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.”

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.

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.