Welcome to my Sammamish and Eastside Blog

  Wordless Wednesday, Downtown Mercer Island, 1960    This is a picture in the business district of downtown Mercer Island taken around 1960 from our family collection.  A lot has changed since then; the gas station and little house are gone.  Loads of mixed use retail/residential building has go...

 Home Selling Key 4, Priced Appropriately  This is the final part of a series called Keys to Selling your Home Quickly and for Top Dollar.  The 4 keys are, you must be the Best Looking,        Best Marketed,      Easiest to See  and   Priced Appropriately                     Pricing strategies sh...

Home Selling, Key 3, Easiest to See In a previous post I wrote, 4 Keys to Selling your Home Quickly and for Top Dollar, I mentioned that the first key is being the Best Looking home in your price category.  The second key is being the Best Marketed.  For this post we need to discuss making your h...

E.T. Meets ET, Silent Sunday E.T. (Elsie Tabit) meets ET.  While going for a walk in the hills behind Roslyn Washington (The town used to film Northern Exposure) a while back we came across this incredible rock.  The rock formations in the area  come in all sorts of unusual shapes, but this one a...

Anatomy of a Short Sale, The Guts   By now most people know that a short sale takes place when a seller owes more than their house is worth and requests the lender(s) release title for a reduced amount.    To be a successful short sale buyer or seller it can take guts, and knowing the guts of the...

Home Selling Key 2, Best Marketed In a previous post I wrote, 4 Keys to Selling your Home Quickly and for Top Dollar, I mentioned that the first key is being the Best Looking home in your price category.  The second key is being the Best Marketed.  Marketing is the job of a professional broker/ag...

Preparing for Staging, The Three D’s   I’m not a professional stager, but I’m married to one.  I’ve watched her work wonders in homes using both the owners’ furnishings and bringing in a few other pieces.  Staging, when done by a professional will maximize a home’s desirability and if all other a...

Home Selling Key 1, Best Looking   In a previous post I wrote, 4 Keys to Selling your Home Quickly and for Top Dollar, I mentioned that the first key is being the Best Looking Home in your price category.  You don’t have to compete with million dollar listings, unless yours is a million dollar ho...

With this post, I’m over 200,000 Points in the Rain   With this post, I’m over 200,000 points in the rain, another milestone.  When I first attended RainCamp in 2009, I had no idea what I was getting into.  Drinking from a fire hose is a cliché but it really fits. Who was I to think I had much to...

  A Whole Herd Joined Us at This Brokers’ Open, Silent Sunday   A whole herd joined us at this brokers’ open.  While touring broker’s open Houses recently we were taken on a tour of the grounds of an incredible estate in North Bend Washington.  There along the river, beyond the Winery, the barns ...