Deep Snow Is Making Curb Signage Difficult!

The 2011 – 2012 winter in Anchorage has had at least two high wind storms which have stripped the signs from the yard-arm posts all over town.  I can’t help but wonder where the signs actually end up, because it seems you can never find them.  There must be a big stack of wind-blown and thrashed real estate signs in China or in the bottom of sea because you never find the sign once they blow off the yard-arm post.

The other unusual obsticle has been the snow.  Many years, we get snow and a few weeks later the tempature goes up and the snow melts, only to come again in a few weeks.  This year, the snow came right on schedule in late October and kept coming, kept coming and kept coming.  The last I heard we have had over 100 inches! 

Now a real estate sign is only 48 inch tall.  Can you see the delema of trying to get a sign on the curb when the snow is higher than the yard arm? 

You need a sign, if you are going to put a advertising brochure or flyer up.  Consumers don’t like to walk up the driveway to the house, for obvious reasons.  Right now, if you put the sign at the edge of the lot, the odds are real good a snow plow will take your sign away.  If you put the sign on the lot, the snow is so deep customers can’t get through the snow to get a flyer! 

I’ve seen some signs where only the very top of the 4×4 post is visable through the deep snow! 

The good news is the days are getting longer in Anchorage over 5 minutes a day.  It’s late January as I write this so spring is only three months away in Anchorage.

Isn't this a warm inviting exterior? This is a great example of a Craftsman Home Style

Craftsman style.  It is sometimes called a  ”lodge” or “bungalow” style home.  This particular home was built in 2008 and is approximately 3,100 square feet in the home and the garage is another 800 square feet.

The home has an open floor plan, like a great room plan.  There is a lot of custom hand finished trim, built in cabinets and shelves and really attractive personal touches.’

The flooring is a commercial grade of bamboo.  Much of the lighting in the home is either recessed or unusual custom lighting.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words so a video must be worth ten thousand words, right?  Check this home out here.

Most recently, I attended a luncheon for the Alaska Association of Realtors where Neal Fried, a popular Alaska Department of Labor economist, shared the results of his studies, looking back at previous years and projected his thoughts into the near future.

The short version was that, while employment in Anchorage dipped slightly in 2009, it grew in 2010 to recover from the previous employment loss.  Neal felt that all signs point to another year of growth for the Anchorage area, albeit modest growth; In relation to many other cities and States these days, any growth is good and well received.

The individual sectors that make up an economy have different strengths and weakness’s, for instance, construction employment is expected to decline for the 6th year in a row.  Health care employment will continue to rise.  Our oil industry is still doing well and and the visitor industry (tourism) is projecting a stronger year this year.  The retail employment numbers are expected to remain about stable and not change much.

Meanwhile, the municipal tax assessor, Marty McGee, has stated that assessed, or tax values, are up slightly.  The Municipality of Anchorage hires appraisers to assess real estate.  They make every effort to have the tax appraisal at 100% of value.  McGee also echo’d confidence of the stability of the Anchorage market and employment.

I’ll continue to keep you posted, but for right now, Alaska is looking like a great place to live and work in 2012!

I took this photo at 3pm in the afternoon. See the glow from the setting sun in the windows?

The shortest day of the year is December 21 which is called Winter Solstice.  On that day in Anchorage our sunrise will be about 10am and sunset will be around 3:30pm for a really short day.   In some rural areas of the State, people might tend to begin their day when it’s daylight and begin to feel really tired when the sun goes down.  For most people, we have normal schedules to follow regardless of the amount of day light, although the long dark days certainly can affect your energy level.  The further north you go, the longer the darkness is.

The days begin to lengthen after December 21;  in the beginning, maybe just a few minutes a day, but each day is a little longer than the preceding day – and before you know it, it’s still light when you pull the blinds down to go to bed at night!  In the summer close to the summer solstice, or June 20th, it doesn’t get dark at all; the sun didn’t go down in Anchorage on that day!

The short days aren’t that good for the real estate business.  I have a small window of time when I can take photos a property to have photo’s to use on the Internet.  I have learned a few tricks such as raising my ISO and increasing my exposure time, using a tripod for the long exposure time, but still, it’s a short day to get that done.  Homebuyers don’t like to see properties as late in the evening either. 

Of course, just the opposite is true in the summer.  An anxious buyer and his realtor could work late in the night in their quest for a home!

I just love the music and video and think you will too. 

This production is copywrited and I am sharing it with you with their permission.

As you know, Anchorage is a typical town, pretty much like any other town.  One unique thing about Anchorage is you

How Alaskan's get out of town for the weekend

can hop in a plane and be in a rural Alaska adventure in an hour!  That’s exactly what our family did over the 4th of July this year.

RainyPass Lodge is located on the original Iditarod trail and is still a check point for the race.  The Iron Dog (snowmachine race) passes through also.  The Perrins family, Steve and Denise and their five sons, Steve II, Shane, Clayton, Chase, and Colton were excellent hosts to us! The lodging was great, rustic log cabins with all modern amenities like showers, hot water and flush toilets.  We ate like royalty and even had a lobster feed one evening!  You may have seen the TV show R5sons.  It was interesting to watch the TV episodes before, but it’s personal now that we’ve seen each of the family members working and playing in “real life.”

During our long weekend at the lodge we did a bunch of great fun outdoor “Alaska” things.  There were probably 30 people in our group.  Steve II divided us up into teams that competed in various events such as a canoe race, horse shoes, log roll in the lake, ax throwing contest, rifle and pistol shooting, archery, volley ball and trap and skeet shooting

After a good fight in hip boots, you'll be proud to pose for photos!

with shotguns.  This would be the ultimate team building experience because the group all played well with each other and in the end, the score wasn’t all that important because everyone had a lot of fun.

As a real bonus, for me anyway, was the opportunity to get a tour of the area in a helicopter that stopped in over the weekend.  It was amazing to fly right up to glaciers and hover over mountain tops.

We rode horses in the mountains and felt like real live cowboys.  We went fishing to the mouth of a creek where salmon were pooling at the base of the creek waiting to move into the creek to spawn.  There were continual visits from both brown bears and black bears.  Some bears would rush into the creek, grab

What's on the menu? Salmon or the guy in the boat?

a fish and scoot into the woods to eat in, and some would just play in the water obviously watching the fish scurry away from them.

I could keep going on, but the bottom line is this: If you really want to see Alaska and have an adventure of a lifetime, I’d recommend contacting Steve Perrins at Rainy Pass Lodge and get booked! 

Tell’em Dan Wolf sent you

Make your home inviting! Curb Appeal is important!

There are several reasons that the “older realtor’s” get more listing business; It’s a well known fact that some buyers will purchase from any one convenient at the time, but when they get ready to sell they want a seasoned and experienced person on their side of the table.  They have their money at stake and don’t want someone practising on their dime!

This summer, my team and I have been listing steadily and selling too, but it seems like our sellers are out pacing our buyers.  Because I am might not “see the forest for the trees,” I like to talk to other agents for their perspectives and look at the statistics available to me via the Alaska Multiple Listing Service.

Do you think you are seeing more For Sale signs on the street when you are driving around?  You are; actually, sellers typically start listing homes heavily in May as it spring arrives.  Listing activity continues strongly through August when school starts.  This year, property listings are up about 10% over the same time last year.  Sales have been steady, but when you compare year to date 2011 over the same YTD in 2010, you see sales off about 10% or about 100 transactions in the Anchorage area.

So, given the information I can see so far, my best guess is that the market continue to be fairly constant or flat – not heating up or inflating, but not necessarily going down either.  Sellers in each price bracket, you have to carefully analyze the market in terms of the number of homes they are competing with and measure how many are selling in a measured about of time.  The goal would be for a seller to have more to offer than the homes he was competing with.  Get your pencil sharp, meaning price your home well against what other sellers are asking and get your home in the best condition for homes in your price bracket.

This home feels inviting, Doesn't It?

Buyers are looking for a deal, but when they look at a bunch of tired fixer-uppers, most people don’t like what they see.  The homes that are in good condition still sell quicker than homes needing a contractors attention.

The long story, made short is that Anchorage is very lucky compared to many “lower-48″ States.  Our market didn’t inflate much and hasn’t really come down much. 

It’s a great time to buy a house because you can buy a home today about the same price as that house was in 2006.  If the seller improved it, the buyer will get the direct benefit.

As a kid growing up, I lived in the Palmer area on 20 acres out by Lazy Mountain,  which is still a rural area; back then it was “in the sticks!”

An old fashioned heating source!

Long before natural gas was available to the Palmer area, we heated our shop and garages with a wood stove.  Weekends dad and I would cut trees into lengths and bring the logs back to the shop.  During the week, after feeding the I would cut the log lengths into fireplace sized logs and then split them with an ax or maul and wedge.

Believe me, the farm work of my youth set my work habits for rest of my life, even though I felt disadvantaged as a youth!

When I saw the log and ax at a house I was looking at, memories came flooding back to me!

You could be on "thin ice" sell FSBO in today's real estate market

You need an expert guide if you are traveling a dangerous path, like a safari or adventure in the great outdoors somewhere.

The field of real estate is loaded with land mines. You need a expert to guide you through the dangerous pitfalls that currently exist. Finding a buyer willing to pay fair market value for your home at a time that there are larger inventories of motivated sellers and short sales will take a true real estate professional. Once you do find a buyer, keeping them on task while their friends and family might be casting doubt on whether this is the right time to buy can increase buyer anxiety – which can come back to you in several ways.  Figuring out what the fair market value of your home is a challeng all by itself!  Long gone are the days of using your tax assessments to get the fair market value of your home.  Zillow isn’t much help in our market, either. 

You need a skilled negotiator to keep you from making a serious mistake, and there are many trouble spots in todays real estate market; Pricing your house with out the objectivity a real estate professional provides, knowing a good offer when you get one, and how to best put that offer together so both the buyer and seller can live with it.

In today’s market, hiring a talented negotiator could save you thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of dollars. Each step of the way – from the original offer, to the possible re-negotiation of that off after a home inspection, to the possible cancellation of the deal based on a troubled appraisal – you need someone who can keep the deal together until it closes.

Realize that when an agent is negotiating their commission with you, they are negotiating their own salary; the salary that keeps a roof over their family’s head; the salary that puts food on their family’s table. If they are quick to take less when negotiating for themselves and their families, what makes you think they will not act the same way when negotiating for you and your family? If they were Clark Kent when negotiating with you, they will not turn into Superman when negotiating with the buyer or seller in your deal.

I am here to help you navigate today’s real estate market. Please contact me or visit my website for detailed  information about today’s real estate market.