Seattle Area Real Estate Market For 2007

After speaking with dozens of fellow Realtors® at the recent NAR Expo in Las Vegas it was clear to me that the media has made us all too aware of how bad the national real estate market is. However, whenever I mentioned that I'm from Seattle, I was nearly universally met with a response like "... oh, your market's pretty good" or something of the sort. It's true. And as confirmation a Seattle Times article published January 23 mirrored my own evaluation of local Northwest Multiple Listing Service statistics. Download a PDF of my Year to Year Comparison of Resale and New Construction Homesale Stats for both condos and single family homes in King County, WA

The bottom line is that while home sales are down slightly median home prices rose by 7% and condo prices rose by 12% in King County, home to Seattle and its suburbs.

Marketing Tip On RealTown

Magic Words Improve Consumer Response

Marylin Lewis from MSN Real Estate writes that Professor Paul Aglin, a real estate economist from the University of Windsor in Ontario, after researching 20,000 home listings has discovered some "magic words" used in real estate advertising that improve the chances of a home selling. The study took place between 1997 and 2000 in two counties in Ontario, Canada.

Assuming that the study has relevance to US real estate, it's not surprising to learn that descriptive adjectives like "beautiful" and "gorgeous" when used in ads decreased market time by around 15%, the word "landscaping" by 20% and "handyman special" by a whopping 50%. Unfortunately, according to the study, "handyman special" also seemed to indicate a 30% decrease in sales price. Why is unknown. And whatever you do, don't use the words "must sell" or "motivated". For some reason these had a large negative impact on market time. To read the entire article click HERE.

It's no surprise to me that using positive descriptive adjectives like immaculate, gorgeous, pristine, beautiful, turnkey, gleaming, fabulous, and a host of others is important in real estate marketing. If I can excite the public to view my listings with language, my sellers home has a greater chance of being shown and I am doing my job.