To our Clients,
Acknowledging that unprecedented times like these create uncertainty and insecurity, we want to share with you our commitments.
Where Next: Insights from our Broker Network
Los Angeles! Ari Wintraub is a top-tier broker and referral partner serving the highly-competitive L.A. market. Based in Brentwood, he serves many of the most prestigious communities in the area such as Beverly Hills, B.H. Post Office, Santa Monica, Venice, and more.
Insights from Our Broker Network
Throughout the years, we have befriended many quality real estate brokers around the country and other parts of the world. In our effort to always provide the best possible service to our clients, we have built professional relationships and friendships with the best of these brokers and touch base on a regular basis to discuss how our individual regions are changing while learning about new services and technologies they’ve implemented. This year, we will share a collection of articles co-written with some of these amazing professionals.
Featured as “Home of the Day” on the Puget Sound Business Journal
We are excited to share that our client’s Cape Cod-style home in Burien is featured as the “Home of the Day” on the Puget Sound Business Journal! Help us win “Home of the Week” by voting here.
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Is it Really Less Expensive to Own than Rent?
Realogics Sotheby’s International Realty and Caliber Home Loans looked at average prices of newer condominiums and compared rents for comparable apartments. They found the total cost of ownership was effectively lower when factoring income tax deductions, not to mention the opportunity for capital appreciation. The research was performed as part of a recent think tank hosted by the Puget Sound Business Journal, which was published as a section called The Manhattanization of Seattle.
Lifestyle Magazine 2014 Collection Magazine
Sotheby’s Intl Realty’s Luxury Lifestyle Report
“We observe China as the soon-to-be largest economy and a wealth engine with a high propensity for its nationals to seek financial safe harbor and education overseas. Asian demographics are the fastest-growing segment in Washington State with the greatest number stemming from China.”
Other markets covered in the report include The United States, The United Kingdom, and Brazil. View more insights in our Luxury Life report.
Global Realty & Top Rated Washington Winemaker to Open a New Wine Bar & Events Venue
February 24, 2014 (Kirkland, WA) – Representatives of Realogics Sotheby’s International Realty announced today a retail partnership with Woodinville-based DeLille Cellars to open Maison DeLille at 15 Lake Street in downtown Kirkland. The high-profile retail storefront will feature a wine bar and retail wine shop operated by DeLille Cellars while also showcasing art, fine furnishings and residential opportunities represented by the global realty network.
“We are thrilled to partner with DeLille Cellars on Maison DeLille and we’re eager to open our doors later this month,” said Dean Jones,
The 3,200 sq. ft. facility is set to open to the public on March 1, 2014 – precisely four months to the day after The Puget Sound Business Journal first broke the story about the unique retail concept. Designed by Atelier Drome Architects and developed by Adatto Construction, the facility features 17-foot ceilings and a unique building-in-a-building structure with expansive sliding wall panels to create individual spaces for day-to-day corporate use or to open up completely from street to bay for larger events of up to 250 persons on special occasions.Owner of Realogics Sotheby’s International Realty. “Far more than a general real estate brokerage or a wine tasting room, together we’ve conceived the ultimate open house for the connoisseurs of life to experience a convergence of lifestyle brands within a single, beautiful setting.”
“Maison DeLille extends our brand well beyond our Woodinville-basedDeLille Chateau and Carriage House tasting room,” said Greg Lill, President of DeLille Cellars. “Realogics Sotheby’s International Realty is a marketing maverick with a window to the world and a lakeside location, which is highly attractive to us. By combining our resources and databases we’re destined to draw both individual consumers and special events business to downtown Kirkland.”
Lill says his special events business is second only to retail wine sales and venue rentals brings tremendous awareness for his brand and event clientele. He believes the Maison Delille storefront along with the convertible functionality of the brokerage office will be a popular platform for other retailers and artists, broker promotions, corporate events, fundraisers and other philanthropic interests. Jones agrees saying the gallery-like retail experience is more dynamic than a typical brokerage office reception area while activating the retail to brin
“Our Kirkland branch provides a fully functional brokerage operation with all the systems to support our growing real estate enterprise on the Eastside,” adds Jones. “We’ve gone to great efforts to ensure that our retail experience is multi-dimensional and evolving, much like a website home page needs to stay current. Besides, events are a great way to bring individual broker networks together without feeling like you’re in a sales environment.”g attention to his exclusive properties.
Local opinion leaders have been watching the development of what’s being dubbed the “Connoisseurs of Life Showroom” with great interest.
“Realogics Sotheby’s International Realty and DeLille Cellars are a perfect pairing – it’s a very savvy retail concept,” says Maria Royer, Principal of Real Retail – a Seattle-based retail broker that specializes in lifestyle brands. “They will benefit from a prime downtown Kirkland location attracting a likeminded consumer drawn to the beautiful homes, compelling art and fine wines. The showroom is like a lifestyle magazine coming to life while providing a living room of sorts for the community. And given its adjacency to the Kirkland Marina, I think Maison DeLille will also become a popular lifestyle destination for boaters on Lake Washington.”
For priority information on upcoming events and promotions, join the Passport Registry
Eye Candy: 13 Largest Houses on the Market
Get ready for a little eye candy! Here are the 13 largest houses on the market in the US. From Florida to California and everywhere in-between, these mega homes boast guest houses, private lakes and even an equestrian center. Check them out here: http://curbed.com/archives/2014/01/29/here-now-the-12-largest-houses-on-the-market-in-america.php
2014 Cost VS Value : Trends
For the second consecutive year, Cost vs. Value data show that the value of remodeling is up for all 35 projects included in the survey. This trend signals an end to the long slide in the cost-value ratio, which began to fall in 2006 and didn’t begin to rebound until last year (see, “Cost vs. Value 11-Year Trend”). For 2014, the cost-value ratio stands at 66.1%, a jump of 5.5 points over last year and the largest increase since 2005, when the ratio jumped 6.1 points to reach its high of 86.7%.
(The cost-value ratio expresses resale value as a percentage of construction cost. When cost and value are equal, the ratio is 100%; when cost is higher than value, the ratio is less than 100%; when value is higher than cost, the ratio exceeds 100%.)
Significantly, for the first time in four years, improved resale value of residential housing had more of an influence in the cost-value ratio than construction costs. A modest 2.2% increase in average national construction costs was more than offset by an 11.5% improvement in average national resale value. This reverses a trend that began in 2010–11, when construction costs dropped dramatically, but resale values dropped even more, driving the ratio down. The situation began to change in 2013, when lower costs were mainly responsible for across-the-board improvement in the cost-value ratio. While this was good news for the remodeling market, costs remained volatile and housing values had yet to stabilize. In what is perhaps the most positive sign in this year’s data, rising resale value is driving the overall market improvement.
Biggest Gainers
There is still some progress to be made before the remodeling market fully recovers, but the 2014 Cost vs. Value Report shows that the national average cost-value ratio is up more than 9%, with 15 projects improving between 10% and 28% compared with 2013 (see “Biggest Gainers”).
The biggest gainer may reflect the market’s response to the year’s unpredictable weather and multiple large storms: Backup Power Generator, an $11,742 project that supplies electricity during a utility outage, increased 28% nationally to its all-time high of 67.5% in percentage of cost recouped, and jumped to 25th in the overall ranking.
More important is the continued presence of several big-ticket projects among the biggest gainers. Attic Bedroom Remodel, with a national average remodeling cost of $49,438, gained 15.6% compared with 2013, reaching a cost-to-value ratio of 84.3% and moving from eighth to fourth in overall rank. Similarly, Basement Remodel, with an average cost of $62,834, gained 10.4% over 2013 to reach a 77.6% cost-to-value ratio, and move from 13th to 12th in rank. Both of these projects have been trending upward in recent years, possibly because, compared with building an addition, they represent an inexpensive way to add living space to an existing home. But the fact that their comparatively high initial cost is balanced by a higher value at resale than at any time since the peak year of 2005 signals a return of confidence in the value of remodeling.
Replacements
That said, replacements—especially door, window, and siding projects—once again outperformed larger discretionary remodeling projects, when judged solely by national ranking (see “ROI: Replacement vs. Remodeling”). Entry Door Replacement (steel) is once again ranked first, as has been the case since this project was introduced in the 2009–10 report, and is the only project to return more than 90% of cost (96.6%). Low initial cost combined with the positive effect on curb appeal is likely responsible for the high ranking. This is also true of the midrange and upscale versions of Garage Door Replacement, which ranked fifth and sixth, respectively.
At the next cost level, nine of the 14 projects with costs in the $5,000 to $25,000 range are also replacements. (Since the introduction of several low-cost projects to the survey, the Cost vs. Value Report has presented data in four cost categories, making for a better comparison among projects of similar size.) This includes all three Siding Replacement projects, led by Siding Replacement (fiber-cement), an “upscale” project ranked first in this category and second overall, with a cost-value ratio of 87.4% (a 10.2% improvement over 2013); and all four window replacement projects, led by wood and vinyl “midrange” projects with cost-value ratios of 79.3% and 78.7%, respectively.
High ROI
While the cost-value ratio only occasionally exceeds 100% nationally, this occurs more often at the city level, where it typically indicates either strong appeal for a particular project, or a strong housing market, or both. This year, the cost-value ratio exceeded 100% in more than 300 instances or nearly 9% of the time. (By comparison, 2013 saw just 65 instances of projects exceeding 100%.) Of the 64 markets with at least one project that registered a 100%-plus ratio, 21 had 5 or more. Leading the list of high-ROI projects is Entry Door Replacement (steel), which topped 100% in 38 cities, followed by Deck Addition (wood), with a 100%-plus ratio in 25 cities (see “High-ROI Projects”). Most of the other top-performers are replacement projects, with four notable exceptions: Minor Kitchen Remodel and Backup Power Generator, both of which are under-$25,000 projects; and the two bigger ticket projects mentioned earlier, Attic Bedroom Remodel and Basement Remodel.
Top Cities
This year’s report added 19 new markets, bringing the total number surveyed to 101. (Wilmington, Del., was inadvertently included in this year’s survey. Future surveys will follow the U.S. Census and include Wilmington as part of the Philadelphia MSA.) Performance among these “first-time” markets was split, with 9 performing at or above the national average, and 10 below. Three first-time cities are among the ten markets showing a cost-value ratio above 80% (see, “Top 10 Cities”).
Seven of the nine regions outperformed the national average, a distinct improvement over 2013, when just four regions performed better than average. This result may be partly due to the uneven distribution of first-time cities, but it is difficult to determine how big a role this factor may have played, if any. The Middle Atlantic region, which picked up the most first-time cities, and the West North Central region, which picked up none, rank last among the nine regions (see “2014 Regional Comparison”), but they also ranked last in 2013. On the other hand, three regions that performed below the national average in 2013 and also added first-time cities (East North Central, New England, and Mountain) performed well above the national average in 2014.
Once again, the Pacific and West South Central regions ranked first and second, respectively, but the New England region moved from 6th to 3rd; and the East North Central region, from 7th to 5th.
Upscale and K&B
With a few already-noted exceptions, more expensive projects did not fare as well as lower-cost projects, although all made significant gains compared with 2013. While the cost-value ratio for all projects improved 10% on average, midrange projects improved 10.6% versus 8.8% for upscale versions. (Many projects in the Cost vs. Value Report have two versions, “midrange” and “upscale,” with lower and higher costs, respectively, based on scope of work, complexity, and quality of finishes.) One exception is Two-Story Addition, which improved 9.9% due to a large increase (11.9%) in resale value compared with a small (1.9%) cost increase. The other exception is the upscale Bathroom Addition. It ranked just ahead of the midrange version, suggesting that the market is willing to pay for more square footage and higher-end appointments in the bathroom.
Once again, the best-performing K&B project was Minor Kitchen Remodel, which includes new appliances and countertops, and a facelift for existing cabinets. At $18,856, it is not the least expensive K&B project, but it delivers a lot of bang for the buck.
In general, kitchen projects outperformed bathroom projects, regardless of cost. One indication is the Major Kitchen Remodel: Despite its hefty $54,909 price tag, its cost-value ratio of 74.2% ranks it second among the seven K&B projects, just above Bathroom Remodel, which is about one-third the size. And the $109,935 upscale Major Kitchen Remodel project ranked higher than the other three much smaller bathroom projects.
BREAKDOWN BY PROJECT
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Enrico Pozzo, Barry Bergner & the SeattlebyDesign Team
