September 6, 2010

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Market Trends for July 2010: Avg Price Per Sq Ft

September 4, 2010 By seattlesavvy Leave a Comment

Here is our first update of four market trends we’ll be posting each month.  Data spans an 18 month period in efforts to avoid presenting a false trends based on activity of the the current season.

Mentions:

  • Resale properties reached it’s all time low in 18 months at $383/sq. ft.
  • New construction reached it’s all time high in 18 months at $756/sq. ft.
  • As an average, price were it’s lowest in August ’09.
dyerware


All reports presented are based on data supplied by the NWMLS. Neither the Association nor its MLS guarantees or is in anyway responsible for its accuracy. Data maintained by the Association or its MLS may not reflect all real estate activities in the market. Information deemed reliable but not guaranteed.

Filed Under: Featured, Market Trends: Price Per Sq Ft, Neighborhoods/Condos, Sales

View Seattle Height Restrictions in 3D!

August 28, 2010 By seattlesavvy Leave a Comment

We couldn’t be more excited to have almost completed a map of downtown Seattle height restrictions in 3D using Google Earth.  Currently, the file is only available as a download and it’s very important to us.  Therefore, we’re looking into ways to keep it private.  As of right now, we’re only sharing it with clients.  We feel that making a intuitive purchase based on the 3 P’s is what makes a happy buyer.

Please, take a look out this snapshot and contact us if you’re interested in a download of the Google Earth file.  The person putting it together for us is incredibly busy, so we don’t want to rush the guy.  Therefore, all you get is a teaser.  I’m just so excited to have such a cool tool we can put on our website, I had to share a sneak peak!

What’s most interesting, is there are truly very few units with protected views…

In the meantime, you can view a flat map of height restrictions set by the city here.

Filed Under: Featured, Land Use Bulletin, Neighborhoods/Condos

Two new BIG neighbors to Mosler Lofts coming to Belltown

August 16, 2010 By seattlesavvy Leave a Comment

I love reading the Dept. of Planning and Developments “Land use Information Bulletin” in the morning. Not because it’s as dry as toast and goes well with coffee but because it provides me with exciting news for me to pass along to you, my loyal readers…..and I’ve got a doozy of a scoop for you today!

There will be TWO new high-rise apartments buildings going up soon in the northend of Belltown. A 19-story at 2625 3rd Avenue and a 17-story at 311 Cedar Street. The good news is they will bring more retail space and I’m hoping for some good Teriyaki and a Jelly Belly shop. There will be commercial space as well and I trust they’ve got tenants lined up. The best news are all the rental units available to make up for the loss of the unlucky McGuire building.

What’s the bad news? Just ask the homeowners at Mosler Lofts and Seattle Heights. They’ve just gotten the awful reminder that an open view is never guaranteed. Each complex will have some of its Association members unhappy with the loss of a portion of their view….and there’s nothing they can do about it.

We have a height restriction chart on our site (Seattle Height Restrictions) providing you with a guideline of what COULD happen around town. It shows the maximum height a new building can be anywhere within the colored coded zone. You know why we spent time creating it….to remind us all that nothing stays the same. New opportunities will bring progress and Seattle Savvy doesn’t want some brand new big building stuck in front of your window to come as a shocking surprise.

As a resident of the Montreux, I often marvel at the view of the skyline from our pretty fabulous rooftop deck.  Dave and I stand up there and “ooh n’ ahh” about the golden color reflecting off the 27-story Grandview Condos as it towers over every other building within two blocks. Dave likes the fact that every unit has a great view. I take a big slurp of my cherry coke and point out the  west side of the Cosmopolitan. “Those buyers thought they had a great view too.” I say in a somber tone. Dave’s naturally pale completion bursts into a red hue as he begins a long diatribe on how “somebody” should write a post about how nothing is guaranteed and that it’s our job to help buyers perform the due diligence needed to make the best buying decisions of their lives.

After all, no one wants to share their morning coffee and toast with a neighbor living only a short alleys distance away.

With love….Somebody.

Filed Under: Architecture/Design, Belltown, Buyer 101, Denny Triangle, Featured, Gradview, Land Use Bulletin, Mosler Lofts, Seattle Heights Tagged With: 2625 3rd Ave, 311 Cedar St, Cotterpin, Doozers, Fraggle Rock

Established Belltown business owner needs a new home

August 11, 2010 By seattlesavvy Leave a Comment

A friend of mine recently asked if we could help with finding his martial arts teacher a new home for his business.  Since commercial real estate is a whole different business, all we could do is pass the word.   Bottom line is Belltown Martial Arts needs to find a new home, and if there is any warehouse or retail space owners looking to lease to a great established tenant, here ya go…

Sifu David Leong is looking for 3 to 5k square feet.  He is an active community member, has an established business, and mentioned that he would be open to South Lake Union.  His current location on 3rd and Cedar is being torn down.  If you know of someone or are yourself looking for a good tenant, please contact him directly.  Of course price is a concern, but really just needs some space for a dojo, and a couple bathrooms.

He can be contacted through his website and into a new home by the beginning of next month.

On a side note, I was poking around on this guys site a few months ago and read about the Lion Dance.  Pretty amazing…  Here was my favorite vid I found when I was looking about:

Filed Under: Belltown, Featured Tagged With: Belltown Martial Arts, Sifu David Leong

What to consider during your 5-10 day inspection period

August 5, 2010 By seattlesavvy Leave a Comment

There’s a period of between 5-10 calendar days after you’ve received mutual acceptance on your sales contract that you have the opportunity to check and recheck all that pertains to the condition of your potential purchase. Most buyers think this is only the responsibility of a licensed ASHI Home Inspector who you hire to find all the problems with your future home.

This is in fact not the case.

This vendor is good at performing tests on systems and the proper functionality on all items included in the sale. They are excellent at following CSI style clues of past water leaks and pest infestations. They even love to teach you about past upgrades, additions and remodels that they’ve discovered. However, beyond those details, they perform only a visual inspection!  Especially with condominiums, we can’t expect an entire building to be inspected upon.  This is something you must entrust to your agent.

There are a mirage of other issues that you might want to make yourself aware of as the future home owner. We always suggest to to buyers to take this “inspection period” to verify to the best of your ability the following information: square footage of the home (and lot if single-family home), neighborhood conditions (crime, future development, and especially potential loss of views), HOA concerns, past or future lawsuits, title disputes, disclosure form issues, lead-based paint presence, insurance claim histories, oil tank decommissioning (SF), sewer pipe inspection (SF), water drainage performance, utility usage and the estimated costs to make the improvements you have in mind to name just a few.

This is your best chance to stop the purchase process and have your earnest money refunded so get proactive. Ask questions, hire additional vendors and get educated. Go the extra mile to make sure you know what you’re buying. If you don’t like what you find you’ve given yourself two great options:

  1. Get out now while the gettin’ is good or,
  2. Thoroughly know what it is you’re buying.

Both options can be VERY liberating!

Filed Under: Buyer 101, Featured, Neighborhoods/Condos Tagged With: ashi, inspections

Target department-store chain comes to downtown

August 1, 2010 By seattlesavvy Leave a Comment

The Newmark, a condo building on 2nd & Pike, will be getting a new Target department-store.  A spokeswoman for Target stated that it will be at least a year before it opens as they now start the permitting process and build out the 3-story, 103,000 square-foot commercial space.  Previously leased to Washington Mutual, Target paid $15.5 million for the empty location, and the purchase also included 250 parking stalls.  It wasn’t clear whether or not they will allow any of that parking for patrons, but the article in the Seattle Times did mention:

One Target store in Brooklyn, N.Y., has no dedicated parking. Earlier this month, the chain opened a store in New York’s East Harlem, its first in Manhattan. Target operates stores in downtown Minneapolis and the Chicago Loop, and it also is exploring sites for its first store in San Francisco.

After living downtown for several years now, it is a breath of fresh air to hear a new department store is coming to downtown!  It will certainly broaden downtown residents shopping options rather than having to either drive outside the city, or chip away at your pocket book by paying the premium price you do for shopping at the urban deli/mini-marts where anti-perspiration is $8, a smaller jug of laundry soap is close to $10 or a pack of four AAA batteries is over $6.  Those three items alone rang up at over $20 for me personally just yesterday!

More than anything, it’s just great to see something occupy a significant portion of retail/commercial space.

Filed Under: Commercial, Featured, Lifestyles/Activities, Newmark Tower, West Edge Tagged With: Target

1200 Stewart: APPROVED

July 30, 2010 By seattlesavvy 2 Comments

Congratulations Midby family and Lexas Companies, LLC (same developers of ESCALA)!

1200 Stewart rendering1200 Stewart is two 35-story towers above a 5-story podium, containing 340 residential units, 229,781 square feet hotel, 79,934 square foot indoor participant sports, 12,903 square feet child care center, 28,738 square feet private club, 26,738 retail, and 5,104 square feet of restaurant use. Parking for 940 vehicles will be provided below grade.

View Project Details

View Notice of Decision

I’m not personally not sure about Midby’s choice to try yet another “private club” so soon, especially after his experience with Club Cielo.  However, you can’t knock a guy for not letting that keep him down from doing what he wants to do.  I remember Midby talking about this project even a year ago, which now reminds me of the special feature on Kill Bill when Quentin Terintino discussed coming up with the movie during the time they were filming Pulp Fiction.  These are guys that just don’t stop dreaming big.

Being that it does however take a couple years for a project to even pop-up out of the dirt, what I wonder is if these guys are expecting there to be another Seattle condo boom anytime soon?  But at the same time, what would companies/people like these do?

lexas companies logo and puzzle peiceStop building?

That would be like us just stopping to care about real estate!  Maybe they’re thinking that it’s tough to believe that people are going to just stop buying homes, and that sooner or later current inventory will be bought up?

This is now the 2nd land use permit to have some sort of application process made in just the last couple of months.   At the same time, I think it would be crazy for anybody to start shouting, “THE SKY IS BEING PUT BACK TOGETHER!  THE SKY IS BEING PUT BACK TOGETHER!”

Both of these two mentioned would be in my personal Seattle 100 just because they do what they do.

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Filed Under: 1200 Stewart, Featured, Land Use Bulletin Tagged With: 1200 Stewart, Erik Midby, ESCALA, John Midby, Lexas Companies

Seattle’s highest priced condo listed in MLS closes today

July 29, 2010 By seattlesavvy Leave a Comment

Escala AwningOne of the things we have to do as we continue to revamp our blog is to make a call or shoot an email to those who send out press releases or can provide some good information regarding our downtown Seattle condo market.  We called Eric Mehr with John L. Scott today who is representing ESCALA because there has been a lot of positive news about sales continuing to go up.  As Seattle’s only emerald green glass high-rise the project has struggled as it was the last of all the new construction to open for occupancy during the crash.

Since, Bob Rennie with Rennie marketing has pulled some pretty amazing ideas that have helped cater to the market over the last several months.  Today, Mehr had a little bit of excitement in his voice, and I had to later send a congratulatory text message because today ESCALA breaks a record.  Originally listed around $6.7 million, today they are closing on a completely built out East, West, and North facing penthouse for around $6 million.  This is big news for everybody who has an invested interest in downtown real estate.

CORRECTION: Ben Kakimoto at SeattleCondosAndLofts.com reminded me on Facebook that this is the second most expensive to sell in Seattle history.  First was Four Season’s which sold for somewhere around $7 million, as well as a private sale for around $15 million.  Can I get a Mulligan Ben?

I’ve actually been in that unit when it was just a shell with drills and ladder’s laying around everywhere.  The 5,200 square foot unit is nothing short from spectacular when you kink your neck looking right, then spanning the room to look left towards the sound.  Amazing!  I can’t imagine what it looks like today!  Congrats team ESCALA!

Filed Under: ESCALA, Featured, Sales Tagged With: Bob Rennie, Erik Mehr

The Belltown neighborhood…

July 28, 2010 By seattlesavvy Leave a Comment

It’s been somewhere around 2 months now we’ve been working on this website, and it’s personally thrilling to open it up and see it come together.  We’ve done a round of professional photos for all of Pioneer Square and for most of Belltown, along with a pretty nice write up for each building.  Yesterday we added a great little description of Belltown and will be adding a photo gallery of some shots we’ve taken just hanging out in the neighborhood.

Belltown P-Patch

You’ll be impressed with all of the wide tree-lined streets throughout the large level zone between 1st & 5th and from Lenora & Denny. The western edge borders Elliott Avenue where cool breezes blow past the Olympic Sculpture Park. You’ll notice… [read more]

You’ll also see on the page a simple jQuery Google map that pinpoints each condo building, along with a link to each building where you can get more specific information including active and sold listing data.  However, we still have many moons to go before we can cross it off the list as “ready for more improvement.”  Currently, it’s still just simply under a lot of development.   Please take a peek, and if you have any ideas on how we can make it better, don’t hesitate to let us know!

Filed Under: Belltown, Featured

Seattle Four Seasons Featuring 7 Days of ART

July 25, 2010 By seattlesavvy Leave a Comment

ART Restaurant & Lounge…on a plate.

In addition to sneaking into that ridiculously uber cool infinity pool, the Four Seasons has lured me in for many other reasons such as chocolate, to die for happy hour sushi and to simply be vacuumed in through the air conditioned lobby entrance.

Starting today, the renowned Chef Kerry Sear is taunting us with another treat of luxury with 7 days of his culinary genius (*wipes nose) with dining specials that even a king would jump for joy about.

Check out this list of 7 days of ART, at ART Restaurant.  With exciting specials such as 50% off bottles of wine, TV trays of crab and a steak sampler, we wouldn’t want you to hesitate in contacting us if you’re looking for a date!

Sunday:
Family Dinners, $100 for four people
Join the Four Seasons family each Sunday with classic, home-style recipes with a modern twist. Dine family-style with whole roast chicken, bread stuffing, “Grandma’s recipe” chicken pan gravy, roast summer vegetables, crushed potatoes, bottomless sides and blue ribbon apple pie and ice cream.

Monday:
Wine all you Want Mondays
Put an end to Monday blues with Wine all you Want. Enjoy 50% off all bottles of wine ordered with dinner. With over 160 choices, ask Jerald Armstrong or Giorgio Saturnino to recommend a bottle.

Tuesday:
Big Chill Tuesdays, from $6 – $20
From the flavor of the week and classic chocolate fudge brownie sundaes to shave ice and “The Works,” an ultimate ice cream tasting for the whole table, be a big kid in an ice cream store with specialty ice cream and sorbet flavors from the pastry kitchen.

Wednesday:
Organic Wednesdays, $30
Our chefs bring Pike Place Market’s “Organic Wednesdays” to you. A market to table menu is created that day from the freshest organic produce.

Thursday:
Crab Duel TV Tray, $32
Dungeness or King? No need to decide as we pit the two in our popular TV Trays. Sample four crab dishes served at once. King crab leg cocktail; Dungeness crab legs, with artichoke and grapefruit; warm Dungeness crab meat with herb pasta blanket and chive crème fraiche; and grilled King crab with sweet peas and slow roasted garlic.

Friday:
Friday Night Flight Night, from $15 – $35
Sample a flight of three wines each Friday night. Compare Regions in the “Pinot Noir Challenge,” Makers in “Not Your Mother’s Chardonnay” or Brands in “The Bubble Lounge.”

Saturday:
Steak Saturday, $44
Expand your knowledge of beef with a TV tray sampling of four different cuts of steak and seasonal condiments. A four-course TV tray menu may include organic beef tenderloin; fire grilled dry aged New York steak; dry aged beef rib eye steak and American Kobe flank steak.

For reservations, call 206.749.7070

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Filed Under: Featured, Four Seasons, Lifestyles/Activities Tagged With: ART Restaurant, Chef Kerry Spear
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