Archive for the ‘Kenmore Info’ Category
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Sep
26
Posted by James Lupori
As a realtor and Kenmore resident, I’m always trying to discover what’s going on in my home town. If you’re Internet savvy, one of the best resources for Kenmore current events is an excellent blog, http://kenmoreblog.net.
I like this blog because it’s not only informative, but it’s editors do an excellent job of helping the reader link to other relevant sites. For example, in the Octoberfest post, the event is taking place at the Kenmore Community Club . Just click on the link and you go to another nice site with even more information:
The internet is truly an amazing tool.
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Sep
25
Posted by James Lupori
It should be no surprise that new homes (those built in 2008) have not been selling at the brisk pace of several years ago. Far from it. Since January 1, 2008, twenty-five (25) newly constructed homes have sold in Kenmore. Resale has been doing much better at 101 sales. 50% of these homes sold for under $500,000. All of the new homes sold for over $500,000. I believe that the current market trumoil is taking its toll on home sales in general; however, I also think that new construction is facing some tough competitioin from the resale market. There are almost 2-times as many resale properties on the market right now. They are selling for about 8% less than original list price which means those sellers are being more flexible in their negotiations.
Overall, sales of new homes has been lethargic. Please turn your attention to the charts below:
As the turmoil in Wall Street unfolds and we move into the 4th quarter and Presidential elections, I wonder how the real estate market will fair? Properties are selling in Kenmore in the face of some fairly scary economic times, so it’s not the end of the world…yet. The important thing to recognize is that you should do your homework before jumping into (or out of) the real estate market.
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Sep
20
Posted by James Lupori
I received the Kenmore Newsletter Fall 2008 edition. It’s an excellent publication. As a resident there are interesting articles in the newsletter regarding topics such as the Northshore Fire Department, the King Co. Library System and the Utility District. Also, as a real estate agent, it helps me understand some of the “big picture” happenings in Kenmore. One other benefit of the newsletter is that it reminds me to visit the City of Kenmore’s website, which contains a huge amount of information about our community. The web address is http://www.cityofkenmore.com/. For those of you who don’t live in Kenmore, you can see the whole newsletter by going to the website, click on the “About Kenmore” icon which takes you to the next page. Click on “News” at the top. This brings you to a page of events. Scroll down to publications where you will find an on-line copy of the newsletter. I hope this helps give you some insight into our community. Kenmore, WA is my home and I really like it here.
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Sep
15
Posted by James Lupori
Isn’t it cold in Seattle? We were asked this a lot in Italy. My realtives had a hard time believing that the weather in Seattle is temperate and relatively mild. Because we lie so far north, even most people in the United States think of Seattle as a cold place like Maine or Upstate NY. The fact is, the weather in Puget Sound is unique. Even though Seattle is further north than all other major US cities, we have an oceanic climate. As a realtor, I’ve worked with a lot of relocation clients and it’s always fun to see their faces when I mention that Seattle is a place where the grass is brown in the summer and green in the winter. We are famous for the rain, but most people don’t realize that we have virtually no rain from mid-July to late September.
Some of my friends told me that last month wasn’t a typical August and, since we were in Italy, I wanted to check back to see what happened. Well, I did some poking around and found a wonderful website called Beautiful Seattle that offers a huge amount of information about Seattle. One section of the site deals specifically with our climate. Below are several pages from the site. Just click on them if you want to visit the site:
In the top left of the site, click on the “select destination” menu which will take you to a whole array of topics. If you select climate you get this page:
From here you can select any number of reports regarding the weather in Seattle. So, for those of you who lived through the August weather and those who don’t live in the area, here’s what happened:
This is a very nice chart as it gives me a good idea of what the weather was like last month. It was a fairly cloudy August (unusual) and the temperatures were fairly mixed. Mid-month got really hot. I will tell you that Italy was downright brutal: mid to upper 90’s, sunny and humid. One similarity to Seattle is that most Italians don’t have air conditioning……………………..ouch!
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Sep
14
Posted by James Lupori
August was a slow month for home sales this year in King County. The good news is that there wasn’t much of a change in Kenmore from last August. Take a look at the chart below:
There were only 17 sold homes in Kenmore last month, but one year ago there were 18 sales. This is only a 6% drop as compared to an overall drop of 43% in King County. Median prices have dropped a bit since the beginning of the year. In King Co., they have dropped 7% (the median price having dropped from $460,000 to $410,000. Kenmore faired slightly better with at drop of only 5% (from $453, 450 to $430,000).
In the Seattle Times article from September 10th entitled, “King County home prices in August slide back to April 2006” we have seen a significant erosion of home prices in the area. It’s important for home sellers to understand that the market has been very tough this year. We may not see positive movement until 2009 as we are fast approaching the national election and we will not see significant changes in the capital markets until the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac bailout actually produces some results.
Another factor to consider is the absorption rates of homes in King Co. Remember, absorption rate means the percentage of homes absorbed (sold) as compared to the number of homes available in a given time period. The charts below show, clearly, that home sales are stagnant. Even with a high inventory and dropping prices, buyers are holding on to their money and the lenders continue to be ultra-conservative. As a realtor, I think those of you thinking about buying a home in the near future are going to have a huge opportunity. The most important thing for you to do right now is consult with your lender to ensure that you can get a loan, then start looking now. Home owners, unless you must move right now, take a deep breath, enjoy your home and exercise some common sense.
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Jul
20
Posted by James Lupori
Meet your intrepid bicycling adventurers, Virginia my wife and yours truly, James the Bicycling Realtor:
Virginia and I have been tandem bicycling since 1990 and there’s nothing we enjoy more than taking a ride on the bike from our home in Kenmore and doing what we call the mezzo-lake ride: we start in Kenmore, head south to the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge and then travel north back to Kenmore. This morning we took off at around 8:00 and got back home at 12:00. We’ve done this ride numerous times and there is always some surprise along the way. So what follows are photos of our short adventure. What you’re going to find is that bicycling is the perfect way to experience communities in a very intimate way. As a Realtor, it’s refreshing to look at homes from a bike. One can see how the house relates to the yard and the street. You can smell the neighborhood and hear the sounds. All-too-often we pass through other peoples’ neighborhoods in our cars hardly taking notice of how things fit together. We don’t have a chance to smile at an owner working in the front yard. We pass through anonymously.
At the intersecton of State Highway 522 and 80th Ave. NE (1 mile south of our home) there has been a huge construction project to upgrade the road. It really is amazing to see the size of this project.
We then head east on the Burke-Gilman Trail to Wayne Public Golf Course and then travel south into Juanita:
We continue south (uphill) to Downtown Kirkland. On the we pass by a wildlife refuge on Lake Washington:
Our big surprise today was reaching Downtown Kirkland and bumping into a huge car show. Check these beauties out:
Fortunately, the only fatality we witnessed today was the Wicked Witch of the West. Poor gal. After drooling over some wonderful cars we continued on our way.
From Kirkland, we head bicycle up an unpleasant hill into Downtown Bellevue.
Virginia loves this portion of the ride because we pass by one of the areas most elegant malls: Bellevue Square. Too bad we didn’t have a chance to stop today (ya, right!!). We continue through Bellevue and finally reach one of the best part of the ride: the I-90 floating bridge. The I-90 path starts in the Bellevue neighborhood of Enatai:
We head west onto Mercer Island and then reach the west point of the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge. About 2 miles across, this is a wonderfully refreshing stretch of road. We are fortunate to have a bike lane on such a unique stretch of road.
At the west end of the bridge the auto traffic enters the Mt. Baker Tunnel which heads into Downtown Seattle. We continue by heading north on our way back home. We head along Lake Washington Blvd. through the neighborhoods of Leschi, Madrona, Madison and then hook over through the Seattle Aboretum and then over the Montlake Bridge.
It’s then past Husky Stadium at the University of Washington where Virginia must give the mascot a hug:
We usually stop at University Village for a coffee at Starbucks. University Village is one of the most charming shopping centers in the area.
After our caffene fix, we head north on 25th Avenue NE through such neighborhoods as Bryant, Ravenna, Lake City, Lake Forest Park and finally we’re back home in Kenmore.
Today was perfect for a bicycle ride. The weather was clear and comfortable. We didn’t encounter too much traffic on either the Burke-Gilman Trail or on the roads. Over the years, Virginia and I have logged literally thousands of miles on our tandem. It’s one of the most powerful and enjoyable way to enjoy bicycling together.
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Jul
18
Posted by James Lupori
Her smile is infectious and her enthusiasm is inspiring. As a customer, you always leave her dry-cleaners feeling as if your day is only going to get better. Meet Ki Suk Lim, the Owner of Fabulous Cleaners in Kenmore, WA. I’ve been bringing my dry-cleaning to her shop even before she took over ownership of the business on August 24, 2006. She remembers that day well because she only had $57 of sales. Mrs. Lim is philosophical about owning her business: “Someone up there is looking out for me!”
As an immigrant from Seoul, S. Korea Mrs. Lim’s story is quintessentially American. Having arrived in America 40 years ago, she first lived in Kentucky and then moved to Oklahoma. As a city girl from Seoul, S. Korea moving to KY was a major transition. It was a totally different world: cows, farms, outhouses….. From Oklahoma her family moved to Los Angeles having heard about more opportunities there and the large Korean community. Unfortunately, they didn’t find LA to their liking. After only two weeks, they picked-up and headed for Utah because a friend told them it was a nice place to live. Fate had a different plan for them. They just happened to drive into a little place called Las Vegas and ended up purchasing a dry-cleaning business there. Knowing nothing about the business, they quickly discovered how difficult running a dry-cleaners can be: aging equipment, bills, employees, cash flow problems. Mrs. Lim said that one of the cleaning machines actually blew up and almost killed her husband: “It was in the papers it was so big!” Fortunately, they managed to become very successful in the dry-cleaning business. After her son came to the University of Washington, they decided to move to the Seattle area.
Today, Fabulous Cleaners is doing much better than that first day last August but Mrs. Lim says there are always challenges. Recently, the construction on SR522 has slowed traffic to her shop. It took a lot of hard work to rebuild a clientele after taking over the business last year. She now has many accounts with local schools cleaning their uniforms (Inglemoor HS, Bothell HS, etc.). She now has four employees and things are going well. Please support this great local business!
You can find Mrs. Lim and Fabulous Cleaners at 7818 NE Bothell Way, Kenmore, WA 98028. (425) 483-6100.
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Jul
15
Posted by James Lupori
The market experiened a humble increase in pending and sold homes in June throughout the area. As I mentioned in my blog on July 11th, this increase is a positive sign for a year that has seen little sign of picking up. The charts below illustrate the absorption rates for both King and Snohomish Counties. If you want to see larger charts, just click on them:
June shows a slight drop in the King County inventory and a slight increase in the absorption of homes. Last month there were 16,435 active listings and 2414 net pending sales (vs. 15,831 actives in June and 2549 pending sales). The absorption rate of 16.1% is 2% higher than May. Snohomish County wasn’t much different:
I was encouraged by figures offered by Rainier Title, which showed that Kenmore held it’s own as compared to last June. Below I’ve compressed a report which shows sales and price figures for a number of communities close by Kenmore. You can see the larger version of this report by simply clicking on it:
Basically, we had an OK month in June. Just remember that what this market place needs right now is confidence.
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Jul
10
Posted by James Lupori
Sometimes it’s the simple things that matter. For example: Visualize Kenmore. If you weren’t looking at the map above, would you know where the city limits are? You can enlarge the map by clicking on it.
Some interesting numbers came out of the State Office of Financial Management regarding city populations in Washington State. Take a look at these numbers. Very intersting:
Kenmore currently has a little over 20,000 people. If you’d like to look at the whole report, simply click on the report above.
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Jul
08
Posted by James Lupori
This coming weekend (July 12th & 13th) our neighborhood is having its 3rd Annual Bridlepath Garage Sale! Many households are participating offering toys, clothes, housewares, books, movies, furniture and much much more.
SATURDAY & SUNDAY FROM 9:00 - 4:00
Bridlepath is located at the intersection of 80th Avenue NE and NE 198th Street in Kenmore, WA. Here’s a map showing where we are:
By the way, Bridlepath is a great neighborhood. We are a community of almost 60 homes constructed by Harbour Homes starting in 2004. We have a very active home owner’s association and many engaged neighbors. We are conveniently located near shopping, restaurants and Bothell’s Country Village. Please come and visit us this weekend.
There are two homes currently for sale in the neighborhood:
19805 82nd Pl NE Kenmore, WA 98028 $469,950
19914 83rd Pl NE Kenmore, WA 98028 $485,000
So if you come over, love our neighborhood and would like to move in, please contact me at (206) 713-2102 or jlupori@comcast.net.
