And until I belatedly read the the New York Times bit on golf, I thought the next guy still liked golf.

If you are the rebel who still golfs, the golfer who subscribes to GolfPunk magazine, full text will help you find a home on a golf course: A quick search of the greater Seattle area shows about 400 homes advertising proximity to golf courses. (check it out - it’s a funny clustering of homes by the area’s golf courses).

My preferred search is “-golf“, which eliminates those 400 homes from the search and means I can get more non-golf home for my money.

File this under old news, but it costs about 4% of the value of your home when a sex offender moves in nearby. Ouch.

This “charmer” is the featured property on the Capitol Hill blog’s neighborhood recruitment program this week. Only in Capitol Hill, Seattle is a property well into jumbo loan territory be considered entry level. We do appreciate the Capitol Hill blog’s efforts and we realize that they really are looking at the less expensive properties (check out this orange charmer for example).

Capitol Hill blog seems ahead of the curve - I couldn’t find a neighborhood recruitment program on most of the other Seattle blogs I looked at.

Hot Tipper Erika let us know that Robin Beaty is renting out this Ballard, Seattle house for a mere $900 a month. Seriously, he’ll send you the keys if you’ll just send $900 for the first month’s rent. Erika says:

“I SERIOUSLY HOPE THAT PEOPLE HAVE THE COMMON SENSE NOT TO FALL FOR THIS BUT JUST WANTED MAKE SURE YOU WERE AWARE OF WHATS GOING ON.”

Perhaps the reverend is aware that a 30 year loan with 20% down and a 5% interest rate, his rental pricing comes out to nearly exactly half of the $1,868 a month our brand spanking new mortgage calculator predicts you’d pay for your payments if you bought it.

Apparently the missionary Mr. Beaty owns real estate up and down the West Coast - Ballard real estate is just part of his master plan. He has also been spotted in Sacramento. If you do decide to rent from Mr. Beaty (or his alter-ego, Rev. Robin Bruce), please get in touch with me; I have a very cheap bridge that you might be interested in buying.

According to RemodelingOnline, on average, no major home improvement project yields a significantly higher resale value than you put into it. Here are the stats from the Seattle area and here is a soon to be pay-walled summary. So, as with most things in life, think about what makes you happy first, then think about how much it will cost.

That said, if new siding, a new deck, or a new kitchen would make you happy, it’s 80% off once you sell your home:

The most profitable project on the national level was upscale siding replacement, recouping 88 percent of costs upon resale. Wood deck additions and wood window replacements also returned more than 80 percent of costs, at 85 percent and 81 percent, respectively. On a national average, the only interior project to return more than 80 percent of remodeling costs this year was a minor kitchen remodel, returning 83 percent of project costs at resale.

Our whole job is to make finding and buying homes easier, but it’s the hard to classify homes that are a deal.

If you’re willing to do a little extra work (or you have a local agent who has actually been to all the homes for sale in your area), you can really score - Frank Llosa did a little digging and found that homes for sale with fewer photos sold for less:

• 1 Photo= 91.2% of Original Price
• 6 Or more= 95% of Original Price

And they sold more slowly (DOM is Days on Market, or the number of days the house was on the market before it sold):

• 1 Photo = 70 DOM Avg
• 6 Photos =40 DOM
• 16-19 = 36 DOM
• 20 MAX= 32 DOM

(via ReAgent in Connecticut)

Just a quick reminder that now that Leopard Day has come and past, Estately will continue to delight you in Apple Safari (and Firefox and Internet Explorer).

For those wincing at the cost of Seattle homes that cost an average of $374 per square foot, I’d like to point out that they are a relative deal when placed next to New York’s approximate $1,000 per square foot prices (!!!). Seattle per square foot condo prices are higher - $521 per square foot ($540,556 average price, 1,037 sqft average size).

If you have a big screen, Estately is one of the only real estate search sites that will fill it up with real estate search goodness. Small screen? We shrink to your level unless it’s tiny. Seriously: go to Estately’s Seattle real estate page now and try resizing your browser - see how everything scales to fit your needs? Regardless, some people have asked us for even more map and even more room for photos and today we deliver, but only if they really want it.

Hanging out between the map and the search options is a little triangle in a long thin bar. Click on it and Huzzah! the map is full screen. Once you’ve set up your search, you can shrink that sucker down and just cruise the map, going from listings to photos to neighborhood information. Want it back? The same bar is still hanging out on the left side of the map. Click it again and Huzzah! it’s like it was never gone.

Before:

After: