Real Estate Briefs

Everett Public Market building
sold for $2 million
Bellevue businessman Lobsang Dargey and a few of his relatives recently purchased the Everett Public Market building at the southwest corner of California Street and Grand Avenue for $2 million.

The building has housed a collection of small merchants in recent years, but has previously hosted an auto parts store, union hall and even hosted manufacturing activity for the Boeing Co. during World War II.

Dargey said he doesn’t plan to change some things after taking over the building from Jeff and Valerie Gray. The Sisters restaurant on the building’s ground floor is a popular downtown Everett lunch spot. Next door, the Sno-Isle Natural Foods Co-op is another longtime tenant and the only business of its kind in the area.

On the street-level floor next to the co-op, however, he’s already shuffling the businesses inside. A new hair salon is scheduled to open in a space recently abandoned by a similar enterprise.

And Art Boutique, which has occupied a small space in the building since 1998, is close to opening a much larger gallery.

An old freight elevator in the 50,000-square-foot building could be replaced soon with a working passenger elevator, Dargey said. On portions of the top floor, home for the past 25 years to the Grand Central Antique Mall, he envisions creating first-class office space with waterfront views one day.

Monroe to sell land for retail development
A home improvement center and other stores may replace a former gravel pit east of the Evergreen State Fairgrounds in Monroe next year.

That proposal moved closer to reality in May when the city agreed to sell about 34 acres to two companies, said Hiller West, the city’s community development director.

Lowe’s Home Improvement and First Western Development, a developer, agreed to pay the city about $21 million.

The land is part of the proposed North Kelsey Development. The city owns about 60 acres in the development, which it hopes would boost its sales tax revenue.

Within the next six months, the two companies will decide how to divide the property, West said. Lowe’s agreed to buy about 12 acres for roughly $9 million, and First Western Development is seeking about 22 acres for $12 million.

The shopping center likely would include the home improvement center, a restaurant and other retailers, West said.

The city bought the former gravel pit from Snohomish County in 2005 for $16.1 million. It hoped to gain more control over the site’s commercial development.

The development also will include about an acre of public space, Mayor Donnetta Walser said.

Real estate seminar set for June 15
Windermere Inc./WA Inc. and Custom Mortgage Solutions will hold a free educational seminar at 6:30 p.m. June 15 at Mitzel's Restaurant, 303 128th St. SW, in Everett. Topics, aimed at homebuyers and sellers, will include tips for first-time buyers, moving up to a higher value, downsizing strategies and financing options. Refreshments will be served.

For more information or to reserve a seat, call 866-438-4101.

John L. Scott introduces
High-Definition Home Search
In May, John L. Scott Real Estate introduced its online High-Definition Home Search powered by Microsoft’s Virtual Earth platform at www.JohnLScott.com.

The high-definition function enables visitors to the Web site to have a deeply immersive home search experience, including bird’s eye imagery, which is a highly interactive mapping feature providing aerial imagery with a 45-degree view of every home for sale in the greater Seattle area, the company said. This imagery can be adjusted to view the property from different angles, allowing for greater visibility than satellite mapping.

“The creation of High-Definition Home Search will revolutionize the real estate industry and how consumers look for homes,” said J. Lennox Scott, chairman and chief executive of John L. Scott Real Estate.

Home prices up nearly
18 percent; sales drop 7.4 percent
Home prices in Snohomish County tilted more toward a buyers’ market in April, but that still did nothing to rein in prices, the Multiple Listing Service reported.

The combined median price for single-family homes and condominiums rose to $312,000, a 17.74 percent increase from April 2005, according to the service, which represents real estate agents in Western Washington.

For single-family homes, the median price was $329,900, a nearly 18 percent hike from a year ago. For condos, the median was $199,950, up 7.8 percent from April 2005.

Median means that half the homes sold for more and half sold for less.

While prices remain high, the increases are ebbing in comparison to previous months, which were typically 20-plus percent higher than year-ago figures.

The number of available homes, which has been shrinking for some time, actually increased in April by 10 percent, but it wasn’t enough to push prices down.

While prices and listings are up, sales are down.

Pending sales, meaning sales in which the paperwork wasn’t completed by the end of April, were down nearly 4 percent. Completed sales dropped 7.4 percent.

Still, sales remain at a high level. They’re only slightly down from April 2005 sales, which set records in much of the Puget Sound area.

Online real estate course
approved for Washington state
The Council of Residential Specialists’ online course, “Creating Value for Your Clients,” has been approved for continuing education credit in the state of Washington. Real estate students in Washington who successfully complete the course can earn eight hours of continuing education credits.

Designed for real estate agents of all levels of experience, the course presents current, relevant and practical real estate concepts in an interactive, multimedia format via the Web.

“Creating Value for Your Clients” is the first phase of the council’s plan to expand its Internet-based learning community with online seminars, skill assessments, news articles, discussion forums and downloadable resources for council members and students.

Students have 45 days to complete the eight-hour course and pass the exam. The course counts as one unit of elective credit toward the CRS Designation.

The cost is $99 for agents through 2006; $149 beginning in 2007. CRS Designees pay a discounted rate of $75. To register, visit www.CRS.com or call 800-462-8841.

County residential septic-system
maps available online
The Snohomish Health District has electronically converted drainfield diagram “as builts” from the paper files of 70,000 properties, making the records accessible — for no charge — online at its Web site, www.snohd.org.

Project lead Bruce McCormick said the as-builts page logs up to 40 visits a day. He estimated that the district will scan in about 1,000 property files every year in order to remain current.

The service also provides property description information from the Snohomish County Assessor’s Office.

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