A lot of people have inquired about our holiday card this year, wondering how we did it. No Photoshop, these are claymation characters created by artist Mike Leavitt. He owns Intuition Kitchen, a small art studio in South Seattle.
My husband took photos of each of us for reference and sent to Mike. […]

Worsening house market slump is heightening fear that the American economy may be thrust into recession
The United States housing market plunged deeper into despair last month, with sales of new homes plummeting to the lowest level in more than 12 years. The slump worsened more than most analysts expected, heightening fears that the country may […]

Yeah, I’ve got the typical New Year’s Resolutions - like eat less chocolate, exercise more etc., but I thought I’d share what I’m calling my “Mortgage Resolutions.”  
I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and a great time with family.   I think I could describe my Christmas as too noisy, too busy, and too fast, but […]

“The cold, hard truth is that foreclosures are serving only to hasten the painful process of shifting housing prices back to a level the market can sustain. Prices must and will fall. Everywhere. Probably 25% to 30% from their peak.”
In today’s (December 28, 2007) Los Angeles Times, Christopher Thornberg made the above statement.
Mr. Thornberg used […]

On October 30, 2007, the Government of Canada announced in its Economic Statement that it proposes to reduce the GST rate by one percentage point from 6% to 5%, effective January 1, 2008. To facilitate the transition to the lower rate, the Economic Statement also proposes transitional rules for determining the GST/HST rates applicable to […]

Strong demand and a lack of supply drives markets forward
The national office vacancy rate will drop from the current 6.2 percent by the fourth quarter of 2008 to 5.6 percent as major urban centres continue to see the amount of available space decline.
Cushman & Wakefield LePage’s Outlook ’08: Annual Market Review found that, of the […]

Seth Godin is one of my favorite authors, unknowing mentor and personal hero.  He has a great post from a couple of years ago that he quoted for his last post of 2007.  His question is “Why not be great?“  To all of us that have tracked the implosion of this market, the epic shifts […]

Home buyers often use school statistics as one of the criteria for selecting real estate; regardless of whether you have children, future buyers will want to be in a good school district. Fizber.com understands this need on the part of home buyers and will help as much as possible.

An insightful and balanced analysis of the dispute between Realtysellers and the Toronto Real Estate Board appears in an article on the Realosophy website. It is refreshing to see that there are some people in the real estate brokerage business who “get it”!
See the full article »

If you’ve read my blog in the past, you probably know that I’m a huge supporter of the San Francisco Zoo. In fact, I was just there this last weekend doing some volunteer work. I even spent two years working at the Zoo several years before I found my calling helping […]