Update to “what’s wrong with this Kirk­land condo.”

Price has been reduced from $199,950 to $182,500. Home Owner Dues are $255/mo. See details on this web­site. Or see this Kirk­land condo on YouTube.

As I write this, 72 agents have set foot into this condo since I first listed it on August 13, 2009.

I fol­lowed up with all these agents. The replies by two most recent who sent me feed­back included these com­ments: The unit shows very nicely and it is priced right for sure. and I loved the condo…  Sould sell soon.

It should have sold twice.

Two buy­ers, two offers, two mutual agree­ments
With an agent vis­it­ing this Kirk­land condo every third day there should have been an offer, right?  There were two. There were two offers and two mutual agreements.

Two buy­ers unable to pay
What hap­pened? Buyer num­ber one, pre-approved by his lender at time of offer did no longer qual­ify for  financ­ing 10 days before clos­ing.  Buyer num­ber two, also pre-approved by lender at time of offer,  allegedly forged his income doc­u­men­ta­tion and the trans­ac­tion was can­celled three days before clos­ing. This time, my client got to keep the earnest money.

Have we learned noth­ing?
There is a say­ing in this busi­ness that “buy­ers are liars.”  That’s per­haps a bit strongly worded. The real­ity is that some buy­ers don’t reveal all they should to their agents and lenders because  some­times the desire to own may be greater than the desire to own up to finan­cial real­i­ties. That this is still hap­pen­ing in the cur­rent mar­ket is truly astonishing.

The two failed trans­ac­tions have hurt the seller. Poten­tial buy­ers search­ing the web and the aver­age agent are won­der­ing why this condo is stilll on the market.

Gov­ern­ment “help” can hurt
The sec­ond fac­tor which hurt this condo and many other likely first-time buyer prop­er­ties was the exten­sion of the first time  home buyer tax credit. Sched­uled to expire at the end of  Novem­ber 2009, the exten­sion until April 30th took away the sense of urgency. As a result, agent vis­its to the prop­erty dropped dra­mat­i­cally in November.

Time­line and events

Short sales change mar­ket
The third rea­son this condo  is still on the mar­ket are an increas­ing num­ber of  short sales of sim­i­lar prop­er­ties. There were no 2-bed short sales in this con­do­minium com­plex in 2009. Now there are two.

Look­ing at the bright side
Through­out these six months, my clients have been help­ful in every way a seller can be help­ful. I would call them my friends although we’ve never met in per­son. They searched for “Kirk­land Condo” on the web. They found me and liked what they saw. We were all so close twice to sell­ing this condo. The third time will be a charm.

Although some poten­tial buy­ers don’t like being on the ground floor or wish they could bring their dog (only cats allowed), there’s  noth­ing “wrong” with this condo.

Web sta­tis­tics include the terms peo­ple use to search on my web­sites. Through the first 36 hours of Decem­ber 2009, the search terms which brought peo­ple to GNAde.com were:

1. wash­ing­ton state rodent dis­clo­sure buy home
2. stairs near the liv­ing room
3. home sell­ers dis­clo­sure form wash­ing­ton state
4. first time home buyer tax credit seattle
5. din­ing room with sky­light light­ing room design
6. mount­lake terrace
7. real estate attor­ney north­gate washington
8. cus­tomer tes­ti­mo­ni­als exam­ples real estate
9. form 17.doc washington
10. real estate laws for wash­ing­ton state
11. under­stand form 17 seller disclosure
12. bed mas­ter room door out
13. fail­ure to pro­vide resale cer­tifi­cate wa
14. exam­ple of home buy­ers form 17
15. the liv­ing end 1998
16. brick tudor homes
17. first time home buyer seattle
18. form 17 wash­ing­ton state law
19. dec­la­ra­tion state­ment real estate washington
20. wash­ing­ton state form 17
21. real estate seat­tle area
22. prop­erty dealer — tes­ti­mo­nial by clients
23. 8000 tax credit flyer

Six of the 23 terms deal with seller dis­clo­sure or men­tion directly Form 17, the Wash­ing­ton Seller Dis­clo­sure State­ment which I have called “form fatale.” Two are look­ing for infor­ma­tion about the which has not only been extended for tax credit for first-time buy­ers but also expanded to include tax cred­its for cur­rent home buy­ers.

Five search terms deal with spe­cific loca­tions (Mount­lake Ter­race and North­gate ) and home style or fea­tures (brick tudor, stair loca­tion, sky­lights). The lat­ter where likely image searches.

The one seach term on the list that has me baf­fled is “the liv­ing end 1998.”

You’ve heard all you can stand about that Mad­off guy.  You’ve read about yet another Ponzi scheme, another fore­clo­sure fraud artist, another dis­hon­est bro­ker, agent, etc. You’re dis­gusted about cheats and liars large and small. So am I.

Black sheep are found in every pro­fes­sion. They seem to mul­ti­ply when oppor­tu­nites to cheat are on the rise. How­ever, oppor­tu­nity tempts not only pro­fes­sion­als but ama­teurs. And there are more ama­teurs than professionals.

When Seat­tle real estate was hot in 2005 and 2006 (it started to sim­mer down in August 2007) I missed out on a lot of busi­ness. Who needs an agent to sell a home when an ad on craigslist will bring crowds to the seller’s door? How many For-Sale-By-Owner deals went down with no real estate agent rep­re­sen­ta­tion for the buyer? How many buy­ers went straight to the list­ing agent in the hope of sav­ing some money?

How many more buy­ers used a rel­a­tive or friend with a real estate license just a few weeks old? How many peo­ple got a real estate license just to buy for them­selves and go into the flip­ping homes business?

How many of these do-it-yourself artists are now fac­ing fore­clo­sure?

Too bad there are no sta­tis­tics on this.

A friend of mine handed me The Seat­tle Times and asked: “have you seen this?” I hadn’t but I did catch the tiny byline cred­it­ing a writer of The Wall Street Jour­nal with the arti­cle. I had read part of the arti­cle in the Jour­nal but the head­line in the Times did not look famil­iar. Curi­ous, I took the local paper home with the idea to com­pare the Times arti­cle to the original.

I am a Real­ist and a Realtor®

Before com­par­ing the two arti­cles, let me say that I’m a real­ist. Home prices are still com­ing down in Seat­tle land but they are not “crash­ing down” as they have in parts of Florida, Ari­zona and Cal­i­for­nia. I’m a real­ist who makes his daily liv­ing in this busi­ness and I have every rea­son to keep in touch with reality.

The National Story and the Local Story

Hyper­bole cuts Both Ways.

The real­ity includes naively opti­mistic and bor­ing adver­tis­ing by the National Asso­ci­a­tion of Real­tors (NAR) on one side (I’m a mem­ber) and on the other side jus­ti­fi­ably neg­a­tive media reports about the country’s finan­cial affairs in gen­eral and in par­tic­u­lar the hous­ing mar­ket. The prob­lem is that some of these neg­a­tive national reports are manip­u­lated to give the impres­sion that they are writ­ten and pro­duced for the local market.

Acci­den­tal or Inten­tional Misrepresentation?

The ques­tion is if this impres­sion is acci­den­tal or inten­tional. Judg­ing by the edited “reprint” of the WSJ arti­cle in The Seat­tle Times (ST) I can only con­clude that the ST did every­thing pos­si­ble to give the impres­sion that this story was about the Seat­tle real estate market.

Sell­ing Doom

The most obvi­ous dif­fer­ence is in the head­line. The WSJ head­line describes the story’s con­tent, while the local head­line is meant to shock. Not enough, the ST edi­tor added an into­duc­tory para­graph lifted from the body of the arti­cle and reworded it so it would appear more neg­a­tive and look as if it described the Seat­tle real estate market.

Stu­pid­ity or Bla­tant Manipulation?

Below the small-print “byline” that iden­ti­fies the WSJ writer of the story, the first para­graph shows addi­tonal edit­ing to give the impres­sion of this being a local story. The WSJ states “House prices have crashed more than 35% in some parts of the coun­try.” (empha­sis mine) which the ST edi­tor changed to “…in some areas.” What areas are we talk­ing about here? Some areas of Seat­tle, the east­side, King, Pierce or Sno­homish county?

Irre­spon­si­ble Journalism

There’s noth­ing wrong with edit­ing to make a story rel­e­vant to the local read­er­ship or shorten it to fit the avail­able space. (The Seat­tle Times reprint left out sev­eral para­graphs from the orig­i­nal WSJ arti­cle.) How­ever, when a local news­pa­per manip­u­lates a thought­ful, even-handed story from a national paper so as to frighten the locals into buy­ing the local news­pa­per, that’s sim­ply irresponsible.

Thanks, the real estate busi­ness is good.

“This has been a busy month.”
Skep­ti­cal looks are what I get when I answer the ques­tion: How’s the real estate business?

How could that be?

The first answer is: life goes on.
Babies are born and fam­i­lies get big­ger, cou­ples get mar­ried and some get divorced, peo­ple lose jobs and find jobs, they get demoted, pro­moted and trans­ferred, some peo­ple lose their invest­ment and oth­ers gain by inheritance.

Two years ago, when busi­ness was still boom­ing, when credit was easy, when homes were sold and bought in a mat­ter of days, when mul­ti­ple offers were the rule I didn’t do as well. Now noth­ing is easy.

And that’s the sec­ond answer: now it takes an expert who makes his or her liv­ing in the busi­ness of real estate, some­body whose exper­tise is in demand and who will work hard.

So this was the month when I had lit­tle time to post a blog because I was busy with my clients — and enjoy­ing every minute of it. I was delighted to help a young cou­ple – let’s call them Jacob and Jane -  to find their first home. We had been look­ing off and on since spring and we were in no hurry. Tak­ing their time enabled Jacob and Jane to decide against an area they had first con­sid­ered desir­able. Tak­ing their time made them more aware of what was really impor­tant in a first home and neigh­bor­hood. Mak­ing an offer that was rejected was part of the learn­ing experience.

Through­out, stay­ing com­fort­ably within their means remained impor­tant to Jacob and Jane. Even­tu­ally we did find the right home in the right neigh­bor­hood at the right price. We are clos­ing today, a day after the Dow Jones aver­age dropped 777 points. Life goes on.

Change: the only constant

The Greek philoso­pher Her­a­cli­tus pro­claimed “panta rei” which means lit­er­ally “every­thing flows.” An expanded ver­sion trans­lates into “Noth­ing endures but change.”

Today, the Dow Jones aver­age was up 485 points and tomor­row a fam­ily of six will get the keys to a house that may be home until all four or more chil­dren have left for col­lege. Four years ago, with only one child in tow, the Jenk­ins moved to Seat­tle from the Mid­west for a new job. We found a nice brick Tudor that reminded them of Chicago. They did not buy it with the idea “to cash in” later but with the desire to make it THEIR home.

The Jenk­ins fam­ily grew to six and even raised chick­ens in the back­yard. They improved the home sen­si­bly — for greater util­ity and their own com­fort. Reap­ing the reward for it at the even­tual sale of the home was con­sid­ered a wel­come out­come but not the pri­mary motivation.

The new home, built in 1942, is much larger, has “good bones” but is in need of improve­ments. It was listed as being eclec­tic. We agreed, but given the deferred main­te­nance we dubbed it “The Neglec­tic.” In good time it will be a won­der­ful home.

So, busi­ness is good. Thanks to the peo­ple who have trusted me to help them with the inevitable: Change.

In a word: NOTHING.
When I go house hunt­ing with a buyer I have noth­ing to sell. I don’t own the houses and con­dos I show. Yet, in the lingo of real estate I am the Sell­ing Agent.

Until the early 1980s there was only one agent:
the List­ing Agent. Buy­ers thought they were rep­re­sented by the list­ing agent when, in real­ity, they weren’t rep­re­sented at all. When we bought our first home in 1982 we knew noth­ing about real estate. The agent was a nice guy and it looked to us as if he was “on our side.” He wasn’t.

Sold by the Sell­ing Agent? — NOT

Now, some 25 years later,
many peo­ple, espe­cially first-time buy­ers, know as much about real estate as I did back then. And, while “buyer agency” started in the early 1980s, the con­cept of being rep­re­sented as a buyer by an agent devoted entirely to the buyer’s inter­est still needs to be explained and promoted.

Expunge the term Sell­ing Agent
from the real estate vocab­u­lary. Use instead the term Pur­chas­ing Agent, a term widely under­stood by any­one who’s ever dealt with business.

Busi­ness dic­tio­nar­ies describe the role of a Pur­chas­ing Agent as:

1. seek­ing reli­able ven­dors or sup­pli­ers to pro­vide qual­ity goods at rea­son­able prices
2. nego­ti­at­ing prices and contracts
3. review­ing tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions for raw mate­ri­als, com­po­nents, equip­ment or buildings
4. deter­min­ing quan­tity and tim­ing of deliveries

Trans­lated into the real estate busi­ness, the Pur­chas­ing Agent:

1. seeks to find qual­ity real estate at rea­son­able prices from reli­able sources, such as other agents or pri­vate sellers
2. nego­ti­ates prices and terms of pur­chase and sale agreements
3. reviews fea­tures and exam­ines, with the help of other experts, the sound­ness of prop­erty and
4. ensures that trans­ac­tion moves for­ward in a timely man­ner accord­ing to the con­tract and closes as agreed.

Pur­chas­ing Agents
are used in busi­ness where either price or quan­tity or both are sig­nif­i­cant and where an indi­vid­ual with spe­cial prod­uct exper­tise can save a com­pany money or oth­er­wise add value to the trans­ac­tion. Pur­chas­ing real estate is for most peo­ple the high­est value trans­ac­tion and to engage a pur­chas­ing agent with spe­cial exper­tise makes sense.

When the time comes to hire an agent
to help you find a home or condo ask the agent to give you a job descrip­tion for what he or she will do for you. What IS the spe­cial exper­tise? Where’s the value for YOU? The last per­son you want to hire is an agent who want to “sell you on a property.”

Ter­mi­nol­ogy is local
The term Sell­ing Agent is used in Wash­ing­ton State and else­where across the USA. A web­site, call­ing itself the Real Estate Dic­tio­nary gives this def­i­n­i­tion of Sell­ing Agent: “A real estate bro­ker or sales­per­son who writes the pur­chase offer for a buyer in a real estate trans­ac­tion, but may not actu­ally rep­re­sent the buyer.” WRONG in this part of the world and evi­dence for why the term Sell­ing Agent should be eliminated.

Some say this is a great time to buy.

Not so fast, I say. It’s an OK time to buy if you do not have to sell first. It’s a good time to buy if you don’t have to sell first and have good credit. It’s a great time to buy if you don’t have to sell, have good credit and have saved up for this very purpose.

If you are young, have a well-paying job and would find another job in greater Seat­tle with rel­a­tive ease, this is your day to go house hunt­ing — eh, make that condo hunting.

Know what you want; then make a list.

Condo hunt­ing — that’s just what I did with a young man who fits the above pro­file. Begin­ning about a month ago, we started to look around, first online, then in the real world. Shawn had a pretty good idea of what he wanted. He made a list for me:

1. Must Have (max­i­mum 25-minute no-transfer bus ride to work),
2. Would Like (lots of light, neigh­bor­hood feel),
3. Don’t Need (ameni­ties like pool, gym) and
4. Can­not Have (pre­vi­ous owner with pet — allergic).

Do your­self and your real estate agent a favor and make your own list. In the end, we found a condo that met 3 of the 4 cri­te­ria. The seller has a dog but there are no car­pets; just hard­wood floors and a cen­tral vac­uum sys­tem. We made an offer and, after some back and forth, we arrived at a mutual agree­ment on price and conditions.

Imag­ine a day in your life.

What I tell all my buy­ing clients is to imag­ine how they spent their time. What do you do after work? Cud­dle up with a book or go bar hop­ping? Do you like to have friends over for meals or rather go to a restau­rant? What do you do on week­ends? In Shawn’s case one such lifestyle con­sid­er­a­tion was where his friends lived. Some live on the east­side some south of down­town Seat­tle. The cho­sen condo put him right in the middle.

East­side or Seattle?

We started on the east­side at the south­ern edge of Both­ell with lots of con­dos within walk­ing dis­tance to the Brick­yard Park & Ride. Shawn took the bus from work in Seat­tle to meet me there — the com­mut­ing test. We saw about half-a-dozen con­dos that late after­noon and early evening. In the fol­low­ing week I picked up Shawn with my car after work and we looked at con­dos in sev­eral Seat­tle neigh­bor­hoods — Fre­mont, Maple Leaf, Sand­point, Lake City to name a few.

If you are won­der­ing about the num­ber of con­dos cur­rently on the mar­ket, here’s the count from the North­west Mul­ti­ple List­ing Ser­vice (NWMLS).

1-bedroom con­dos between $150,000 and $200,000

• Seat­tle (city lim­its): 67
• Ken­more, Both­ell, Mount­lake Ter­race, Mill Creek: 33
• Kirk­land, Belle­vue, Red­mond: 24

2-bedroom con­dos between $200,000 and $250,000

• Seat­tle (city lim­its): 64
• Ken­more, Both­ell, Mount­lake Ter­race, Mill Creek: 48
• Kirk­land, Belle­vue, Red­mond: 42

Online real estate is like read­ing a menu; you can’t “taste the place.”

What Shawn learned from look­ing at over a dozen con­dos was that you can’t tell by the pic­tures what a place is really like. What I learned again is that pric­ing real estate is at least as much art as it is sci­ence. Too much depends on the owner’s moti­va­tion to sell. Res­i­den­tial real estate is not entirely ratio­nal. The web is full of infor­ma­tion but the smell of a place is some­thing else altogether.

What’s your take?

What’s hold­ing you back from own­ing your own place? What’s your idea of the ideal condo? What’s your pre­ferred neigh­bor­hood and why? Have ris­ing gas prices changed your mind as to where you would like to live? Your thoughts and com­ments are welcome.

On June 12, the Wash­ing­ton State “Dis­tressed Prop­er­ties Law” took effect. That’s House Bill — HB 2791 If you have the time to plow through the bill, here’s the whole offi­cial mess as a PDF file. If you have a shorter atten­tion span, read the June 6 Press Release from the Wash­ing­ton Attor­ney Gen­eral.

So, what’s the big deal, you ask.

Big deal because you, too, are a “Poten­tial Dis­tressed Home Owner” if you

1. Are at risk of loss for non-payment of prop­erty taxes,
2. in default under a mortgage,
3. 30 days behind on mort­gage — OR
4. believe that you could default on your mort­gage within 4 months and tell your lawyer, real estate agent, lender, mort­gage or credit coun­selor, etc.

The bill has many flaws,

such as point 4 in the list above, vague word­ing, and sweep­ing def­i­n­i­tions, but there are two major flaws worth not­ing. To be a Poten­tial Dis­tressed Home­owner you must be

1. occu­py­ing the property,
2. the prop­erty must be your pri­mary res­i­dence, and
3. this prop­erty has from 1 to 4 res­i­den­tial units

Any­thing miss­ing here?

Yep, the Dis­tressed Prop­erty Law does not cover any build­ing with more than 4 units, which excludes almost every con­do­minium com­plex.

What makes this an impor­tant flaw, you ask? Well, the pur­pose of HB 2791 is to pro­tect res­i­den­tial prop­erty own­ers in Wash­ing­ton from those shady char­ac­ters who are prey­ing on the dis­tressed home owner. It is to pro­tect them from con artist who “skim equity” and “steal homes”.

Since a good num­ber of first-time-buyers buy con­dos and since some of them financed their dream with ques­tion­able mort­gages this leaves a whole lot of tar­gets for the scam artists to pur­sue.

The other major flaw

of the bill is that it does not exempt real estate agents. (In other states that passed sim­i­lar leg­is­la­tion, real estate agents are exempt,) It is not that real estate agents are nec­es­sar­ily bet­ter than the aver­age per­son, but they are already cov­ered under other leg­is­la­tion, namely RCW 18.86 which gov­erns real estate prac­tice.

The bill cre­ates a whole new pro­fes­sion: the “Dis­tressed Home Con­sul­tant.” That new label was meant to apply to legit­i­mate fore­clo­sure spe­cial­ists and scam artists. It now also applies to real estate agents. The bill does exempt oth­ers equally likely involved in real estate trans­ac­tions: lenders, mort­gage bro­kers and lawyers.

These two flaws may be major but this one beats both.

Each bill that becomes leg­is­la­tion includes a “Fis­cal Note” which states the esti­mated Fis­cal Impact of the bill — that’s the impact on the bud­get, I sup­pose. And since that bud­get is paid for by our taxes that means the fis­cal impact on you and me. Accord­ing to the math wiz­ards in Olympia, the Dis­tressed Prop­erty is esti­mated to have “No Fis­cal Impact.”

No Fis­cal Impact? Let me count the ways.

The bill has resulted in numer­ous rewrit­ten and newly printed real estate trans­ac­tion forms. It has already cre­ated and will cre­ate more con­fu­sion and waste of time for any­one involved in buy­ing and sell­ing a home. That includes all the afore­men­tioned poten­tial dis­tressed home own­ers. The worst and most costly impact of this bill will be this: Every sane real estate agent will stay miles away from any­body sus­pected of har­bor­ing thoughts of being a poten­tially dis­tressed home owner. The poten­tial lia­bil­ity to be sued is sim­ply too great. Ulti­mately, this bill may achieve the oppo­site results of what was intended: more fore­clo­sures and more bank­rupt­cies. The shady char­ac­ters meant to be deterred by this bill will find other ways to ply their trade. Most condo own­ers remain unpro­tected and should watch out.

Much has and will be writ­ten about this law.

Here’s how a real estate fore­clo­sure spe­cial­ist (now becom­ing my Dis­tressed Home Con­sul­tant col­league) views this bill. Your com­ments are welcome.

This is a great time to buy homes in and around Seat­tle, espe­cially if you do not have to sell. Two of my first-time buy­ers are tak­ing advan­tage of the local buy­ers’ mar­ket. One young cou­ple will close in two weeks on their first home in Mon­roe, the other just started look­ing with their eyes set on homes in the Issaquah High­lands.

Ready and Qual­i­fied to Buy their First Home

Both cou­ples share a trait that is becom­ing rare these days: save before you buy and then buy less than what you could afford. Need­less to say, it is a treat to nego­ti­ate a deal for buy­ers like that.

What and Where?

Hav­ing deter­mined the basic min­i­mum spec­i­fi­ca­tions — 3 bed, 2 bath, 1,500 sq ft, 2 sto­ries, small yard — and what was com­fort­ably afford­able and with pre-approval in hand, we started the search online. To help in choos­ing the right Seat­tle east­side neigh­bor­hood I sug­gested that they imag­ine a work day and a week­end — get­ting up in the morn­ing, com­mut­ing to work, tak­ing a tod­dler to day care, tak­ing a walk, doing errands, going out to din­ner, hav­ing friends over, etc.

Old or New, the Prices are Down

Before set­ting off for the High­lands we looked at a home south of down­town Issaquah. Built in the early 80s, vacant and on the mar­ket for months, the best prop­erty fea­ture was the size of the lot with a siz­able, mature back yard. We decided that any offer would be at least $35,000 below the ask­ing price; money needed to upgrade the kitchen, bath­rooms and remove the pop­corn ceilings.

To save gas we left one car in down­town Issaquah and drove across 1–90 at exit 18 and up High­land Drive. Over the course of two hours we saw the eight homes on our list and two more we came across by chance. Seven of the eight homes were priced between $480,000 and just below $500,000; only one was listed close to $525,000. Look­ing at the homes’ list­ing his­to­ries, it was clear that $500,000 had become the “high water mark” — five of the eight homes had once been listed over $500,000 before being reduced below that mark. The most extreme was a home that was reduced over the course of 140 days by 11.1%, from $540,000 to $480,000. The Zillow.com chart above illus­trates the one-year price trend for Issaquah and the 98029 zip code which includes the Issaquah Highlands.

Keep­ing Count and Pick­ing the Winner

Look­ing at sev­eral homes in short suc­ces­sion can become con­fus­ing. My method to keep them apart and mem­o­rable is to give each home a name, usu­ally a dis­tinc­tive fea­ture. In our case, we named the three favorites “Stairs in the Back,” “Buy Three, get Four,” and “Secret Garden.”

In my opin­ion, Secret Gar­den is the clear win­ner. At $254.40 per square foot the least expen­sive, by loca­tion it is in the qui­etest neigh­bor­hood, yet clos­est to the Park & Ride. Built in 1999, it is the old­est of the three. But how else can you get such a beau­ti­ful gar­den with roses and clema­tis and enjoy your bar­be­cue hid­den from view by mature vegetation?

Look­ing for Alternatives

I searched the North­west Mul­ti­ple List­ing Ser­vice web­site for homes in Red­mond, Belle­vue, Kirk­land and Sam­mamish with match­ing cri­te­ria: built between 1999 and 2008, 3 or 4 bed­rooms, up to 3 bath­rooms, between 1,900 and 2,000 sq ft, 2-stories, min­i­mum of 4,500 sq ft lot, and 2-car, attached garage. The result: zero.

Expand­ing the age of the homes back to 1995 made no dif­fer­ence. Elim­i­nat­ing the lot size spec­i­fi­ca­tion entirely and reduc­ing the required square footage to a min­i­mum of 1,500 sq ft resulted in nine prop­er­ties, three on the Red­mond Ridge and six in Sam­mamish. The least expen­sive is a $424,950 Sam­mamish home with 1,550 square feet. How­ever, lan­guish­ing 138 days on the mar­ket and located deep in the heart of the Sam­mamish plateau it is a tough com­mute and per­haps not such a good deal.