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Urban Living Home Buying Class March 8

By Matt Goyer March 5, 2017

First-time home buyer? New to Seattle? Want to know everything you need to know to buy a home in Seattle in 2017 without reading our home buying guide?

We’re holding a free, no-obligation, home buying class March 8th from 6 to 8pm at the Hotel Andra in Belltown. To sign up, grab a free ticket on Eventbrite.

What we’ll cover:

What to expect
Finding homes
Picking an agent and a lender
Seeing homes in person
How to write a winning offer

Can’t make it? I’m happy to grab coffee or a beer and run through the same tickets one-on-one, just drop me a line at [email protected].

I own and manage Urban Living, a boutique Seattle and Bellevue real estate brokerage. I love lofts, floating homes, new construction, and mid-century moderns, but I will help you buy or sell just about anything!

Get in touch to:

Understand the market
Find your perfect home
Sell your home

Contact:
[email protected]
206-203-6242

4 responses to “Urban Living Home Buying Class March 8”

Flash says:

March 5, 2017 at 7:33 pm

What an excellent home buying guide! Perhaps people should read it even if they do come to your class. One thing you might add to the “choosing an agent” part is asking how prospective agents are paid for their services. Most “buyer’s agents” are actually paid by the seller, with a commission/kickback amount specified in a listing field that sites like Redfin are not allowed to disclose to buyers. So if your agent is steering you to one home over another, it might be because the seller of one home is paying them more while the other home may specify a lower commission. And since the kickback is a percentage, buyer’s agents usually make more if they convince their client to overpay for a house than if they get the client a really good deal.

Some newer agents have resolved this bias issue by charging a flat fee for their services and then refunding any difference between their fee and the commission rebate back to their clients. For example, my Seattle agent charges $11,900 no matter which house I buy, so I feel like I can really trust his advice. I wish every buyer’s agent charged a fixed fee, which might vary based on their experience and level of service.
mattgoyer says:

March 6, 2017 at 7:41 pm

Glad you like the home buying guide! Agent commission is a complicated and controversial topic, one I decided to steer clear of :). I generally disagree with your comment about steering though. Almost all listings under $1m are 3% and with inventory at an all time low, agents are going to show any houses their clients are interested in. And on the topic of flat fees, if all clients were the same amount of work, saw the number of houses, wrote the same number of offers, that might be a good idea :).

FWIW, I used to strongly believe agents were overpaid with a 3% commission structure, but now that I’m in the trenches and have done a ton of deals, for many clients, 3% isn’t enough.
mattgoyer says:

March 7, 2017 at 5:16 pm

I 100% agree that the commission / bonus amount should be transparent!
Flash says:

March 24, 2017 at 5:01 pm

Another thing which might be worth noting in your excellent home buying guide is that non-MLS sites like Zillow can be an important supplement to primary MLS sites like Redfin because Zillow does not have to follow the MLS rules keeping aspects such as previous listing prices secret from potential buyers in some cases. For example, a Queen Anne house listed today and the Redfin page (https://www.redfin.com/WA/Seattle/820-W-Lee-St-98119/home/133363 ) has 14 entries in the listing/price history where they’re not currently allowed to show the price it was previously listed at. But the Zillow page (https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/820-W-Lee-St-Seattle-WA-98119/48986677_zpid/ ) isn’t bound by those rules and shows that the was listed a few years ago for $500k less than the current listing and failed to sell. Redfin will fill in the numbers once the home sells, but then it’s kind of too late to matter. It’s unfortunate that the Realtors Association forces Redfin and other MLS users to censor their results in many ways, but unless/until that changes we buyers can still get the full details from independent sites like Zillow.

Urban Living Home Buying Class March 8

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