Anchorage had an advertising contest for their “Live Work Play” theme this year. It was won by Brian Dollerhide who took home the Grand Prize & the People’s Choice Award. His video is called “Things People in Anchorage Never Say.” You have to be from Anchorage, or at least Alaska to appreciate many of them. Brian, you are a creative guy – Thank you for making us laugh!
Earlier this week Alaska Multiple Listing Service released some encouraging real estate news.
Mid-town Anchorage as seen from Government Hill
First was that the number of new listings, measured year-over-year is falling. Not a lot, but slightly declining. For instance: in 2009 there were 2,974 new listings, 2010 2,932 new listings and in 2011 2,819 new listings. That means home supply isn’t increasing, it’s flat or slightly decreasing. Generally that means prices stay stable and maybe a few builders will get back into home construction again.
I know I’m reaching here, but I’ll take whatever good news I can get. In 2011 local real estate agents sold 60 more homes than they did in the previous year. Each year from 2007 through 2010 has had fewer sales than the previous year. This is the first year sales have been better, albeit slightly.
This is how the market improves; we talk about the good improvements we’re seeing – a little here and a little there! Keep the faith, Anchorage!
The local business community is always anxious to hear reports from different market sectors to see how they faired in 2010, over the previous year and get sense of what is projected for the near future. I have listened to two speakers so 
far and read a couple business articles on the economy saying nearly the same message.
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!
When I am out of Alaska and meet new people, the most common question I get is “Does it really stay night all day long” or the reverse “Is true the sun doesn’t go down at night?” This probably sounds familiar to you, doesn’t it? Of course the second most common question is if I “know Sarah Palin” 
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!
Those of us in northern climates know well that a little preventative action can save us headaches when the weather
A cold fall day in Anchorage - get your home ready for cold weather!
turns cold. I live an Anchorage, Alaska, which is located on Cook Inlet. Our elevation is low and the water keeps our temperature relatively temperate, but it will still get well below freezing and stay that way for months.
Here is a checklist of things I do around my house “pre-snow“:
1. Have your furnace inspected. This should be done every year. If you forget and have a problem, odds are it will be on a very cold night when the heating guy takes forever to get to you and charges triple-time. I’ve found that you can save money by having your heating systems cleaned and serviced by a professional in good weather, beats the rush and saves you money in the winter when rates are higher.
2. Clean leaves out of your house gutters. If you have trees close by your house, you will have leaves. If you don’t get the leaves out, by next year the leaves will be decomposing into sod. Wait a couple seasons and you’ll have mess of it. On a rainy day you’ll see water running over the sides of your gutters, possibly at the dammed up downspouts. This is an easy job to do in the fall before the roof gets ice on it.
3. Disconnect your garden house. This is an easy item to overlook. Leaving a garden hose connected will make water trapped inside the hose freeze and travel upside the wall of the house. Modern hose bibs are built to be frost free, but it’s not worth it to test the quality of your wall and frost-free hose spigot. If it freezes, it will break and can run water inside the wall either right when it breaks or in the spring when it finally thaws creating a much larger mess and greater repair.
4. Use your ‘set-back’ thermostats. In the great State of Alaska, there has been a push for years to get an energy audit and make basic repairs. By basic, installing better quality windows, caulking drafts and cracks and installing weather seal to doors jams and thresholds to stop air leaks. Most homes today, at least in Alaska, have set-back thermometers that allow you to set the time for you home to cool down during the day when you are at work, and come back to temperature when you are on your way home from work. If you have them already, use them! They will save you money. If you don’t have them, get them, install them and use’em! During the day, wear a sweater and put your socks on – you’ll save money!
5. Use Your Ceiling Fan. I like to have the air moving when I am at home. In the summer our fan blows down to provide refreshing cool air. Warm air rises; if you have a vaulted ceiling your fan will push the warm air back down into the room.
6. Remove small appliance fuel. Gasoline will gel when it sets for the winter. Remove the fuel from your lawn mower and other summer tools. You can add a fuel stabilizer to the gas tanks of small engines, such as tractors or 4 wheelers, if you aren’t going to run them for the winter. If you use a snow blower, now would be a good time to fire it up to make sure it’s ready when you get a driveway full of snow.
7. Take the table and chairs off the deck. It’s a sure bet you won’t be having breakfast or dinner on the deck for a while. If you move the table and chairs off the deck, it’s much easier to shovel the deck this winter.
8. Clean your chimney. The fire department will tell you they have chimney fires every year from people with traditional wood fireplaces when they built a big fire on the first cold night of winter. Remember, wood fires release creosote into to the flue which condenses on the flue walls on the way up the chimney. Creosote is very combustible. Clean your fireplace in the fall to repair for winter use.
9. Double check your smoke detector and carbon monoxide units. Accidental carbon monoxide poisoning generally happens when furnaces have problems or when cars run in the garage without ventilation. Make sure the batteries are fresh and the units are functioning properly. Also check for operating fire extinguishers!
10. Unpack your snow shovels. Make sure your shovel is accessible for the first snow dump early on Monday morning when you open your garage door to head to work! Ugh!
Alaska has had a rich history of growth, due to a great extent by the oil and gas industry. The “easy” gas and oil has been harvested and Alaska’s natural gas and heavy oil fields have been a slow decline.
The oil and gas industry employs very bright minds and the sharpest engineers in the world to continually find new ways to find and extract pockets of fuel from around the world.
One method that had been in use for the past 10 years is called “horizontal drilling”. This is one of the best explanations I’ve seen on horizontal drilling. There is a lot of engineering and expense involved to get gas and oil out of the ground!
“http://www.northernoil.com/drilling.php”
When you think about the technology, equipment and man power involved to pull this off, you get some idea why the price of fuel at the pump has gone up.
I for one, am thankful for the folks that have brought this technology to Alaska. There are a lot Alaska families with better lives for each “oil patch’ job in Alaska!
Ask some Anchorage residents about Bear Valley, and you’ll hear varied thoughts and comments. Bear Valley is a 10 minute drive to the crest of the hill on Rabbit Creek Road, and then east on Clark’s Road. The drive from mid-town Anchorage is probably no
Bear Valley - Get out of home - every night!
more than 20 minutes. It is literally a valley between mountains with large country sized lots and 360 degree views. The valley overlooks Cook Inlet like no other hillside location in Anchorage. You can see the entire Anchorage city lights with Sleeping Lady Mountain and even Mt McKinley, or Mt Denali, on a clear day.
Many people know about Bear Valley Elementary. It’s one of the top rated elementary schools in the Municipality of Anchorage. Some people remember 20 years ago when Bear Valley was known for the “Birkenstock sandal” earth-people with long hair! Funny, a lot changes in 20 years! Some people remember when the road was narrow and it seemed to take an hour to get there. Some people have called it the “dark side of the moon” because their cell phone reception was spotty in years past.
To Bear Valley is a place where you could literally “get out of town- every night.” Once you turn off Rabbit Creek road and up Clark’s Road, it seems like the city hustle and bustle slows right down. There isn’t the traffic, of course, and most of the roads are gravel so traffic isn’t moving fast.
You can see the city of Anchorage from the front window
Homes in Bear Valley range at the low end around $275,000 to an occasional home approaching a million.
I am currently marketing a home that is under construction in Bear Valley. The home is a two story home, about 1,400 square feet and with a heated single car garage. The home is on a 24,900 square foot lot (over a 1/2 acre) with panoramic views. It is for sale for $285,000. There is no where else within an hour of Anchorage you could buy a new home on such a large lot and get this type of views.
My wife, Kristi, met a very talented videographer named Tom Roberts. Tom combined his love of outdoor Alaska with musician Jody Adams. Together they produced the very peaceful video below, called “A Sisters Song.”
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.
My family recently had the opportunity to visit the Perrins family at Rainy Pass Lodge. Rainy Pass Lodge is about an hour northwest of Anchorage by plane.
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
This past week Anchorage Economic Development Corporation (AEDC) gave an update on the health of the business market in Anchorage. If you haven’t heard of AEDC before, Anchorage is fortunate to have a group like this! AEDC is a private, non-profit organization that has been in operation since 1987. Their mission is to encourage growth
Plenty of Good News-but still some Challenges
and diversify the Anchorage economy. They are represented and supported by over 190 local business’s who encourage their mission. Because of the large cross-section of business’s that participate and have a voice in this group, AEDC is in a good position to feel the pulse of the local economy and gage the attitude and concerns of the business community.
Here is a brief summary of AEDC’s views, quoted from the luncheon and written comments, of the current economy and their short term forecast and comments going forward.
Population: Perhaps the most basic economic indicator of all is population. A city with a growing population, all other things being equal, is a city with a growing economy. Anchorage’ population in 2010, according to the U.S. Census, was 291,826, a 12 percent increase since the 2000 Census was taken. The Census numbers also show that roughly 40 percent of the state’s population lived in Anchorage in 2010 and nearly 55 percent lived in either Anchorage or the Mat-Su Borough. AEDC forecasts population growth of 1.7 percent in 2011, decelerating slightly over the next three years to 1.2 percent as the U.S. economy improves and migration gains slow.
Employment: A decline of 900 jobs in 2009 ended Anchorage’s 20-year streak of job gains, but growth resumed, albeit by a small margin, in 2010. Preliminary numbers for 2011 show continued growth, thanks mostly to health care, professional and business services and leisure and hospitality. Government jobs are down 260 this year compared to the past 5 months in 2010.
Personal Income: Personal income is a broad measure of economic health that included employment income as well as income from other sou such as investments(dividends, rental income, and interest income) and government transfer payments (which include Social Security, unemployment benefits and the Permanent Fund dividend). AEDC forecasts personal income growth of 3.9 percent in 2011 as general economy conditions improve outside Alaska’s borders and local conditions remain mostly favorable.
Passenger and Freight Volume: Nearly 5 million people passed through the Ted Stevens International Airport in 2010, a 2 % increase over 2009 numbers. The first four months of 2011 had passenger traffic up 6 percent. The volume of air cargo through the airport in 2010 bounced back to about 90% of pre-recession highs. AEDC forecasts growth of .5 percent in air cargo volume in 2012 followed by growth of 2 percent in both 2013 and 2014 in general correlation with global economic conditions.
Building Permit Values: AEDC forecasts that the combined building permit numbers, both residential and commercial construction, will increase for the first time in five years in 2011 and continue to rise at about 5% per year over the 2010 – 2014 period as the investment climate slowly improves.
Port of Anchorage Freight Volume: About 90% of all consumer imports to Alaska arrive through the Port of Anchorage. The total volume of freight that moved through the Port in 2010 was up 4% from 2009, though still well off 2005′s tonnage. AEDC forecasts a freight volume increases of 1.9% in 2012, growing incrementally to 2.5% annually by 2014.
Oil Prices: In recent years oil forecasting has been rife with uncertainty and surprises on both the upside and downside. The AK North Slope oil price through the first half of calendar year 2011 has ranged from $89 in January to $125 a barrel in April. AEDC predicts that long-term forces or growing world demand and limited oil supply suggest that prices will remain high by historical standards Overall, that is a clear net benefit to the Alaska and Anchorage economies, though not without it’s downside in the form of higher transportation costs to both individuals and business’s and higher heating and electricity generation costs.
Not out of the woods yet, facing challenges ahead: Despite the forecasted gains, there are two economic clouds on Alaska’s horizon. The first is the near certain belt-tightening by the federal government, which as always played a large role in the health of the Alaskan economy when compared to most other U.S. states and cities. The other challenge facing Anchorage and state is the ongoing decline in oil production. The issue is not new or unexpected – Prudhoe Bay is the larges oil field in North America and the 18th larges ever discovered in the world, so production declines after a certain point were inevitable. Since reaching a peak of more than 2 million barrels a day in 1989, production has steadily fallen and averaged 607,000 barrels a day thorough the first half of calender year 2011.
Ultimately, it is very clear that the health of the Anchorage and Alaska economies is closely tied to the state’s abundant natural resources. Of those resources, oil has easily been the most important economically for at least the last 30 years, and will likely remain so for the foreseeable future.
Copyright 2011 Dan Wolf, Realtor
All rights reserved.
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