The Real Estate Blog by Cari McGee

Well, if you subscribe to or make a daily trip to The Consumerist, as I’ve urged you all to do for a while now, most of this week’s recaps will be old news.

Moving?  Thinking of using Movearoo? That’s okay, if you don’t mind having some limited choices.

The banks are failing, the banks are failing…well, some of them only LOOK like they will.  Here’s a list of ten banks that don’t appear exactly solvent.

And having difficulty selling your house?  Here’s a great reminder that it doesn’t always take tons of money to improve your home.  Sometimes, all you need is some elbow grease.  It is impossible to underestimate the importance of light (and lots of it) streaming into a room in terms of the psychology of selling.

Too much month left at the end of the money?  Here’s how to shop without going broke.

Did you know there was an unattractive fruit called the ugli??  I didn’t either.  I didn’t know about nine of the ten fruits listed in this great list of exotic fruits.

That’s all from here!

Starbucks just released a list of every store they’ll be closing, and NONE of the Tri-Cities ones are supposed to fall under the axe. As you might remember, I’m a diet Coke fan, so dwindling numbers of the coffee giant wouldn’t have affected me.

BUT, because I am nothing if not cognizant of others’ needs (where is the sarcasm font?), I am including this list of Washington stores due to be shuttered…

Washington
grays harbor haggens 1213 e wishkah st aberdeen wa
burlington & gilkey 1030 s burlington blvd burlington wa
top foods wenatchee 10 grant rd east wenatchee wa
top foods federal way 31515 20th ave s federal way wa
kent haggens 26015 104th ave sw kent wa
orting retail center 211 washington ave orting wa
hwy 101 & del guzzi dr 108 del guzzi dr port angles wa
15th ave e 328 15th ave e seattle wa
denny & aurora 620 denny way seattle wa
met park ii 1220 howell st seattle wa
23rd & madison 2201 e madison ave seattle wa
45th & stone way 1218 n 45th st seattle wa
northgate mall ii 301 ne northgate way seattle wa
42nd & sw alaska 4704 42nd ave sw seattle wa
market and garland 3907 n market st spokane wa
rainier pacific building 1498 pacific ave tacoma wa
southcenter & minkler 17100 scenter pkwy tukwila wa
orchards 6700 ne 162nd vancouver wa
top foods - yakima 2203 s 1st st yakima wa

List courtesy of The Consumerist, natch.

I love working with a big group of numbers like we get half-way through the year. So far, in every month of ‘08 (except for May), the number of sales have been within a just a few sales of 2003. January was down 21 sales but February evened it out by being up 18, and March, April and June were within 3 sales of the totals for ‘03.

However, May was crazy and sales dropped by 26.2% (ouch!). It’ll be interesting to see what happens by the end of the year - will we get the bump in sales in August that we experienced over the last three years? Or, will we hold true to the 2003 trend of a tiny up-tick in July followed by a steady downward slope?

If the market followed all the rules (like my children - ha ha!), and we doubled the first six months of sales in the second half, we’d finish 2008 within 4 sales of total annual sales in 2003 (1790 to 1794).

Download the full Tri-City Real Estate stats for June, 2008. (663k PDF)

On June 5th, I wrote a post about the unusually high water we had along the Columbia River in Richland.

Well, today I had a chance to get out to the park and take a picture of a much more normal water line -

Compare June 5th -

with today -

and 6/5/08

with today -

So, snakes should be gone, and optimal wading conditions exist!

A couple sales which were just waiting to close finally did this week.  Kudos to Dani, Emma, Michelle, Paul and Tiffany, Keith and Sonja, and Pat for hanging in there and not making any rash decisions about moving and staying and rescinding, etc.  From the minute I got into this business my least favorite aspect is that I can’t control every aspect of it.  Heavy sigh.

And another high price gas casualty - moving companies.  Calling on old friends and buying pizza for everyone is much cheaper than paying a company to move you.

West Richland is growing up, and it might be time the residents have their own ambulance service, as per this article in the Herald.

Heck, the whole area is growing up - even Sen. Murray is paying attention to us.

And this week contained some huge news about Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, government-sponsored enterprises that loan tons of money for houses.  IF they fail, and IF our beloved government bails them out, then interest rates might go back up to where they were when my parents bought the house where I grew up - double digits, for crying out loud. It might happen, it might not, but this week brought all kinds of stock fears - read more here, here, and here.  The last ‘here’ links to something written in 2003, and eerily expresses concern over the situation we might be embroiled in now.

Finally, at a loss trying to find Wi-Fi so you can check things out online?  Wear this shirt and then just look down!