great aerial photography. It is a very easy (and did I say FUN) site to navigate. I should also note that I am a listed agent on the site.
Next up is Google Maps. Don't bother with Mapquest or Yahoo Maps, once again, Google has done it right. The site is a lot of fun and I especially like that you can zoom around with the arrow keys on your keyboard. While you're at it, try doing a local search on something you like to visit (I did Bakery). I ended up with all the local bakeries around my house!
Finally, if you really want to get down to details, check out the on-line GIS maps provided by the City of Seattle. This site is wickedly powerful in that you can see property information for EVERY residential property in the City all via a convenient (albeit slow) interface (no more trips down to the public library for "public" information). It includes previous sale information for each property... Not that I've done this :), but it can also be used to "remember" the name of a neighbor. As long as they are the owner of the house, then their name will show up on their parcel data.

The City of Seattle also puts out a great bike map. I went ahead and ordered a free hard-copy version of these maps, and I use it regularly.

Three visitor guide books to Seattle:

The first is from "The Stranger". A Seattle-only weekly that definitely gives the best inside scoop on Seattle. However, the book is not for the faint of heart as it focuses mostly on the alternative scene. The Rough Guide books are some of the most informative guide books around with info on history, entertainment, food, etc. Albeit they are geared toward the backpacker crowd. The Frommer's Guide is one of the best all-around guidebooks.



Seattle City Walks has some fun urban hikes that will give you a pretty good idea of the various neighborhoods. I've got this book and have especially enjoyed the historical tit-bits they throw in.



This is a wildly popular book (Relocating to Seattle) among the people relocating to the area. I've not read it, but I've heard people say that it has given them a real insider's perspective on the region:

What does it take to be a successful real estate blogger?
What does it mean to be a successful real estate blogger?

I've been asking myself these questions a lot lately as I try to figure out where I should take this site. Where does one start? Google, or course! So I searched "Real Estate Blog":
Google Search: real estate blog

Of course, generating traffic is of the highest priority, so I want my site to rank high in google searches... So what are:
Southern California Real Estate Blog and Toronto at Home doing "right" so that they rank so high?

1) The highest ranking site, the S. Cal. blog, is using blogger technology. (They have a ***.blogspot address, just like me.) Neither of the top two sites hosts their own site under their own domain (such as www.annaluther.com), which makes me think that I should be content and satisfied with my site location. In addition, the S. Cal site has the poster's names in it highlighting the fact that the domain doesn't really matter (in other words, the domain doesn't have to say "seattle" or "real estate" in order to rank high. The content of, and links to, likely matters much more.
2) Both of the top two sites add a blog entry at least every other day.
3) The top site has been blogging since Aug 2003 (1 1/2 years), the second site only since Nov 2004 (5 months) (at least that is as far as the archives go back.
4) Both place links to other real estate bloggers in prominent places on their website.
5) S. Cal blog is chatty with general updates (spring cleaning, flipping real estate, etc.), while Toronto's site is loaded with longer articles that would be right at home in a Realtor magazine.
6) Toronto's blog is particularly slick and is loaded with links to good information!!! The clean photo of the blogger at his laptop sets the mood for the entire site.
7) Each entry on Toronto's blog is categorized by type of information. This is quite nifty and very easy to use.
8) Both sites are very well integrated with a website (lots of links back and forth). My preference is to not keep up a traditional website, but instead, just find a way to host files that I can link to... I'll have to think on that one.

In summary, I think the Toronto blog looks a lot better, and I imagine with time, it will surpass the S. Cal Blog in google searches simply because it offers more and better information.
Did I answer the question of what it takes to be a real estate blogger? Definitely not completely, but I'm getting some ideas...

If you have some ideas on the type of features I should add, I welcome your comments...

Despite all the talk about a bubble in the real estate market, the article ends with what I think is the most salient point. That the scarcity of land is driving up the cost of housing. I'd also add that people don't want to continue to move farther out from the downtown areas. Established neighborhoods like Wallingford, Queen Anne, Sunset Hill, simply can be reproduced far away from a downtown AND these same neighborhoods will only be able to add minimal density. Hence: continued higher prices as long as the job market is there to support the higher prices.

The Seattle Times: Home values:
"Ultimately, what may keep Seattle on the path of the San Francisco metro area is that builders are running out of land. 'It's the price of land that's driving higher home prices,' said Suzanne Britsch, president of Real Vision Research and a consultant to home builders.
The question of land shortage is the subject of a raucous debate between developers, who want to modify the state's growth-management law, and planners, who are working to preserve it.
King County Assessor Scott Noble said scarcity of developable land in the right places is undoubtedly a cause of the current real-estate boom."

How many times can they run the same news story?
King County real estate market heating up again
"The hot King County housing market is forcing some to lose their cool."

username: login@annaluther.com
password: letmein

I just set up a username/password for this site: KING5.com

username: login@annaluther.com
password: letmein

Feel free to use it if I ever link to King5 pages!

Using a process called google-hacking, someone has posted Seattle's 911 incident data (automatically generated) on top of a google map. :
Google Maps - Most recent Seattle 911 incidents
Interesting stuff with lots of real estate applications. For example, what if we could feed MLS data into Google maps for display?