Happy New Decade!

I suspect that many of you, like me, are not entirely sorry to see the decade end. What with wars, recession, financial market downturns and the collapse of real estate values, the last few years have certainly been challenging. Perhaps there's hope, however, that 2010 represents a new beginning.

For me, one major offset to all of the rotten stuff is the great reward I have experienced in writing this bog, now eight months old. Since I began, I have come to know a lot of great people in the neighborhood that I probably would not have met had I not embarked on this project. It has been a lot of fun researching and writing postings, and I have appreciated the feedback (mostly positive) of the many readers who have taken the time to email me, stop me on the street, or add their comments on the blog. Please keep doing so.

I see that many other neighborhood blogs have ended the year by listing their top stories for 2009, so I have decided to fall into line. Here are the most-read Madison Park Blogger postings for the year:

1. MadArt will accost you
2. Preview of a possible 520 solution
3. Girl injured jumping off diving board
4. When it comes to crime, vigilance is better than the other thing
5. Christmas ships to arrive
6. Madison Park loses out on water taxi
7. Why the police won't come running
8. What next for the notorious Deno's
9. MadArt wows
10. June Real Estate Report

In spite of the fact that the series did not make it to the most-read list, the postings that I enjoyed the most were the three entries Defining Madison Park, in which I spent 6,000 words trying to say what, exactly, is meant by the term "Madison Park." We never did decide!

My least favorite posting was the recent announcement of the death of Scott McKee.

I, for one, am ready to move on. I offer to each of you my best wishes for a great end to 2009 and a happy and successful new year ahead.

See you in the new decade!

Bryan Tagas
Madison Park Blogger

A sad end to a really bad year

I am very sorry to report the death of Madison Park Hardware's Scott McKee, who was reportedly struck down this weekend after a brief battle with cancer. Scott's mother, Lola, has been hospitalized, I understand, but her condition is not thought to be life threatening.

Scott has been a neighborhood mainstay and go-to guy for as long as many Madison Parkers can remember. As the sign in the window says, he will be missed. Our hearts go out to Lola and Scott's sister, Cookie, at this sad time.

UPDATE: The Seattle Times carries Scott's obituary in the December 30 edition, available online here. Scott's family suggests donations in his name to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (530 Dexter Avenue N., Seattle, 98109).

Indispensable reading

This year-end post is one of those occasional digressions, as noted in the masthead above, that I sometimes allow myself. It has nothing directly to do with Madison Park; but it does have to do with my having an educated audience for this blog, one presumably composed of people who also care about the world outside of Madison Park.

I, myself, have always been a bit of a news junkie. And for many years I subscribed to every major national news magazine that existed, as well as four or five daily newspapers. That's in addition, of course, to watching an hour or two of news each evening. In recent years, changes in the way news is delivered, as well as a decrease in the amount of time I have each day to peruse information, have caused me to focus on fewer sources.

Perhaps you have your own list of indispensable news resources. Mine includes the Washington Post online, Talk of the Nation on NPR, the Economist magazine, and the Sunday edition of The New York Times. Several years ago I added to the list an absolutely essential news magazine called The Week.

I am not into the USA Today, short-attention-span style of news delivery; and on the surface, The Week might appear to be that kind of a periodical. For it's certainly the case that the articles are concise, and there's a lot of information summarized. What's particularly special about The Week, however, is that it draws upon literally hundreds of news sources and presents the material in a particularly interesting and informative fashion.

Virtually every subject is covered each week: politics, people, events, health, science, books, movies, music, art, films, television, food, economics, and travel. For each subject, The Week presents the best reviews of and commentary on what's current. One of my favorite features is "Best Properties on the Market," a two-page spread showing some great residences currently for sale across the country. Each issue includes an in-depth "Briefing" or two on a subject of importance (this week's is on how Bethlehem is a city with a lot of problems). There's a puzzle page, political cartoons, quizes...well you get the idea.

The Week is such a good magazine that the publishers think that just getting it into your hands will make you a lifelong subscriber. For this reason, they make an offer at the end of each year to each current subscriber: give a friend the gift of a one-year subscription to The Week for free!

In view both of my lack of friends and my desire to spread the word about this great magazine (in which I hold no financial interest), I will therefore give a gift of The Week to the first Madison Park Blog reader who emails me his or her name and address.

Here's to a year of great reading!

Merry! Merry! Merry!

Best wishes to each of you for a delightful holiday season, whatever you may be celebrating. Here are a few random shots of the Madison Park scene as Christmas approaches.

For those of you who missed the Christmas ships on Saturday, Madison Valley resident Rachel Diaz did a post on her blog in which she included a little video with sound. Not as good as being there, but you'll get the idea.

A very reliable witness reports that the cookies, which were provided by Parkshore, were spectacular, mouthwatering, and clearly the best ever served at a Christmas Ship arrival here in the Park. I'll have to take her word for it, since I made it down to the beach--with nephew in tow--too late for us to get in on that action.

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A few spectators, I am told, were a bit put off by the absence of actual Christmas music being sung by the choir while the boats paused at our beach, but I thought the singers (the Rainier Ensemble) did a great job even so.

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Here, by the way, is my vote for best Christmas display. My picture does not do it justice, so you'll just have to wander down to 38th (north of Madison) and see for yourself:

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Cheers!

Is it me?...

… or is there something that’s not quite in the holiday spirit about those bright orange sandwich boards that recently cropped up around the neighborhood advertising fish? Sometime last week they suddenly appeared at various street corners along E. Madison and on certain residential side streets, covered with protective plastic and weighted down with concrete blocks. What’s the story?

“I’m just a fisherman trying to make a living,” says the perpetrator. “These signs are tremendously effective for a very low cost.” That’s why they’re there.

There are fewer signs around Madison Park today, however, than there were a week ago. That’s because of complaints. According to the fisherman, who reports that he places these signs in selected neighborhoods all over the City, the only neighborhood that he’s ever received a complaint from is ours. He used to live in Madison Park, he says, and wonders why it is only in our community that people have gotten torqued. We’re just naturally curmudgeonly down here, I guess.

He promises that the signs are temporary and will be removed within the week. If anyone has a complaint about a specific sign, he will get that sign down sooner, he says.

Maybe there’s really nothing wrong (other than the illegality) with putting up a few signs here and there to advertise your wares in the Park. But when it comes to this kind of thing there's clearly more than one school of thought. There are your “live and let-live” Madison Parkers; and then there are your “standards are standards” Madison Parkers. This all reminds me of a story someone told me about a yard sale she had in the neighborhood a few years ago. As the sale was underway, one of her neighbors came by and delivered a gentle admonishment: “Really, my dear, this kind of thing is just not done in this neighborhood.”

Well, of course it is. That and orange fish-for-sale signs.

November Real Estate Report

Madison Park goes posh

At mid-December there were exactly two houses for sale in Madison Park listed at under $1 million. And with the median price of condos having risen to $600,000, affordable is definitely not a good characterization of the current real estate scene here in the Park.

It isn’t that there aren’t still a lot of Madison Park houses that are worth less than $1 million. It’s just that the market has absorbed almost all homes that had been for sale in that price range. Meanwhile, many of the higher-priced residences are still awaiting buyers. “Maybe we’re just out of the relatively inexpensive houses,” says Dave Hale, Managing Broker for Windermere Real Estate in Madison Park. “I think our office’s average listing price is now somewhere in the $2 million range.”

What we had in the early part of 2008 was a market with very little movement. Now what we apparently have is a market where houses at the lower end are being snapped up fairly quickly, but the upper market has yet to fully recover. The average number of days on the market for under $1 million houses during the last three months was 79, while the average for the over $1 million houses was 145, based on listing information from the Northwest Multiple Listing Service (MLS).

Nevertheless, sales were surprisingly brisk last month in the upper market. Of seven houses sold during November in Madison Park (Broadmoor and Washington Park included), five changed hands at over $1 million. Here are the statistics (which include two houses not listed by MLS but recorded as sold by the King County Assessor’s Office):

Houses

Average Sales Price: $1,433,000
Median Sales Price: $1,295,000
Average Sq. Ft.: 2,952
Average Cost per Sq. Ft: $485
Average Days on Market for Listed Homes: 267
Average Discount from Original List Price: 16%

(Note that the discount average is skewed by the famous example, which I discussed in an earlier posting, of the Washington Park home which sold for a 52% discount from its initial asking price. Without that outlier, the average discount accepted by house sellers in November was just 7%.)

[Pictured above is the least expensive house on the market as of December 15, a three-bedroom 1927 stucco home located at 2324 41st Avenue E. Priced at $649,000, it is a listing of Michael Roland of Skyline Properties.]

There were also three condo sales in Madison Park during November:

Condos

Average Sales Price: $593,667
Median Sales Price: $585,000
Average Sq. Ft.: 1,410
Average Cost per Sq. Ft.: $440
Average Days on Market: 223
Average Discount from Original list Price: 6.5%

With ten total residential real estate sales during the month, November continued the trend of increasing market activity that began earlier in the fall. December, though mid-month, also showed surprising strength, with six sales recorded in the first two weeks. In addition, there were nine houses listed as pending sale or contingent. There were, however, only three new house listings and one new condo listing during the holiday season.

The impact of all these sales and the relative lack of new listings means that we enter 2010 with a pretty low level of inventory. Currently, there are only 70 active listings in Madison Park, which is a 10% decline from the October level and a 40% decline from the 116 listings that agents were working with at the beginning of the summer. We end the year with a seven-month absorption rate (10 sales to 70 listings).

So it’s both a rather limited market and an expensive one:

As Windermere’s Dave Hale notes, however, this is all just part of a long-term trend. “For the average person, it’s getting very tough to find a home here,” he says. So-called ‘starter’ homes which once may have cost $800,000 in the Park have declined to something like $650,000, he notes, but there aren’t very many of them available. And with declining inventory and renewed buyer interest, we may even be returning to price appreciation in 2010. “It’s been a tough year,” Hale admits, “but we start fresh in January. So we’ll just have to see what the New Year brings.”

Thanks to Wendy Skerritt of Windermere Realty for her help in providing some of the market data utilized in this report. Additional listing information was obtained from Redfin.

Christmas ships reminder

Don't forget that the Christmas Ships will be arriving on our shores at about 4:55 this Saturday afternoon. Weather permitting, there will be a bonfire, hot chocolate, goodies--and of course, caroling. The ships are scheduled to depart precisely at 5:15 for a return trip to Kirkland, so if you're very late you'll miss the show. The choir on the lead Argosy ship for this year's trip to Madison Park is the Rainier Ensemble.

Officially, I am told that it is actually the Christmas Ship (not Ships), a term which Argosy Cruises has now trademarked. The other ships that follow along in the wake of the "Christmas Ship" (aka The Spirit of Seattle) are officially designated as parade boats, follow boats, or jazz boats. Who knew? The tradition of lighted boats parading on the Lake in December has supposedly been around for 60 years or so (predating Argosy Cruises for sure), so I am sticking with the term Christmas Ships.

At least we haven't gotten so politically correct as to be calling it the Holiday Ship (yet).

[Photo courtesy of the Seattle Municipal Archives]