We don’t normally post about the software that powers our non-blog site (Ruby On Rails - we like it a lot), but I just clicked through for some documentation and lo-and-behold, RubyOnRails.org is now squaterville:

According to domaintools.com, it has been snatched up by a company called Next Angle. It looks like the domain was originally purchased for 4 years on 19-Apr-2004. I’ve seen that same splash page on a lot of typo names.

Until this is worked out (until the squatter is paid extortion money), no installing gems from rubyonrails.org, no documentation from rubyonrails.org, and no love from all the dhh / rails haters in the world.

Update: Apparently it was a hosting problem (that host sure has a spammy default page). From where I sit it’s back online as of today.

Hot on the heels of the West African “missionary” leasing out a house that isn’t his (and is for sale, not rent) in Ballard (send your check now!), we spotted a story about squatters offering leases on bank-owned (foreclosed) properties they have “colonized.” I like that term. Sounds so much better than “breaking and entering.”

Here’s the deal: they break into the home, then they charge you monthly rent for the new locks they put on the doors. You, dear renter, are now technically a squatter too. You’re just a sucka-squatter who is paying for the privilege. You live in said home, paying rent, until the bank shows up and puts it on the market.

Seems like a nasty scam, but at least someone is home, right? A renter has to be no worse than a bank at doing upkeep on a foreclosure. Presumably they leave the pipes in place.

We normally reserve this space to discuss our real estate, online technology, or our website, but today I’m going to make an exception to discuss Estately the company - we’re growing! We’ve reached a point where the two of us and our broker can’t keep up with the number of clients asking to be matched with agents while still having time to continue to improve the site.

We’ve decided it’s time to hire someone who is dedicated to Estately’s AgentMatch program, the full job description can be found here:

http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/rej/554863288.html

There is a lot of flexibility in this position, we want to find someone who shares our vision for AgentMatch and let them carve out their own role at Estately and ultimately help steer the AgentMatch program as it continues to grow. If this sounds interesting to you or you know someone who might be interested drop us an email at jobs@estately.com

I’ve always thought of America as a disposable nation; we seem to have the capacity to make even the most permanent things, from dishware to cameras, into disposable objects. And, looking at a lot of recent housing developments (and ignoring assurances about vastly improved housing codes from an architect friend), I just assumed we led the world in disposable housing.

But we aren’t.

Due to a history riddled with earthquakes, fires and perverse pro-new housing tax incentives, Japan razes homes faster than casino developers in Vegas. After about 30 years, homes are replaced and because of the disposable mindset, new homes are built with cheap materials, prolonging the cycle. So few “used” homes are sold that there is little infrastructure, from surveyors to appraisers, for second-hand homes (sorry Eppraisal!).

Statistics from the Economist. The full story is behind a paywall at the Economist.

Useless Bay, in Langley, Washington. Washington has a lot of ridiculous names, but Useless Bay is my new favorite.

Sorry about a little unscheduled downtime this morning - Estately is getting a massage. Remember when Flickr used to get massages every other day? This is our first this year. We’ll let you know when we’ve worked the knots out.

Update: Knot free and working thanks to the massage machine.

Doug has been working on invisible-to-you backend stuff recently to help us lay the groundwork for some exciting future releases, but he spent some time yesterday tweaking things on Estately. You should find that the bubbles and property information pages load even faster than they did before. Like the gmail team, we are fanatical about speed. We just don’t have quite their man- and woman-power.

I have unfortunately been bogged down in non-development work, but it too should pay off in making the site better in the long (medium?) run. Oh, and we made the View It, Save It, Mail It buttons a little more obvious, so you can stop emailing us asking us how to send a property to a friend or family member. So I guess I have done something useful recently.

So you’re buying a house and you’re thinking to yourself, “I want a deal, and in this market I should be able to find someone who is represented by an amateur (who blew their staging and marketing) and will sell their house for less than it’s worth. Or better yet, someone who has to sell or they’ll be foreclosed on.” (That’s a dangling participle, if you’re keeping score)

You’re in luck. Short sales are being advertised.
You only need to search for the code words. Here is what the code words for foreclosure are showing us today:

“Short Sale” - 18 homes and condos for sale in the greater Seattle area
“Motivated Seller” - 125 homes for sale in the greater Seattle area
“Foreclosure” - 11 homes and condos for sale in the greater Seattle area

If you want to see foreclosures as they come on the market, you can save a search with one of those keywords and subscribe to get emails every time a foreclosure comes on the market.

While doing this survey I spotted another example of mediocre representation. Directly from the description of one of the foreclosure homes: “All offers will be reviewed 07/31/2007 and may be subject to bank approval.” The home is still for sale. Oops! Maybe the agent should have included more than one photo. Or more than 2 sentences in the description. Seller, you need to ditch that loser and try out Estately Agent Match.

Have more words we should add to the list? Let me know if the comments and I’ll add ‘em.

Have you ever done the math to see when and how buying a home pays off? It’s not in the first couple of years - that’s for sure. By many accounts, you maximize profit after about 10 years in a home, at which time you have built up some equity, the cost of buying and selling your home (Realtor commissions, mortgage fees, moving costs) has been spread over a longer time period. After 10 years your monthly costs slowly start to rise because all that equity you have in your house could now be put to a higher use in stocks and bonds. You can always “pull” some of the equity out at that time and invest it in your preferred investment vehicle.

Want to see how your own situation pans out? Check it out for yourself at housemath.us (check the monthly cost vs. Sell Time chart after you’ve put in your basic information).

But it’s always nice to hear the same advice from a professional minus the charts and graphs:

Some how people have gotten the idea that buying and selling real estate, frequently is a good idea, or even a way to get rich. It didn’t used to be that way. People looked at homes as a place to live.

I get phone calls from people who bought homes two years ago and are kind of thinking they might like to move. I hate to get all parental with them, but I do. Sometimes I even say no, you can’t move you have to stay where you are.

…

Don’t even think about buying a home if you can’t live in it for at least five years. I know you can move any time you want to and when you do I make some money. The truth is that it costs money to buy a home, and it costs money to sell a home and it may not be the best use of financial resources to move around for the heck of it. Again it is your money and your choice. I would choose differently.

Real estate agents aren’t a particularly well respected group of people, but a select group has the integrity and intelligence to really help their clients. We had a client ask us to recommend an agent to help him buy a Belltown condo last week and the agent we recommended showed him comps that indicated it was overpriced.

Was this good for the agent’s bottom line (or ours)?

Not in the short run, but by building trust - by letting people know that we are working on their behalf to provide knowledgeable, high quality agents and not mediocre salespeople - we can create better business in the long run.

The market in the Seattle area isn’t taking quite the beating it is in the rest of the country, but the number of homes on the market is growing - there are nearly 50,000 homes and condos for sale in western Washington now, up from about 30,000 when we launched in December. Some of that is the normal cycle of the market (more homes for sale in the summer), but not all of it.

That means more choices for home buyers, which means they can be pickier about quality and / or price. So what to do if you’re selling your place? The experts weigh in:

Greg Swann of the BloodHound Blog

Homes are being sold every day. There are fewer buyers than there were a year ago, a lot fewer than two years ago. But even though too many homes are on the market, some of them are selling.

Which ones? Those homes that offer the greatest perceived value to buyers.

And where is that value perceived? In the quality of the home or in a bargain price.

The seller of house number three can beat “the market” in one of two ways. He can refurbish the home to the quality of house number one, then undercut it on price by five or ten percent. Or he can leave the house the way it is — and cut the price by twenty percent.

Jim Duncan, Real Central VA:

1) Make your house stand out because of the price (make it more competitive than the rest).
2) Make your house spotless. Clean windows, baseboards, floors, corners, cabinets … everything.
3) If you don’t have a huge back yard, make it functional as it is. If you do have a huge back yard, offer your riding mower.
4) Make it sparkle. Do any and all reasonable (and some not-so-reasonable) repairs before it hits the market.
5) Remove any and all objections that you can before the house goes on the market. You only get one chance to make a first impression.

If all that sounds like too much, you can always just sell your home in 5 days, but I suspect that the same rules if you want to get the full value. Just last week I saw signs in Greenwood, Seattle touting “this home will sell Sunday night to the highest bidder.” I should have followed up…