Why an English major is so valuable

Because we learn the important questions to ask. In the wake of ANOTHER Kitsap County snowstorm, I pose this one to you:

When Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? (Shelley, if you've forgotten.)

Click below for the answer.

Yes.

Regardless of what the weather brings this winter, heating your home efficiently should be a priority.  Keeping your home a comfortable temperature when the weather turns bad doesn’t have to be a financial drain. With a little bit of work, you can actually save a great deal on your heating bills:

Stop Air Leaks

The first step to making your home more heat efficient is to identify air leaks. Common air leak sources such as recessed lights, doorframes, window frames, and electrical outlets can be a big drain of heat and money. You can check for air leaks yourself by walking through your home with a lit incense stick (horizontal smoke indicates a leak), or you can hire a technician for a more thorough inspection. Simple fixes like sealing around outlets and switches, caulking gaps in the framing, and plugging gaps surrounding pipes will typically result in noticeable savings.

Duct Problems

One of the most important systems in your home may be quietly wasting your energy dollars. Often overlooked, typical duct systems lose 25-40% of the heating or cooling energy put out by the central furnace, heat pump, or air conditioner. Common duct system problems include:

• Leaky joints or visible holes in the duct surface 
  
• Disconnected ducts that have fallen away from each other 
  
• Inadequate or poorly finished duct work
  
• Un-insulated or poorly insulated ducts in attics and crawlspaces

Most duct repairs should be made by a trained professional, especially those that will take place in unconditioned spaces. A qualified pro can also help you more accurately assess the duct problems that you have. If you decide to make minor duct repairs on your own, keep in mind that duct tape is usually only intended as a temporary fix (but a good one--I once used duct tape to repair an aluminum canoe on a trip down the Brule River in Minnesota!) . Silicone caulking or cement with mastic are better sealing options. Improving your duct system efficiency can cut your annual utility bills by as much as $300, and will improve the overall air quality in your home.

Keep your Home Insulated

Properly insulating your home is one of the most cost-effective ways to cut down on energy loss. Improving the insulation in your home can cut your heating and cooling costs by as much as 30%, and will create a more uniform, comfortable temperature in your home. Better insulation will also help decrease outdoor noise. Check the insulation in your attic, ceilings, exterior and basement walls, floors, and crawl spaces to see if they meet recommended standards for your area. The U.S. Dept. of Energy provides information on recommended insulation levels for each region. Typically the easiest and most cost-effective way to improve your home’s insulation is to add insulation to your attic.

Thermostat Solutions

That little box on the wall can be a tool for big energy savings. You can save up to 3 percent for every one degree that you lower the temperature in your home over a 24-hour period in winter. You can also save up to 10% annually in your heating and cooling bills by adjusting your thermostat down 10% to 15% for an 8-hour period each day. Turning the heat down while you sleep or while you’re away at work is a simple and logical energy efficiency solution. If the prospect of waking up to a chilly house doesn’t excite you, buy a programmable thermostat. They are inexpensive and adjust the temperature in your home based on schedules that you determine.

Ceiling Fans

While most people think of ceiling fans as a cooling solution, they can also help maintain a warm temperature in your home during winter. Running a ceiling fan in reverse circulates rising warm air back down to living areas. Consider ceiling fans for your home, particularly if you have rooms with high ceilings that seem to stay colder. Ceiling fans vary in price depending on things like material and size, but many are inexpensive and easy to operate.

Up a driveway without a shovel

Compared to the Midwest and Atlantic seaboard, snowstorms in our area are relatively infrequent. No need to have a snow shovel. Usually.

This week we were slammed. I've been unable to get to the ferry since Thursday, especially disappointing for me because I missed all five performances of Seattle Symphony's presentation of Handel's Messiah.

We expect unusual weather through Christmas. Check Kitsap County's site for road conditions before you travel.

photo credit: Kitsap Sun

Real Estate Myth 9

This is a continuation of a series of posts inspired by a conversation with an acquaintance who revealed a good deal of ignorance about the real estate profession. Because I think an educated market benefits everyone, I intend to debunk as many myths as possible. I hope you find this information useful. Please feel free to comment!

Myth #9: It's a terrible time to sell.

FACT - Wrong. In this market, homes priced correctly in Kitsap County are selling, and selling quickly.  For a seller wishing to trade up, selling low is more than offset by buying the new move-up home at a lower price. The market will recover, and when it does, appreciation on the new home will yield a good return. 

Consider: Homebuyers want bargains. If you price your home much lower than your competition, it's possible to start a bidding war. 

Why we love living in Kitsap County

Brian Miller of The Seattle Weekly has written an entertaining article about what he calls Seattle's Ugliest Houses. It's long, but I think you'll enjoy it. I'm proud to say we find very, very few of these in our area, and we intend to keep it that way. Another reason we're glad to live and play here!

Much has been written about the proliferation of tacky town houses and shoddy, high-priced condos in Seattle, as if they had cornered the market on bad taste. But if you actually examine our far greater supply of single-family homes, as SW has done in a far-ranging field study, that privileged ideal falls victim to a less flattering taxonomy. Just as an entomologist pins beetles in a display case, so can we also delineate and describe the varied and uniquely hideous species of ugly Seattle houses, as follows below with selected illustrations.

The FAR-monster

Floor-area ratio (FAR) relies on arcane formulas best understood by architects, rocket scientists, Mensa members, Charles Mudede, and planners at Seattle's Department of Planning and Development (or DPD, an acronym that will recur maddeningly below). The easiest way to understand FAR is that, whatever the size lot next to you, your neighbor has got way, way too much FAR—and you should probably place an anonymous call to the DPD to get his ass investigated.

The classic monster house or "megahouse" is bloated with FAR. What was once a cute, 1,000-square-foot Wallingford bungalow is scraped to the foundation, has its basement excavated for wine cellar and home theater, then vomits itself perpendicularly toward the sky with nary an eave, taper, gable, dormer, or softening of right angles. The FAR-monster is a math-fed beast. Each square inch is justified by lot size and the DPD's maximum permitted height. To build anything less would be to leave money on the table!

It's all about numbers, the owner reasons: Since I paid and am being taxed so much on this land, I might as well max out my investment, balloon my mortgage, and supersize my potential return when I eventually sell. If the neighbors complain, if small children are frightened, if the designer chickens owned by the lesbians next door stop laying eggs, to heed those concerns would allow them to steal my money! They would be drinking my milk shake! Drinking it up!

There is no architectural hallmark of the FAR-monster, no signature style. Its aesthetic is size—an SUV without wheels, a venti coffee without froth, a galvanized bucket brought to the all-you-can-eat buffet. Some allude to Federal or Tudor with appliqué bricks or turrets; some try to pass off painted C-board as international modernist; a few even belt themselves with tiny porches (sized to park a few strollers) in a gesture toward the Craftsman houses whimpering next door. But no one is fooled. The FAR-monster cannot change its stripes—or rather, the spreadsheet columns and rows that constitute its genetic code.

The Misfit

Listening to the Tom Waits song "What's He Building?" will help you understand the Misfit. The owner—and it's always a he—never comes out in daylight hours. He might've built the house himself, or inherited it from a crazy old bachelor uncle who never married and shot at the neighborhood dogs with a BB gun. No one knows his name. There is no mailbox, only a shattered, rotting timber where it used to stand—as if something explosive came by first-class delivery.

The Misfit itself is the opposite of contextual or background architecture. It's the glaringly broken tooth in a row of stucco Alki bungalows or manicured Maple Leaf Tudors or tidy View Ridge ranchers. It's the house where your real estate agent steps on the gas, redirecting your attention to the cute little number on the other side of the street. It's the address where the UPS man, newspaper boy, and doorbelling Mormons won't enter the yard. It's the property where even neighborhood dogs won't go to crap or pee, as if some instinctual, self-preserving part of their canine brain keeps them away.

If the neighbors are shingled, the Misfit is tin. If others on the block favor an indigenous color scheme of sand, salal, and fir, the Misfit will be industrial orange, with glossy black trim. If your community association favors tasteful, ecumenical holiday decorations in December, the Misfit inexplicably lights up during solstices and foreign holidays. If cedar siding surrounds the Misfit, that house is clad in crumbling asbestos shingles whose particles whirl and eddy in the wind. And no matter what the prevailing taste of the neighbors, the Misfit's design always incorporates concrete blocks, blue tarps, garages converted to living quarters (or home laboratories; no one is certain which), corrugated plastic paneling, uncovered tar paper, uncovered, untreated plywood, and old Ron Paul yard signs.

You may have solar panels on your roof to help power your plug-in hybrid. The Misfit has a working oil derrick in the backyard. You may drive the kids to school in an old Mercedes wagon converted to biodiesel. In the Misfit's driveway, there's an Eastern European jalopy of uncertain vintage and branding that runs on coal, grain alcohol, or potato scraps—depending on the old rationing scheme of the Soviet Bloc. Your windows are triple-glazed and energy-efficient. The Misfit uses an elaborate system of Saran Wrap and cardboard. You compost your food waste out back and use the worm-enriched product for fertilizer. The Misfit has a perpetually smoldering 55-gallon oil drum.

There is a canoe on the roof, just in case. The front fence is made of stacked, hardened old bags of concrete. The sibilant table saw in the garage can be heard always running, running, running. What, at first glance, appear to be tacky ornamental lawn animals are, when inspected with binoculars, actual taxidermic specimens. There are eight satellite dishes on the roof, all of them working. Sometimes the cellar door—yes, there is a cellar; the Misfit is tornado-ready even if you aren't—inexplicably flies open with a whooshing sound and burst of acetylene light, then slams shut again as if by its own hand.

The Pig Face

Also known by architects as the Snout House, this dwelling thrusts its two-car garage toward the street like a greedy sow rooting for rotten vegetables. There is no yard, just a couple of anorexic saplings flanking its maw. No one who lives there has ever been seen to enter or exit on foot. (You're not sure if the owners even have feet.) The garage bay doors gape open and shut to swallow assorted minivans, SUVs, motor homes, ATVs, motorcycles, dune buggies, Segways, Jet Skis, and snowmobiles.

The rest of the Pig Face is curiously quiet, an appendage to its nerve center. The garage is how it thinks, breathes, and functions; it is an orifice directed at the world, its primary sensory organ, the snake's tongue and cat's whiskers.

When it snows in winter, the path to the front door is untracked, but the driveway is always swept clear (or heated from below).

Like their porcine cousins, Snout Houses tend to cluster in herds, on blocks of new, spec-built tract homes without alleys for garage parking in back. In fact, no one knows what the backs of these houses look like. They're all front, all face, always nudging closer to the street, as if they, too, crave movement and mobility. If they could drive themselves to Costco, then motor up and down the aisles, they would.

The Trophy Home (aka The Angelina Jolie)

Found in your more premium Seattle neighborhoods (Washington Park, North Capitol Hill, Windermere, the Highlands, etc.), the Angie manages to outshine even her most expensive rivals on the block. It doesn't matter if they were designed or remodeled by name architects; they become the dowdy girls at the dance who, by contrast, make the Angie's special glow that much more alluring.

How does she do it? Why is the lawn so much greener, the driveway always dewy wet and sparkling in the sunshine, the yard so well tended (seemingly without déclassé leaf blowers or unsightly, undocumented labor), the cherry trees in season a little sooner? Her roof is never mossy, her gutters never full.

It's not just the money. Her neighbors all have the funds for titanium roofs, Italian hand-quarried marble countertops, and clear-grain cedar siding. It's just that the Angie presents her opulence so much better. It's like gold dust is mixed in with the paint pigments, the furniture is stuffed with the hair of blond, 8-year-old Austrian farm children (all of them humanely shorn!), and the air inside enriched with extra oxygen (is it being piped in?). The floors don't squeak when you walk on them. There's always a gentle breeze caressing your neck. You can hear the babbling of the courtyard water feature in every room.

The Angie herself may not be ugly. But something about her unnatural collagen-lipped, silicone-breasted architecture arouses ugly feelings of resentment and suspicion. Her perfection can't be real, can't be the result of a normal birth between architect, client, and interior decorator (who functions, in this cause, like a doula).

Also, the Angie is trying too hard. There are showier houses, larger and more vulgar houses, houses that are merely garish and nouveau riche. But the Angie bludgeons us with good taste—and, in the process, devalues the very idea of it, threatens our appreciation of it.

Then, after you've been invited to tour the Trophy Home, or perhaps been over for an Obama fund-raiser cocktail party, when one perfect Rogue's Spruce gin martini led to perhaps three or four, and you allowed yourself to sink deeper into that seductive couch full of Austrian farm-children hair, it feels like you've cheated on your own house, been seduced by the Angie.

And, in a horrible way, you liked it.

The Appalachian

Not to be confused with the Misfit, which at least has an organizing aesthetic principle at work, here the basic design tenets are secretiveness, contempt for community standards, an inbred resistance to book learning, parole violations, home detention, and crystal meth.

The Appalachian is hostile to nature—hence the paved-over yard—yet indifferent to the creeping urban kudzu of broken-down cars, discarded beer coolers, old refrigerators, metal bed frames (with burnt shards of mattresses still attached), and forlorn children's bicycles (though no kids reside in the house) that surrounds the place.

The architectural method here is a process of reduction to essentials. Its ethos is decay. Its hallmark is a refusal to pay bills, answer the doorbell (two protruding wires, actually), do routine maintenance, or let the dogs out to pee.

House fires are a signature element of the Appalachian, all of them calmly extinguished by garden hose, the rusted sprinkler still attached. But the authorities are never, ever called. Whether caused by cigarette smoking in bed, on the couch, in the shower, or while working on an outboard boat engine in an old, water-filled oil drum, these small, regular blazes give a charcoal patina to the Appalachian. Tyvek and two-by-fours are nailed over the damage, and woe to the inquisitive opossum that squeezes through the plastic to investigate; these marauders are never seen again. (In truth, another advantage to having the Appalachian as a neighbor is that there's always someplace convenient to have your chain saw sharpened.)

Other telltales include: automotive paint and Bondo used to patch the facade after a police chase leads to a high-speed "parking" maneuver by the house; the pile of old propane canisters out back; wiring connected to the nearest street lamp; and motorcycles parked indoors. And, of course, all the windows are covered with tinfoil.

The Bauhaus Bunker

When Al Qaeda drops the big one, we know which house on the block will be left standing. Sometimes referred to as the International Brutalist style or the Bastard Son of Mies (or sometimes simply "the Dieter"), the Bauhaus Bunker is always built and designed by an architect who has no other private residential commissions in town. Instead, his firm—with a mostly international clientele—is noted for designing parking garages, hockey arenas, airport terminals, and NORAD facilities.

Proud, unadorned concrete is the hallmark of the Bauhaus Bunker. There is a purity to the hard yet malleable substance that those who don't speak German as a first or second language will never be able to appreciate; they cannot see the beauty of the Kunst-Idee wrested from man-made Baumaterialien. The austerity is only softened by the occasional protruding I-beam, steel window shutters, and opaque glass curtain walls. There are no trees or flowers to compromise the intellectual rigor of the design. A small plot of lawn seems to tend itself, as if frightened to grow any taller.

The place contains no wood or natural materials, as if it were allergic to them. There are no drapes on the windows. (Privacy is not a concern for the owners, with their close-cropped gray hair and steel-rimmed spectacles, who are androgynous nudists in their 50s fond of wearing only wool socks with nonslip soles.) There is no garbage or recycling left by the curb. The Bauhaus Bunker never needs painting, of course, and its tidiness becomes severity, almost a form of aggression.

The street address for the Bauhaus Bunker always includes the numeral 7, and that numeral is always rendered as the European 7. Its dimensions and ratios are perfect. (Perfect!) All angles are right. All floors are perfectly level; when you drop a drafting pencil on the floor—meine Liebchen!—it stays perfectly in place without rolling. Doors close soundlessly on titanium hinges. Its square footage is actually rendered in square meters, and that figure ends in a zero. There are no stray decimal points, no uncoiled garden hoses, no blue New York Times bags strewn by the front door.

Everything has been precisely calibrated and calculated in the Bauhaus Bunker. It wears its math on the outside. The rest of you wouldn't understand.

The Green Zone Special

Warning! Warning! You are walking too close to this property! The police have been called! Once considered indigenous only to Baghdad and Kabul, or the province of Colombian drug lords and Eastside software barons, the maximum security compound is steadily taking hold in Seattle. We are, after all, a global city, and that means global threats. Why should your family be any less safe than a U.N. delegation or the Lagos bureau of CNN? Who knows what threats lurk in the undergrowth of Laurelhurst or Madison Park? Is there any reason to believe Al Qaeda doesn't have access to Google, that they might not be tracking your kids after soccer practice, that the violent predators of America's Most Wanted don't also thrive in the Pacific Northwest?

Why take that chance?

The Green Zone Special doesn't. And the beauty is that unsightly blast walls and razor wire are no longer required to keep infiltrators and undesirables off your property. Swing gates with intercom boxes are the hallmark of the high-walled GZS, but the security doesn't stop there. Armored glass windows never open, even in summer. The whole compound is ringed by motion-sensor lights. Unmarked security patrol vehicles pass by regularly, driven by uniformed men with coiled earphones. Marauding midnight raccoons have been known to elicit helicopter searchlights. Delivery men are instructed to leave their packages out front, then back away very, very slowly, with hands visible.

Sometimes, when walking the dog past, you notice the red light of a laser spotting scope on your chest (or that of your pet). If a newspaper or errant ball is lobbed over the wall, it's incinerated midflight. Inside, the savage barking of guard dogs can be heard. There is no street address on the house, no family name indicated. Online, the property tax records have been redacted. Should you wish to speak with the owners about a PTA meeting or a tree that's dropping leaves into your yard, you must submit your questions in writing to an attorney.

Architecturally, beyond a reliance on concrete, steel, and clear firing lines, the Green Zone Special is distinguished by metal roll-down window shutters and safe rooms with separate and redundant lines for electricity, water, and oxygen. It's got driveway space for an entire motorcade of armored Hummers.

The FU-ADU

First regulators allowed the ADU (Accessory Dwelling Unit), or "mother-in-law apartment," designed to help relieve housing pressures in areas of the city zoned single-family. Then came the DADU (Detached Accessory Dwelling Unit), which resulted in backyard cottages in designated areas of Seattle. More recently, a tight rental market and ballooning mortgage payments have quietly given rise to the FU-ADU, which gives the middle finger to neighbors and DPD planners alike. One day, where a carport, fruit tree, or children's sandbox previously stood,
a cheap, squat, C-board-encased cashbox appears. Its purpose is not to please or ingratiate. It is there to produce revenue, no matter what the leafy concerned citizens of Wallingford, Bryant, or Fauntleroy might think. White vinyl gutters run like engorged veins off the tar-poured roof. The fixtures come from Home Depot, the construction labor from the parking lot of Home Depot, the permits from...well, there aren't any permits.

Do you miss the sound of children playing on the swing set, the smell of hamburgers cooking at neighborhood barbecues, the gentle thwacking of the shuttlecock during summer badminton tournaments?

Well, then, you obviously don't know a goddamn thing about real estate values, or you'd already have a FU-ADU of your own. And, mark my words, you will.

The Encroacher

Lot line? What lot line? The Encroacher is the equivalent of the close talker in Seinfeld. One summer evening you walk around the side of your house to coil the garden hose, when you think, "WTF, did the fence just get closer—or is it the neighbors' entire house?!?" After all those remodels, their house sure looks different. But could it have actually moved on its foundations?

Suddenly your own home is shadowed by the Encroacher during all seasons of the year. Its windows now peer directly into your bedroom, bath, and kitchen. Squirrels no longer have to traverse the power lines between houses but leisurely bound across the short gap between roofs. Your Wi-Fi network always asks you first if you'd like to join the Encroacher, and you wonder if its inhabitants are monitoring your e-mail. Your TiVo records its shows. The UPS man forces you to sign for its packages. Your Wall Street Journal always gets tossed onto its porch. There's no place to park anymore on the street.

More than once, you've been roused from bed by the reassuring grinding of the coffee mill and aroma of fresh French Roast, the sound of children chattering and the dog's feet pattering on the hardwood floors, when you realize, "This is not the morning routine of our happy home. This is the deception of the Encroacher!"

Yet city surveys, old property maps, and Google Earth provide no confirmation. The Encroacher just seems larger, more overbearing, and uncomfortably intimate. Loomier, if one may use that word. It's a psychic as well as a physical projection. The FAR-monster is bulky and steroidal, obvious in its gross demands for space. The Encroacher insinuates, creeping across the property line of your brain, into your very dreams. It ruins your marriage, alienates you from your kids. It's the architectural Iago, a conniver, a malign whisperer whose voice keeps getting closer, closer, closer....

This is why, in nine cases out of 10, unhappy owners next door to an Encroacher ultimately opt to move. It's also why they invariably sell to greedy town house developers, with this final request: "Just make them as ugly and as close to the neighbors as possible."

The Never-Ending Remodel

No one can remember when it began. No one knows when, if, it will end. What was once Tudor, maybe, has since transitioned through Mediterranean Revival, International style, shingled bungalow, pseudo Gothic, and to its present state—which no one can identify beneath the scaffolding and tarps. (Unless it's late-period Frank Gehry.)

Contractors will no longer bid on the job. Architects don't return phone calls from the owners. DPD inspectors have taken early retirement rather than add to the stack of appeals and violations. The front-yard sign where permits are stapled has itself been on the block longer than some houses. Only the carting company that regularly drops off and retrieves its truck-bed Dumpsters bothers to send Christmas cards.

The yard, meaning piles of dirt, is held in place against the rain by an elaborate lattice of garden plastic, old tires, and rope. Local children use it as a BMX course during the afternoons.

The owners of the NER, bank account run dry, triply mortgaged, IRAs cashed out early, both with second jobs at Target and Starbucks, have now taken to doing most of their own renovations. Late at night, flashlights and nail guns are busily employed behind the wind-whipped plastic. (The rest of the house is dark, as if the power has been shut off.) In the morning ghostly footprints of Sheetrock dust lead to where the cars are parked. The owners have become zombies, prisoners of their NER, lost in the maze of blueprints and permits.

They can't remember what they wanted, can't predict where the project is going. But perhaps the next shelter mag in the mailbox will give them a new idea to follow....

Kitsap Resources: Green Cat B&B

If you're planning a visit to Kitsap County this spring or summer, you'll find it hard to beat the accommodations and hospitality of Ken Grantham and Kimberly King at the Green Cat Bed and Breakfast just north of Poulsbo.

Having relocated themselves, these professional actors know how to make you comfortable and can make the kind of recommendations that will make your stay here even more pleasant.

Plan to build in Kitsap County?

If you plan to build your dream home in Kitsap County outside one of the few areas with sewer hookups, you'll have to pay close attention to septic requirements. Annoying, perhaps, to city dwellers who have never had to worry about what happens after they flush, but very, very important.

We worry what happens to our water resources, whether to our wells or to our recreational water. Your builder will have to follow strict poop regulations.

Don't be upset by their complexity--be thankful that we care what we drink and fish in!

Local lender seeks perfect matches

North Kitsap Herald

POULSBO — In today’s world, honest mortgage brokering can be a tough job, but somebody’s gotta do it.

And Joseph Prevost might just be the one.

Owner of Pioneer Financial, LLC and a licensed mortgage broker, Prevost’s mission is to offer his clients consistent and reliable mortgage services that achieve their individual goals.

And it seems that’s a promise he’s delivering on.



Newly expanded and boasting an easy-access downtown Poulsbo location, Prevost and his wife, Kathy, chose to make Poulsbo home to their business just over a year ago.

“We pretty much fell in love with Poulsbo and the Kitsap Peninsula,” the Seattle native said. “Really, the people is what got me here... I like the folks that take time to get to know each other around here. Some of the best parts of my day are the locals that stop by.”

In the mortgage business since the late 1990s, Prevost’s Pioneer Financial also has an office in Olympia, and between the two boasts eight employees — nine including beloved office canine Gus the Bus. With a focus on Washington and serving people locally, Prevost said he understands the gravity most mortgage situations bring.

“A home mortgage is the single most important investment most people make,” he said. “I take what I do seriously... a business like this is always about taking care of your clients and team members.”

Prevost said he works to secure clients with their own Best Loan, a term he created to describe his process of understanding a person’s needs, and then fitting them with a loan through his relationships with various lenders, from which he can find the right rate payments for anyone.

“I look at myself as a guide,” he said. “The information out there and the whole process can be daunting and confusing... We’re not going to the casino with their home.”

Prevost said a benefit of the many connections he has is that borrowers don’t have to fit into the outlined program of a bank. Not lured by commission as he said many in the business are, Prevost also pointed out the unfavorable experiences many have with the mortgaging business. Negative amortization and teaser rate loans are examples of avenues that often leave people owing more than they should on a home.

“Both of those are examples of volatile adjustment rate mortgages that I will not do,” he said.

“We really pride ourselves in really getting the client their goals,” added Kathy Prevost, who also serves as a loan funding coordinator for the company and said many of their clients are returning ones. “Joe is an expert at really directing them to their best loans. We get to know what they want and what’s best for them... Joe gets to know his clients. He wants to take care of them. He does not offer empty promises.”

Good faith estimates are right up his alley as well, Prevost said, mentioning earlier in the day he’d come within $6 of a larger-sized transaction. He said for first-time borrowers and those looking to refinance, he’s got the background and experience to make it happen, and his growing business can now serve them better than ever.

“We’re going to expand at a very slow, make-sense rate,” he said. “I put people in homes, and that’s really important to me.”

Kitsap County residents beginning to support urban growth

A growing number of Kitsap County residents support the concept of targeting population growth in urban areas, according to Mike Eliason, government affairs director for the Kitsap County Association of Realtors.

A new survey conducted for the statewide group Washington Realtors shows that Kitsap residents are concerned about taxes and the rising cost of housing, Eliason said, but many believe that things are "going in the right direction" for the county.



The survey, conducted in early September by Call Research, questioned 200 people each in Kitsap, Thurston, Clark and Spokane counties, providing a 6.9 percent margin of error for each county's results.

Such surveys can be helpful when talking about "quality of life" issues, Eliason said.

"Elected officials should not necessarily make their positions based on polling," he said, "but it is important for them to understand where the public stands at any point in time."

Asked about the general feeling about life in Kitsap County, more than half (52 percent), said things were going in the right direction, while about a third (32 percent) said they were on the wrong track. The other 16 percent either didn't know or declined to answer.

Respondents' top priorities were widely scattered, but leading the list was "holding the line on taxes," with 15 percent ranking it first, followed by improving public education, with 12 percent. Wasteful government spending, affordable housing and growth management were tied, with 11 percent ranking them first.

Protecting the rights of property owners (7 percent) came in ahead of protecting the environment (5 percent), though the margin of error placed them on par.

"Interestingly," Eliason said, "a lot of the debate has become property rights versus the environment, but those aren't the biggest issues for the people."

Of the four counties surveyed, only Kitsap had the largest group putting the greatest emphasis on taxes. For Thurston and Whatcom, it was managing growth. For Spokane, it was improving the economy. For Clark, it was a tie between public education and wasteful government spending.

More than two-thirds of Kitsap respondents (67 percent) said they were very concerned or somewhat concerned about the cost of housing. Concerns were roughly the same for Thurston, Whatcom, Clark and Spokane counties.

People have reason to be concerned, Eliason said. Median home prices in Kitsap are up 8 percent over a year ago, but the median income has grown by only 7 percent over the past five years.

Asked about where growth should occur, 29 percent of Kitsap residents said in cities, 24 percent said in suburbs, 22 percent said on the "fringe of current suburban development," and 16 percent said in rural areas.

Kitsap residents were overwhelmingly convinced that urban and suburban growth benefits the community. About 70 percent said they were "very convinced" or "somewhat convinced" that urban growth allows people to live closer to work, thus keeping traffic from getting worse; 69 percent said urban growth would encourage economic development and increase jobs; and 60 percent said it helps preserve the environment and maintain the quality of life.

Looking at previous surveys, Eliason said more people are seeing the benefits of urban growth, as the state's Growth Management Act drives more housing construction into urban areas.

"The community is becoming more supportive of urban growth once people see it in action," he said, "because people see that it does not negatively affect them."

But he added that it's important to remember that many people in Kitsap County already live in unincorporated areas, making it easy for them to support urban growth.

More than 70 percent of Kitsap respondents said they would support new homes in their own neighborhood to avoid overcrowding of streets and roads, preserve parks and open spaces, or maintain neighborhood character.

Seventy-seven percent said they would support building "affordable homes" in their neighborhood if the housing were provided for teachers, firefighters, police and "other people whom we rely on for help."

Eliason said Bainbridge Island is one community facing a realization that many employees providing essential community services cannot afford to live on the island. City leaders are studying the problem, he said, and they may follow Mercer Island, which identified funding for teachers to live in the school district where they work.

Sixty-six percent of Kitsap residents said they would support building a variety of new housing types, including single-family homes, cottages and townhomes. Seventy-six percent said local governments should allow such construction.

That's because people support choice, Eliason noted.

Addressing the problems of rising housing costs requires a partnership between the real estate community and the government sector, he said. The problem involves market forces, government regulations and the lending environment, he noted. To help people purchase their first home, multiple solutions are needed.

By Christopher Dunagan, The Kitsap Sun
dunagan@kitsapsun.com
Originally published 01:30 p.m., October 18, 2007
Updated 01:30 p.m., October 18, 2007

Top 10 reasons: It's a great time to buy real estate in Kitsap County

In recent weeks the news media have been bashing real estate. True, some markets (such as Detroit, which is suffering from the decline of the automakers) are plummeting. But the market here in Kitsap County continues strong. For buyers, the increased inventory is very good news.

• Selection, selection, selection. There are about over 2100 resale homes on the market in Kitsap County. Regardless of the price range a buyer desires, there are plenty of houses from which to choose. Just a few years ago the resale inventory was much smaller. Buyers were forced to make compromises if they were going to locate the home of their dreams. There is a great selection of attached homes, condos, and townhouses. You can find large lots, small lots, and a lot that will accommodate your boat or RV. There are lots of options in this market.
  
• No bidding wars. In 2005 one client in Seattle made an offer on ten homes. He lost the first nine to the 'feeding frenzy' that existed. Other buyers bid the properties up substantially from the original listing price. There were escalation clauses where buyers authorized their agents to outbid other offers by thousands of dollars. There is no competitive bidding in this buyer's market.
  
• You can make an offer. A few years ago when you made an offer, the only question was how high above the list price could the buyer reach in hopes of being the best offer on the table. Today the sell price list vs. price ration is about 96%. A seller will not be insulted if you 'make them an offer they can't refuse'.
  
• Patience is tolerated. In the hot seller's market that existed everything was rushed. Find a house before other buyers did. Hurry up and make the offer. Today a buyer can take their time. Look at several homes and think about your decision for a few hours.
  
• Due diligence is welcomed. In this market a buyer is encouraged to obtain a home inspection, pest inspection, and appraisal. In 2005 many buyers waived these contingencies in order gain an advantage with multiple offers.
  
• There are plenty of specs. In the not-too-distant past buyer had to 'play games' if they wanted a new home. In Phoenix, for example, there were lotteries and waiting lists in order to obtain new construction. Some buyers slept in their cars in order to get to the head of the lines.
  
• Repair requests are welcomed. After a buyer completes a home inspection, they are allowed to submit a repair request to the seller. In the past a seller might insist the home was sold 'as is'. Many times, there were back-up buyers waiting for a primary buyer to upset the seller whose home was increasing in value almost daily.
  
• Few, if any investors. It is estimated that in some areas, one third of all sales in 2005 were to investors. These non-owner-occupied buyers caused the market to inflate and affordability to decline. Mortgage fraud became commonplace. It's a great time to buy without having to compete with hundreds of prospective landlords.
  
• Location, location, location. Bainbridge Island is still the location of choice for professionals working in downtown Seattle. Poulsbo, Bremerton and Silverdale are ideal for navy personnel. The whole county is still a jewel in the USA crown.
  
• Real financing is available. The 'wink, wink' zero down, no doc, adjustable, sub-prime loans are gone. Fixed rates are back. FHA financing, first time homeowner bond programs, special loans for teachers, and police officers are back in business. It's a great time to buy real estate!

by Paul Pastore and Paul J. Pival

Seattle one of America's most stable housing markets

According to Forbes, "Nationwide, home prices are falling, sales are sluggish and the number of foreclosures is mounting. Ask any economist and you'll hear that things are bad, and likely to get worse. Unless you live in Seattle, where the market is slowing but fundamentals remain strong." That market includes Kitsap County.


The Emerald City has experienced strong price appreciation over the last six quarters, and that's expected to continue in the new year, though at a slower pace. In addition to a very low housing inventory and a strong sales rate, there are few non-conforming and high-risk loans on the books than in other cities, which means the area will likely see fewer defaults in the coming months than the rest of the country's markets.

In Pictures: America's Most Stable Real Estate Markets
Also primed for a stable year are Pittsburgh, Columbus, Ohio, and Dallas. They follow Seattle in our ranking of the country's 10 most stable markets. All are projected to have median home sale price increases next year, thanks to a combination of factors including lower-than-average inventory levels, little price volatility and high job growth.

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Best & Worst U.S. Housing Markets

To arrive at our list, we teamed with Moody's Economy.com to develop three prediction models based on a range of factors that affect how prices move. These include, among other things, the state of local economies, new construction contracts, foreclosure rates, local credit markets, sales rates, affordability and inventory. Each of America's 40 biggest cities was ranked on all three models, with price appreciation counting one half and sales rates and credit models accounting for the other half. Data were drawn from the U.S. Census Bureau, National Association of Realtors, Equifax (nyse: EFX - news - people ), a credit-market tracking firm and Moody's Economy.com.

Behind The Numbers
The first model looks at projected median existing home price growth from fourth-quarter 2007 to fourth-quarter 2008. Factors influencing this data include the market's inventory of unsold homes and the amount of new construction underway, both of which have obvious effects on supply. Housing affordability and local construction costs also play a role, acting as indicators of the market's ability to accommodate first-time buyers and new construction. Next is job growth, which attracts people to the area and increases their ability to buy a home.

Expensive markets like Seattle and San Francisco, which have low housing inventories and low construction costs, do well by this measure. Most of the top performers, however, are affordable, high-job growth markets like Dallas and San Antonio.

"It largely reflects that these markets never went through the boom and aren't going through the severe bust," says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com. "Price growth is not great, but [these markets] are not having house price declines. [All markets] are experiencing pricing problems, but in these markets it's less of a problem."

Moody's second predictive model examined market activity by calculating sales rate, which measures how quickly unsold inventory is expected to sell, and turnover, which measures how much of the overall housing stock those sales represent.

For example, the projected volume of home sales in San Francisco for the coming year represents a low 1.1% of the market's overall housing stock. In a market like Los Angeles, hamstrung by foreclosures and inventory glut, a 1% to 2% sales rate is potentially devastating--but given San Francisco's supply-side fundamentals and low foreclosure rates, prices are expected to modestly climb.

The last measure took into account delinquency and foreclosure predictions. By this model, adjusted-rate mortgage- and subprime mortgage-rich Detroit, Riverside, Calif., and Las Vegas got hammered, while Pittsburgh and Seattle performed well.

Regarding this measure, "it's important to differentiate between [delinquencies]: how many people are late relative to their most recent due date and how many people are in the process of losing their home," says Douglas Duncan, chief economist of the Mortgage Bankers Association. "Ninety percent of all 30-day late pays get fixed. Serious delinquencies are 90 days past current due dates."

When lending problems like this occur, the markets hit hardest are those with a high proportion of non-conforming loans. The most troublesome types are subprime mortgages and jumbo mortgages--those that are above the range of Fannie Mae (nyse: FNM - news - people ) and Freddie Mac's (nyse: FRE - news - people ) $417,000 securitization limit. Because few banks eagerly take on mortgages that aren't backed by Freddie and Fannie, the spread on jumbo loan interest rates compared to those of regular loans is at an all time high, according to data from HSH Associates, a credit-market tracking firm.

With fewer lenders wanting to take on jumbos and no banks willing to securitize jumbos, that adds another barrier to sales, especially in an expensive market. In Atlanta, for example, where the median home-sale price is $175,500, it's not an enormous setback, but when securitization stops in Los Angeles--where the median price is $593,000--a greater chunk of market activity halts.

As a result, cheaper markets are more likely to be healthier, as loan activity is less constrained.

Still, no market finds itself in a boom. As Zandi points out, discussing which markets are the healthiest "is a relative term."

"It's not like any of these markets are going gangbusters," he says. "Even Seattle: It's been very strong, but conditions are weakening and this year, at best, will be an OK year."

Solar homes tour in Bainbridge and Kitsap County

Kitsap Sun, September 29--The 12th annual National Solar Tour is coming to Kitsap County on October 6. The tour includes eight solar-powered homes in Bainbridge and one each in Bremerton, Indianola and Poulsbo. We have the solar-powered homes. Now if only Sol will favor us through the winters.

Median home price up in Kitsap

By Josh Farley, Kitsap Sun, Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Home prices in Kitsap edged up in the past year, despite a continued slow down of sales in the county and around Washington, according to statistics released by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service on Monday.

The median home price in Kitsap grew from $278,000 in August 2006 to $299,950 last month, an increase of almost 8 percent. That was higher than all other Puget Sound counties, including King (about 6 percent), Snohomish (about 4 percent) and Pierce (about 4.5 percent). Jefferson County's median home price went up 6 percent, from $320,000 to $339,500, while Mason County's price went up about 2.2 percent, from $195,000 to $199,350.

A downturn in the housing market nationally and the country's skyrocketing number of foreclosures — largely a result of the number of subprime loans issued — has contributed to the local market's slowing.

And despite the increased median prices, homes are staying on the market for much longer. In Kitsap, there are about 700 more homes on the market than last year, an increase of about 32 percent.

Condos in Kitsap continued to see a surge in price — albeit with limited numbers sold — with the median rising from $210,500 to $340,000. About 65 were sold last month, up from 38 in August 2006. Developments on Bainbridge and Bremerton's waterfront appear to be leading that charge.