Chuck & Lisa Tuman

The Seattle Times today had a story about the Hot August Home Sales.  And, it is true that we broke through a mark not seen since 2007 for the numbers of homes sold, and it is also true that prices were, and have been inching up, but nobody seems to be predicting that it will get out of hand again.  There are new jobs being added to our local economy and the inventory of homes available is still low, but there is still that large ‘shadow’ inventory of homes in the foreclosure pipeline.  If they were brought to market quickly, the supply vs. demand issue would push prices lower again.  If you’d like to read the article, do so here:  http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2019072503_homesalesaugustxml.html?prmid=head_main

Registered for the Brat Trot yet?  Want to be an Angel to help students who have economic challenges, but still want to run?  Here is the place to go get all of that information.  You will see you also have a chance to win two tickets to anywhere Alaska Airlines flies.  With this web-site you’ll get basic information about “Hands Around Highline,” our great little local coupon book that is good all year, more information about our annual Oktoberfest Dinner, Dance and Auction on October 20^th:  http://www.highlineschoolsfoundation.org/  And to just learn more about the other fun things with the Brat Trot, do that here:  http://www.burienbrattrot.com/

And…. If you are on Facebook, would you please like our Foundation there?  https://www.facebook.com/HighlineSchoolsFoundation

Interest rates are still hovering in 3.5% range.

Finally, daughter Julie has entered grandson Zachary in a Gerber contest to hopefully have his cuteness earn a college scholarship.  She hopes you will vote for him and then please pass this along to your circle of friends.  In this case, you really can vote early and often.  This comes from Julie:

I have a huge favor to ask all you. We would love if you could vote for Zachary on the Gerber Generation photo search. If we get enough votes then we could get a college scholarship for him, which would be amazing!! You can vote everyday till Sept 24th. So please vote today and whenever you think of it from now till Sept 24th. Also if you can pass this on to friends as well that would be great, any vote helps.

Thanks everyone and I hope you are all doing great!!!

Click on the link below and search for Zachary either by name and city (Snoqualmie) or by his # which is 451997

https://apps.facebook.com/gerberps/gallery.do?type=all

Chuck and Lisa Tuman
Chuck:  206-769-9492
Lisa:  206-679-8669
FAX:  206-241-6837
email: 

 ChuckTuman@windermere.com
 http://www.TumanHomes.com
"Introduce us to your family and friends.  We love to help."  – The Tumans

Want to get some other exercise?  Want to sponsor a student runner who can’t afford the registration and/or the shoes?  Want to have some fun with friends and family on a Hash (coming this Sunday)?  Get all the information here:  http://www.burienbrattrot.com/

Want to live longer as you age?  Here is a clip from a very interesting article.  If you want to read the entire article, you can do that here:  http://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/the-neurobiology-and-psycholog.html

… [H]ere is a “guaranteed” way to lengthen your life. Childhood holidays seem to last forever, but as you grow older time seems to accelerate. “Time” is related to how much information you are taking in – information stretches time. A child’s day from 9am to 3.30pm is like a 20-hour day for an adult. Children experience many new things every day and time passes slowly, but as people get older they have fewer new experiences and time is less stretched by information. So, you can “lengthen” your life by minimizing routine and making sure your life is full of new active experiences – travel to new places, take on new interests, and spend more time living in the present.

The interest rate today is still hovering in the 3.5% range.  There are some real bargains on fixers currently, but the inventory is still pretty low for our area.  We would be delighted to provide charts for you.

Anytime we get below three months of inventory, we do call it a seller’s market.   We’d be delighted to break out those numbers for you if you’d like.

I am volunteering at the Boeing Classic this weekend.  Love the game and appreciate the amount of money we help raise for the Benaroya Research Institute.  I’ll still have access to email while I’m working and will return those as quickly as possible.  I’ll also find a quiet area to return phone calls if you call.  Lisa will be keeping the home fires burning while I’m at Snoqualmie Ridge.

Have a marvelous weekend. 

Chuck and Lisa Tuman
Chuck:  206-769-9492
Lisa:  206-679-8669
FAX:  206-241-6837
email: 

 ChuckTuman@windermere.com
 http://www.TumanHomes.com
"Introduce us to your family and friends.  We love to help."  – The Tumans

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This story certainly caught my eye this morning.  Mr. DeMarco is beginning to feel the pressure from the President and other politicians to soften his stance on principal reductions for loans that are backed by Fannie and Freddie.  This is the story.  I do hope it happens.  I think it would truly turn our real estate market around.  http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/housing/story/2012-04-10/fannie-mae-freddie-mac-principal-reductions-foreclosures/54149662/1

Just put on a gorgeous home in Normandy Park.  You will see it if you go to our website.

As we begin to move to 2012, all of the prognosticators come out in full force.  I might as well join the crowd.  What will 2012 herald for the local housing market?  We really think that things will begin to improve in our local area.   Employment is continuing to pick up which will give more confidence to buyers about their continued employment.  The major employers in our area are all doing well and adding to the work force with wages that will support a family.  And, interest rates are projected to stay at these historically low levels for the months ahead.  Yes, there are still houses being foreclosed, but with the Washington foreclosure laws in effect, we could begin to see more financial institutions willing to rewrite the loans for the current owners to avoid the foreclosure, in effect doing a ‘short sale’ to the current owners.  All financial institutions are required to mediate with the owners and that is one of the results we are starting to see from the mediation.  That will help all of us.

Yes, Fall BACK! Tonight is the night to get an extra hour of sleep.  Turn your clocks back (if they don’t
automatically reset – most do now) just one hour before retiring.  Your body will probably be thanking your
brain for giving it an extra hour.

On Friday the Seattle Times had an article about the sky falling… no, that really was Chicken Little, this time it was about house prices in Seattle.  We had a fairly large drop in prices for housing in the last month… at least that is how it
appears.  The problem is they use either an average price or a median price, and both of those suffer from the perfidy
of using averages.  As I once told my students, if I put one hand in the oven at 150 degrees and the other on a block
of ice at 32, one should be quite warmly comfortable at 91 degrees as that is the average temperature.  And, of course
with just two numbers, you can’t get a median, but if you measured the core temp of your body, that would be the median at 98.6.  Those numbers might look right, but your hands would not appreciate the mathematical diagnosis.  So it is with housing.  One must know the neighborhoods, the history of the pricing of the neighborhood, how many homes that were sold as short sales or foreclosures, etc.  To truly get a better picture of the situation for yourself, you can always call or drop us a note and we’ll be happy to work up some numbers that are more specifically directed for you.  No one hand in the oven and the other in ice for us.

Lisa and I are leaving tomorrow morning for a ten day stay in Puerto Vallarta.  We like to get a last storage of Vitamin D before we begin the darker days of November and December.  As always, we will have our computers with us.  You can rest assured we’ll respond to you with an email, or with a Skype call from our laptops if you have something you’d like a response to and we are delighted to do it.  We went into this business with a glad heart and knew that it meant we needed to be on call for our clients no matter what.  We will have our cell phones turned off while in Mexico.  It is truly
cost prohibitive for texting and calling with those things, so if you want to call, you can still call our old land line 206-242-9991 and leave a voice message.  We can retrieve that with our computers and will get back to you that way as well.

The Seattle Times today had quite a lengthy article regarding the falling home prices in our area.  They don’t always break those things out by neighborhood, and that is too bad, because neighborhoods are a huge factor in pricing.  They also don’t look at which types of homes are selling.  Foreclosures and short sales are continuing to affect the prices as some of those are going for under $200K and are getting multiple offers.  And… unfortunately, the appraisers are still in the mix and seem to be looking for ways to devalue properties that the prospective buyers and sellers have agreed to and that will often times just nix the deal… and, if it doesn’t, the seller is the one who will usually have to bite the bullet and agree to the lower price.  That has a snowball effect for the neighborhood and getting comps for other sales.  I’ll add a bit more on this tomorrow.

This was an interesting article that I came upon this morning.  Here we are at all time historic lows for interest rates for home mortgages, and they might drop even a bit more???  If you would like to meet a mortgage broker to look at your possibilities, just let us know and we’ll be happy to introduce.  This is getting to be a wonderful time to buy an affordable home.

Here is the link to the article:  http://www.mortgagenewsdaily.com/consumer_rates/234792.aspx

I do this with some trepidation because I know it requires a daily effort to try to write something that people will find interesting.  I will attempt to give useful information regarding homes and living in this space.  Sometimes it will be about home maintenance, sometimes about cooking and restaurant news and reviews and even about general real estate issues like foreclosures and interest rates.  I would truly appreciate any comments from readers to let me knkow about other areas of interest and focus for me.