PUBLISHED BY: Seattle Times

As the number of town houses in Seattle-area neighborhoods has mushroomed in recent years, one particular design feature has caught the eye of many a homebuyer and neighbor; the “auto-court” parking area around which some town houses are clustered.

With a central, cavelike driveway, often shaded by the town houses’ upper floors extending overhead, auto courts typically consist of two rows of Smart Car-sized garages.

Rishad Quazi lives in a town-house complex with auto-court parking in the Broadview neighborhood of Seattle.

He is happy with his home, particularly the relatively large back yard, which he estimated at about 20-by-30 feet, the newness of the home when he moved in, and the fact that his is an end unit, with only one wall adjoining another home.

Quazi parks his car in his garage, though he said that it was tricky at first to maneuver his vehicle — at the time a Hyundai hatchback — into the small space.

“I scratched it on both sides before I figured out my correct angle of approach and my proper visual markers to get the car in correctly,” he said.

Some of his neighbors choose to park on the street, he said, due to the tight configuration of their auto court.

The high cost of land, the push toward density, and earlier building code requiring off-street parking have all contributed to the proliferation of auto-court town-house development.

Town houses are meant to squeeze more dwellings into tight places. Taking up less space means that town houses are more attractively priced compared with free-standing homes.

For example, an upscale three-bedroom, three-bath, 1,730-square-foot town house built in 2006 in Fremont was recently listed for $479,000.

It’s on a block where the land alone under a single-family house was assessed for a higher amount, according to county property-tax records.

Though popular for their affordability and relatively new construction, town-house design sometimes has appeared more awkward than functional.

A recent building code update in Seattle intends to change this, by favoring features such as front porches and common outdoor space instead of auto courts.

The Seattle City Council last year updated its multifamily-building code with new rules and incentives that steer development away from the auto-court style of town house and toward row houses, cottages, and apartments.

In place of car-oriented auto courts, the code update encourages visible pedestrian entry doors and more windows facing the street. These features aim to connect homes and their residents with neighbors and communities.

In addition, a system of “floor-area ratio” incentives allows the building of slightly larger units on the same size lot if developers choose dwelling types other than auto-court town houses.

The code update also allows common outdoor space in town-house complexes, rather than requiring individual, enclosed yards. And in certain areas with frequent transit service, multifamily complexes do not have to include parking for each unit.

To arrive at its final update, the council took feedback from the public. Councilmember Sally Clark hosted a neighborhood forum in 2008 titled “Townhomes — Can the Patient be Saved?” and drew on input from neighborhood groups and developers.

Among citizens speaking up was Bill Zosel, a resident of central Seattle’s Squire Park neighborhood. He felt too many formulaic, auto-court style town houses were popping up in his community. He brought to Clark at another meeting a photo of an auto-court development with a red circle around it and diagonal line striking through it; the graphic symbol for “No.”

Interviewed recently, Zosel said he objected to what he called the auto-court town houses’ “diminished relationship to the street.”

Most of the existing single-family homes in his neighborhood, he said, have “useful front doors and ground-level living space facing the street.” By contrast, the only visible entrance to many auto-court complexes is the driveway.

Some areas outside Seattle have stricter rules regarding town house developments. Snohomish County updated its multifamily code in 2009 with new design standards that aim to foster attractive streetscapes and architectural design that blends into existing neighborhoods.

The code update was written “with Seattle’s auto-court issue in mind,” said Clay White, director of Snohomish County Planning and Development Services.

Under the new standards, “auto-court style town houses cannot be developed” he said.

Auto courts have been much less of an issue in Bellevue. The city has not experienced the same proliferation of auto-court town-house projects as Seattle has, according to Carol Helland, Bellevue’s land-use director, who said: “We’ve had relatively robust design expectations in place for some time.”

Such design concerns, however, aren’t necessarily a priority for many people who buy town houses. Price, location and newer construction are what count.

Meredith Spacie and her husband, Tom, bought their auto-court town house in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood in 2008, though they did not set out looking for a town house in particular.

“Our most important element was neighborhood and location and not having to do any work on the house before it was satisfactorily livable,” Spacie said. “There were really no single-family homes in our price range that fit those characteristics.”

Based on what she recalled seeing at the time, Spacie estimated they paid at least $100,000 less for their town house compared with a similarly-sized single-family house in move-in condition.

Most of the neighbors in their complex of eight town houses do park their cars in their auto-court garages, but the Spacies do not.

“Our garage is no tougher to get into than anyone else’s,” Spacie said. “We basically just have too much stuff and are using it for storage.”

See the article here:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/realestate/2017345743_realtownhomes29.html

PUBLISHED BY: The Seattle Times

WASHINGTON — The new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is working on a real-estate issue that gets to the core of the agency’s purpose: Bringing clarity and better disclosures about the often opaque and costly fees that homebuyers, sellers and refinancers are hit with at closings.

One of the disclosures now under review might surprise you: appraisal charges. Why do they need clarifying? Doesn’t just about everybody who applies for a mortgage, whether it’s to buy a house or refinance, have to pay $450 to $600 — sometimes more — to find out what the property is worth?

Correct. But the reality is a bit more complicated. Start with the fact that in three out of every four purchases or refinancings, according to industry estimates, the person who visits, inspects, measures and puts a market value on your property is receiving only a fraction of the money you are paying.

Some are being paid less than half of the fee, while the balance flows to an enterprise you’ve never heard of — an appraisal-management company — that assigns the job to the appraiser. That management company, in turn, may be wholly owned by or in a joint venture or affiliate relationship with your lender, which in turn may be pocketing a significant portion of your appraisal dollars.

Current federal settlement disclosures give you no hint of where that money is really going. There is just a single line item for appraisal charges.

Say you’re charged $550. There is no hint that the appraiser gets $250 and the rest goes to the management company and the lender. The CFPB is considering whether to shed light on this by mandating two disclosures — what the appraiser is paid and what the management company is taking.

Should you care about this? Absolutely. Although banks and mortgage lenders maintain there is no need for additional disclosure, appraisers, builders, realty brokers and others say the costs of appraisals to consumers have increased in the past two years, while the quality and accuracy of the work have declined.

In a poll of its members last year, the National Association of Realtors found that 70 percent reported consumers were being charged higher appraisal fees at closing.

At the same time, appraiser members reported sharp reductions in their own compensation by 40 percent to 50 percent per assignment. Many of the Realtors polled said they saw significant increases in the number of appraisers who were unfamiliar with local market conditions because they were from another geographic area. The same poll also found a growing incidence of sales transactions being derailed by appraisals that came in below the contract price that the seller and the buyer had agreed to.

Critics say the drops in fees to appraisers combined with higher charges to consumers are byproducts of the rapid spread of management companies, whose growth during the post-boom years has been fueled by rules from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Congress aimed at ensuring “appraiser independence.”

Frank Gregoire, a past chairman of the Florida Real Estate Appraisal Board, which oversees and regulates the industry in that state, says that while appraiser independence is an important goal, banks and their affiliated management firms are raising the costs of appraisals to consumers without improving services.

“The borrower receives no benefit from the (appraisal management) ‘service,’ ” he said in an email. “The lender is able to outsource a significant responsibility” — the selection of an appraiser — “to an affiliated subsidiary, and profit from that task by making the consumer and the appraiser pay for the privilege. (This) business arrangement is concealed from the consumer/borrower, and the charge is misrepresented as an ‘appraisal fee’ on the HUD-1. This is dishonest, deceitful and unfair.”

Industry defenders of management firms, such as Donald Kelly, executive director of the Real Estate Valuation Advocacy Association, strongly disagree. Kelly says management firms perform the “back office” functions — including reviews and quality control — “that in the past were done by lender staff and employees.” In other words, they earn the money they get. And there’s no pressing need for consumers to see additional disclosures. They just need to know the bottom line.

Which brings the matter back to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Though it can’t comment on pending rules, the agency has a statutory deadline in July to produce an improved version of the HUD-1 settlement form. How it comes down on real-estate appraisal-fee disclosures — more transparency for consumers or not — will be a revealing early test.

See the article here:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/realestate/2017336010_harney29.html

PUBLISHED BY: Komo News.com

SEATTLE – The “Mercer Mess” is now even messier.

This weekend drivers are getting another reminder that what’s expected to be “the Gateway to the City” is still a work in progress.

It all adds up to more big changes for drivers this weekend and Monday morning.

Seattle motorists remember well the four eastbound lanes on Mercer Street and how they earned their Mercer Mess nickname.

Well, they can forget those memories because now it’s even messer.

“I can’t imagine having to work and drive this,” says motorist Dana Taylor.

Starting Saturday, drivers don’t have to imagine.

Mercer Street has shrunk from four to just three lanes – and all lanes of traffic are being funneled onto what will eventually become the westbound lanes. That way Seattle street crews can start construction on the new eastbound lanes.

Council member Mike McQuaide insists it’s a temporary inconvenience for permanent improvement for what he calls the city’s hottest spot – South Lake Union.

“I’m thrilled, I’m excited about what’s going to happen here,” says McQuaide.

But here’s the price – one less lane for traffic, plus drivers lose three streets to access Mercer from the south: Boren, Terry and Westlake.

“Putting everybody in only a couple streets – it’s going to just stop,” says motorist Chris Poppe.

Right now the Mercer Street exit on-ramp is closed – the city opened the off-ramp to accommodate the Seattle Boat Show traffic.

South Lake Union businesses are bracing for the traffic changes.

Erin Dodge worries about her customers navigating the construction cones. She says most of her customers are from out of town.

“That’s only going to make things worse – I don’t even know where we’re suppose to go … or how they are going to do this,” says Dodge. “People are going to be turning around – it’s going to be insane.”

The city encourages carpooling, using transit and checking out its website with more details before drivers venture into the area.

“It wasn’t great before, but it better be amazing, is all I can say,” says Dodge.

The Mercer Street on-ramp will reopen for Monday’s morning commute, but McQuaid suggests using the Eastlake exit and Highway 99 to help avoid some of the congestion.

See article here:

http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Drivers-businesses-nervous-as-Mercer-Mess-morphs-138267344.html

Published By:fredericksburg.com

A Fredericksburg-area real estate brokerage and management firm is warning of a scam it recently encountered that involves rental properties listed on Craigslist.

Staff members at Johnson & Glazebrook Inc. have recently seen properties that their firm is representing  listed on Craigslist, even though they did not post the material. The properties are listed for rent for extremely low prices.

The real estate firm recently got a call from a person who was interested in a local property listed on Craigslist. She was told to send her money to an address out of the country, and that she could then move in. The woman noticed the Johnson & Glazebrook sign in the yard when she looked at the home, and, sensing something was off, called the firm.

The woman later flagged the post on Craigslist, and it was taken down.

“A similar situation happened to us back in December, and we received quite a few calls about some of our listings fraudulently posted on Craigslist,” said Stephanie Rowe, administrative assistant at Johnson & Glazebrook, in an email.

Local Realtors say that type of scam has long been a problem in the Fredericksburg area and beyond. They say Craigslist is good about removing the fraudulent ads when they’re flagged, but additional ads keep popping up.

A customer of a former RE/MAX Bravo agent lost about $5,000 through this type of scam a couple of years ago, said Jane Wallace, co-owner of the Spotsylvania County-based firm.

One of the agent’s properties was listed for rent fraudulently on Craigslist, and a woman pounced on the deal because the price was so low. She sent an email to the address given, thinking she was communicating with the RE/MAX Bravo agent. The woman received a response from the scammer that he was in the hospital in England, so everything would have to be done through mail or Federal Express.

The victim sent the first month’s rent and security deposit after being promised she would then get the keys, Wallace said. When she didn’t, she tracked down the agent, who knew nothing about the affair.

Wallace said several additional RE/MAX Bravo agents have found their rental listings on Craigslist over the past couple of years.

A spokeswoman for Craigslist could not be reached for comment, but its website posts tips for users on how to sniff out a scam and take steps to avoid becoming a victim. They include:

Deal locally with people you can meet in person.

Never wire or ship funds to someone on Craigslist or give out financial information.

Do not rent housing without seeing the interior.

Craigslist says most scams involve an inquiry from someone far away who refuses to meet face-to-face.

See article here:

http://blogs.fredericksburg.com/newsdesk/2012/01/28/realty-firm-warns-against-craigslist-scam/

Published by 41NBC News

An experimental place where hardcore alcoholics can live and drink at taxpayer expense has been a lighting rod of controversy in Seattle, Washington since it opened, but new evidence from a university study may quiet some critics.

Cecil West is an unrepentant alcoholic.

He’s lived 18 hard years on the streets and is now battling cancer, but he still hasn’t put the bottle down.

“All depends on how much money I got,” he says when asked how much he drinks.

West is one of 95 chronic “street drunks” who are part of the experiment called 1811 Eastlake.

For six years, the City of Seattle has provided them a permanent place to live with the agreement that they’re allowed to drink as much as they want.

West says that isn’t all that goes on there.

“All kinds of crazy things. Pill popping, heroin. Whatever,” he says.

The people who live here will tell you that what’s happens inside isn’t always pretty, but researchers now say it is apparently working.

“There are all kinds of reasons why drinking is as part of survival on the streets,” says Dr. Susan Collins of Harborview Medical Center.

Scientists at the University of Washington collected data over two years from the residents of 1811.

They challenged the widespread assumption that people would drink even more here, but the numbers tell a different story.

“Participants in our study decreased both their alcohol use and their experience of alcohol related problems,” says Collins.

The average number of drinks per day fell nearly by half, from 20 to 12.

Researchers believe it’s mainly a function of having a stable place to live.

“On the streets often you drink to stay warm. You might have to drink to the point of intoxication that they let you into the sobering center where they let you in to sleep it off. Or you might drink to forget you’re on the streets,” says Collins.

A separate study by the University of Washington found that housing homeless alcoholics cut the cost to taxpayers for police, medical and social services by 50 percent.

As for West, he says he drinks just as much as he ever has, but he’s thankful he has a warm safe place to do it.

See the article here:

http://www.41nbc.com/news/national-news/10137-experimental-a-controversial-qdrunkq-housing-cuts-alcoholics-consumption

PUBLISHED BY: http://www.therentables.com/blog/category/landlord-news

There are only a handful of things a landlord dreads more than getting a call on a Sunday evening from a tenant asking them to come in and unclog the toilet. Prevent this problem by supplying all the tools and know-how a tenant might need to unclog their own mess.

Preventative

There are a number of things that should not be flushed down the toilet. Educating your tenants with a good visual list will solve half of the problems. Here is a great list we at The Rentables made for you to tape to the wall in front of the toilet when new tenants move in:

Printable PDF version: Teach your tenants to unclog toilets | The Rentables

Preventing clogs is the best bet, but once they happen there are still a couple remedies any tenant should be able to try before making a call.

Plunger

Every apartment should have it’s own plunger. The cost is minimal, and with proper instructions you may never have to hear from your tenants about this problem. I prefer plungers with a wooden handle instead of plastic. Make sure you get a flange plunger because it properly seals around the edges and doesn’t shift around.

Make sure you explain to your tenants how to use the plunger even though it may seem quite obvious. Some points to remember:
1. There must be some water in the toilet/sink before using the plunger – water is a lot more difficult to compress and it’s water pressure that will clear the clogs.
2. Pulling is just as important as pressing, make sure to press all the way and pull back for 15-20 seconds at a time.
3. You will know the clog is gone when the water starts draining rapidly on it’s own

Drain Cleaners

If the plunger doesn’t work, provide them a simple off the shelf drain unclogging chemical. Explain that these chemicals are very bad for the environment and should only be used as a last resort. The chemicals used are harsh since they are are purposely designed to dissolve anything that is stuck in your drain. Remind your tenants to use gloves and be careful not to get these chemicals in their eyes.

Several events will take place throughout the city this weekend and Monday to mark Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

The Seattle Community Colleges’ 38th-annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Celebration will take place Friday, Jan. 13, at Mount Zion Baptist Church, 1634 19th Ave., from noon to 1:30 p.m., with well-known motivational speaker Nate Miles as the keynote speaker. 

The event will also feature the Mount Zion Wind Ensemble, led by local musical celebrity Wadie Ervin, as well as singers from the Mount Zion Inspirational Chorus, who will perform gospel songs.

Fifth-grade students from John Stanford International School will put on a dramatic presentation based on King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

Teens from around Seattle will gather at noon on Saturday, Jan. 14, to honor King at the Seattle park that bears his name, at 2200 Martin Luther King Jr. Way S.
Teens will gather at the park and begin the march to Garfield Community Center, 2323 E. Cherry St., at 1 p.m. The route will take them up Martin Luther King Jr. Way to Cherry Street and end at Garfield Community Center.

Along the march route, the youths will visit three parks named after local civil-rights leaders and will listen at each one to a brief performance representing the leader:

•Sam Smith Park, 1400 Martin Luther King Jr. Way S., named after the first African-American member of the Seattle City Council who served from 1975 to 1991.

•Powell Barnett Park, 352 Martin Luther King Jr. Way S., named after the community leader who helped to form the East Madison YMCA and chaired the committee that revised and strengthened the Seattle Urban League.

•Sidney Gerber Park, at Cherry Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way, named for the philanthropist, engineer, civic leader and six-year chair of the State Board Against Discrimination.

When they arrive at Garfield Community Center, the marchers will watch the oral histories of veterans of Seattle’s civil-rights campaigns and engage in small and large group discussions to reflect on the contributions of King and the civil-rights movement.

Also in honor of MLK Jr. Day, the Nature Consortium will host a Weekend of Service to commemorate King’s life and legacy as the father of environmental justice.

On Saturday, Jan. 14, and Monday, Jan. 16, volunteers can spend “a day on, not a day off” as part of an ongoing effort to restore the forest to a healthy state.

Saturday’s work party will take place in an area of the West Duwamish Greenbelt known as the “Soundway” site, 32 acres of land originally slated for development by the city. Community members, including Nature Consortium, banded together in 2004 to save the largest remaining forest from development and preserve it as urban green space.

Volunteers will roll up their sleeves to remove invasive species from the forest, install weed barriers and plant native trees and shrubs.

The MLK Celebration Committee will bring the community back to Garfield High School, at 23rd Avenue and East Jefferson Street, for the 30th-annual celebration, “Recapturing MLK Jr.’s Revolutionary Spirit.”

The event will start with workshops geared toward youths from 9:30 to 11 a.m., followed by a rally with speakers, poetry and music from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

A march to the Jackson Federal Building, at Second Avenue and Marion Street in Downtown Seattle, will then take place at 12:30 p.m., culminating the day’s event with a short, outdoor rally there.

See article here:

http://www.capitolhilltimes.com/main.asp?SectionID=26&SubSectionID=248&ArticleID=29454

Published by: ArticlesBase

our HOA is designed to aid and also take care of the motivations of its neighborhood. Nevertheless, several HOAs are ill-equipped to cope with the demands of a community which gets numerous solutions, has intricate property laws, and contains programs pertaining to continuing development. When this is the case, an HOA should look at working with a community supervision company to manage the logistical facets of the community’s maintenance and development. Firms that carry out HOA management present different types of services. But in every circumstance, they provide the subsequent three benefits that HOA board members alone often can’t.

Knowledge of Community Development

An HOA offers two basic goals: a) to conserve and develop the financial value and b) the societal appeal of a residential area. Community advancement calls for employing regulations and providers that satisfy the community’s residents. It also involves understanding what varieties of regulations and products and services are best for the community within the long-term – something that board members and inhabitants may have problems figuring out.

Property management businesses make use of their own expertise in community advancement to help organizations generate plans which meet current and long term targets. By means of conversing with board members and inhabitants regarding the needed direction of your neighborhood, they could establish a policy for moving this in the suitable direction on a project-by-project basis.

Expertise in Management

A weak point of lots of HOA boards is their not enough instruction and experience with community supervision. Nevertheless, their ability to field residents’ feelings and considerations in ways that a administration firm couldn’t is necessary to the management process. Therein is the particular importance of finding a property administration company: it helps board members to serve within their ideal capacity: as reps of their particular community’s concerns, not as business managers which might be taken up largely with the managerial aspects of the neighborhood.

Full-Time Supervision Focus

Even when they have the appropriate instruction as well as know-how, several board members can not invest in the actual management functionality. On most boards, board associates function in an chosen, yet volunteer basis, and also keep an additional career. There’re part-time staff with the HOA, and do not have the continuity of concentration which is necessary to run a plethora of considerations that exist continuously.

A continuity of concentration that may be aimed at handling multiple issues that exist at the same time is exactly what community association administration offers. The cash committed to their products and services ought to be considered as a direct financial commitment inside the community, for they deal with its finances plus produce their real estate investmentprofile.

Bottom Line

The majority of HOAs don’t go through a major occasion that triggers these to pick community association administration. Rather, the degree of administration that residents be expecting – and the caliber of solutions which it guarantees – decline so much that evaluation service fees have nominal worth beyond paying for basic services – a scenario in which the HOA loses appeal in the eyes of brand-new house buyers. If the community’s solutions are declining, and the concern is a lack of resources in the board level, the next step is to prevent the decrease by just implementing new managerial alternatives.

See article here:

http://www.articlesbase.com/management-articles/property-management-companies-greatly-enhance-hoa-management-5554239.html

Please follow the link below to watch.

http://www.marcusmillichap.com/Video/fox_122911.asp

PUBLISHED BY: KING 5 NEWS

SEATTLE – If weather cooperates, in two weeks, commuters who rely on Mercer St. for their commute will be noticing some big changes. Traffic will be shifted into newly completed lanes to allow for the next phase of construction of the two-way Mercer St. project.

To complete the changeover the Interstate 5 on and off ramps at Mercer will have to close. The full weekend closure is expected to happen on January 13th through the 16th. Bad weather could postpone the work.

A City news release outlined the changes:

On January 16, Stage 2 of the Mercer East Project will begin and eastbound traffic on Mercer St. will be re-routed onto the new Mercer St. lanes north of the existing lanes. Three lanes of traffic will continue eastbound on Mercer St. with access to the I-5 on-ramps and Fairview Ave. N.

This traffic shift will result in access restrictions to Mercer St. from the south, as access to Mercer St. via Boren, Terry, and Westlake Avenues will be concurrently closed at Republican St. Alternate routes should be used to reach Eastlake Ave. E and Capitol Hill (i.e. Dexter Ave. N to Republican St.).

Director of the project, Angela Brady of the Seattle Department of Transportation says, “It is going to be rough.” The first few days after the switch will have commuters searching for the easiest way to navigate out of South Lake Union.

Pedestrian and Bike paths will still flow north out of the area, but no cars or trucks.

The entire project is scheduled to wrap up late this year, and these traffic revisions will remain in place until then.

See article here: http://www.king5.com/news/Mercer-Mess-could-get-messier-136864838.html