Here it is again, time for the holidays. The Christmas lights are beginning to show up on people's houses. The grocery stores are full of people buying all the goodies for their annual feast and we all start to think about the simple pleasures of life.

For me, one of the most pleasurable things to do, is just to dream. One of the things I've always dreamed of is designing and building a great castle. It would be a Grand Mansion worthy of a king. And of course it would have lots of rooms.

I'd have a room for this and a room for that. I'd have all sorts of special rooms for things I like to do. For example, I'd have a room just for wrapping gifts. In the center of the room there would be a big square table with scissors and glue and glitter. Wrapping paper as well as ribbons and bows would be hanging from all the walls. And it would have a pretty window that looks out over a garden.

I'd also have a room with a glass ceiling that would be cool in the summer and toasty in the winter. In this room would be the most comfortable furniture imaginable. And I'd build a big saltwater fish tank right into the wall with all kinds of tropical fish in it. The only purpose of this room would be to relax.

I'd also have a soundproofed music room where I can plug in my guitar and play anytime I want without disturbing anyone. And as long as I'm dreaming, I would just have to have a secret basement "Beach Room", where the entrance might be hidden behind a library bookcase. It would have sunshine lights and be decorated in a Caribbean theme. It would even have real sand and rocks around a lagoon style pool.

It's a good thing dreaming is free, eh? I challenge you to go ahead and try it sometime. Dream up the most incredible, outrageous, luxurious home you can think of… and then make it twice as big! Why? Only one reason… "Because it's Fun".

And that brings me to my final comment. Real Estate is fun. The process of designing, building, buying or selling a home is undoubtedly one of the most exciting things you'll ever do. So go ahead, give yourself permission to enjoy the process. Real Estate should be something that makes you smile. Even if the going gets rough it will always be worth it in the end, because there really is "no place like home".

On a concluding note, this is my final post as your guest blogger for the TNT "Open House" Real Estate Blog. Between family, work and hobbies I'm getting pretty crunched for time these days. So, this is a good time for me to hand the reins of the blog over to next Real Estate writer.

I'd just like to say THANK YOU for reading my little stories during the last few months. It's been a pleasure and a thrill to write and talk with you about the very cool world of property ownership.

Submitted by Steve Hurley

When I was a young whippersnapper living in Tacoma I got a job working for a little company that was kinda smart. The business was called "Busy Shoes Instant Shoe Repair" and they located it right next to the Starbucks Coffee in Kirkland.

Now at that time, hardly anyone had really heard about Starbucks because they only had a couple of stores in Seattle (and that one in Kirkland). But Starbucks was on a roll and they opened up a new store in Bellevue. And ya know what my boss did? He opened up his second store right next to the Starbucks in Bellevue!

Again, Starbucks opened up a store on 4th & Seneca in Seattle and guess what my boss did? Yup… His third store at 4th & Seneca. I worked at all three of those shoe repair stores and they were monstrously successful due in no small part because of their close proximity to Starbucks.

Busy Shoes went on to open up several more stores and even started franchising a few of them. And Starbucks, as everyone knows, went on to open up a gazillion new stores. In fact, Starbucks' mantra in 1998 was "2,000 stores by the year 2000".

I remember back then hearing a bunch of bigwig financial experts saying there was no way that 2,000 Starbucks stores could stay afloat because the coffeehouse chain idea was just a fad and competition was too fierce. Obviously the experts were wrong as Starbucks now has over 12,000 stores.

Taking the concept a few steps further, in a press release last week, Starbucks Corporation announced plans to open 2,400 new stores next year and they expect to have 20,000 stores open within the next seven years.

So what's the moral of this story you ask? Starbucks knows Real Estate better than anyone! And although it's a bit of a stretch, if you connect the dots you can pretty well figure that if Starbucks isn't in your neighborhood yet, they're gonna be soon. And that can spell profits for nearby homeowners.

Sarah Gilbert writes about it in her BloggingStocks blog. It seems there's an interesting housing price phenomenon occurring when a Starbucks store plugs into a neighborhood. It appears that living within walking distance of a Starbucks is becoming a sought after "perk" for home buyers.

As the Starbucks culture continues to mature and drills down into the neighborhood level, I think we'll see this percolating price trend become more and more obvious in the years to come.

Remember what my boss did? Perking your way to profits might work for you too.

Submitted by Steve Hurley

Editor's note: This post was revised at 8:45 a.m. on Nov. 16.

It was born in the eye of a hurricane, built in just 20 days, put atop a flatbed and hauled to it's destination on the Mississippi coast. It's 308 square feet of pure cuteness and everybody wants one. It's called "The Katrina Cottage".

Everybody watched the horrors and devastation of Hurricane Katrina. The evacuees lives were pretty much ruined along with their homes. Most of them were destined for temporary emergency housing in trailers. And those trailers proved to be very problematic in more ways than one.

The biggest drawback of the evacuee trailer parks wasn't just the shoddily designed trailers that were made to last about 18 months and then tossed into the landfill. No, the biggest drawback was that people had their dignity taken away. For those who had jobs, at quitting time they went home straight into their trailer and stayed there for fear of crime or other calamity. There was no sense of community.

All that will change if this literal "Cottage Industry" takes off. The front porch is inviting and many a good conversation will surely take place. The windows are oversized to lend a light spacious feeling. And the tin roof reminds us how life used to be when times were simple but sound. The Mississippi Renewal Forum also has designed a second prototype that weighs in at about 700 sf.

Funny thing is the little yellow pup is designed so efficiently it sells for well under 50 grand, about the same as those temporary trailers purchased by FEMA. Just think of what this gem can do. Have a hundred thousand of them pre-built ready to truck to an emergency site. Put one in your backyard for a guest house, (shhhh…don't tell the in-laws). Heck you could even use it for rental income!

My daughter has already commissioned one for up on the hill, …in pink of course. :)

Oh… and rumor has it Lowes is under contract to sell them. Forget home improvement, they're gonna sell the whole enchilada!

Submitted by Steve Hurley

An interesting thing is happening on the street next to mine. There's a whole boat load of For Sale By Owner signs popping up. It's a fairly new street of luxury homes designed and built by a very respected local builder. I really like the houses. They all have intricate landscaping schemes, lots of exotic stonework on the front, pillared entrances. Definitely some nice pieces of architecture and real estate. And that's why it looks so out of place to see a menagerie of home-made signs planted in their front lawns.

To be fair, there's about 22 houses on the street and only 3 FSBO signs plus 1 Windermere sign, but that one was a FSBO before the owner wised up. So as I drive by this everyday my psychoanalysis brain automatically tries to figure out, No. 1: Why this sudden rush to sell? and No. 2: Why aren't they using agents?

#1 is the easy answer. People are just mobile, that's all. Life changes and sometimes ya just gotta pull up roots and move with it. Or maybe you get rich and want to buy a bigger box to live in. Or you get, uhhh.. let's call it, "less rich", and decide it's best to sell "the beast" and live in a smaller (less expensive) box. And of course there's good 'ol divorce… that'll change things in a hurry.

So two or three years after the purchase all this stuff starts to happen and people start to move. No biggie. Life happens. But why are they all For Sale By Owner? My guess: It's because they're underwater on their mortgages and feel they can't pay the Realtor fees. They stretched things so thin to get those mini mansions that there was absolutely no wiggle room financially. Some might even be caught up in the adjustable mortgage escalating payments trap. Who knows?

But for whatever reason they probably don't have any measurable equity in the home. They've probably been paying pretty close to "interest only" for these first years and are shocked to find that they might even have to dig into their savings to sell their house and that's just too big of a pill to swallow.

"If there would have been just one more year of appreciation" I hear them say…. but there wasn't. They took a chance on the continuation of a hot market to carry them through to solvency and they lost the bet. The rains came down, the rivers of risk went up and when the water receded all around them they were still in effect underwater on their loan.

Instead of saying better luck next time, let's just use them as an example of how to use better judgment next time. I'll share an old rule with you that I just made up. It goes like this: "If you think you're stretching your finances too thin, you are". The bank will always give you more than enough rope to hang yourself. When they tell you that you're approved for more than you are comfortable spending, simply tell them to adjust your loan approval letter downward until you feel you won't need to use a snorkel to breath.

Just my opinion of course :)

Submitted by Steve Hurley

I was cruising around the real estate net-o-sphere and came across a really really really (really?) cool site. Seattle real estate guru-ess Marlow Harris has a great website called "Unusual Life".

But before I tell you about the site, let me tell you a bit about Marlow. Her main website is SeattleDreamHomes.com. She also has a very widely read blog called 360Digest.com. She also writes for and moderates the Seattle P-I real estate blog called Seattle Real Estate Professionals, and she edits a Seattle arts and events site called SeattleNeighborhoodGuide.com.

Gosh, that makes my brain hurt just thinking about writing that much, let alone practicing real estate too. Anyway, she's an amazing writer and her Unusual Life site is even more amazing. It's full of pics and descriptions of strange, interesting, unusual, odd and artistic dwellings from around the world.

Be sure to click on the category and page links on her sidebar. There you'll find the Star Trek Apartment and the recently demolished Strange Tacoma Art House. On the site's main page you'll even find the Purple Proctor House that I wrote about here awhile back.

See? We're famous! ...sort of... (grin)

I'll bet there are more of these "interesting" homes around here. Know of one? Email me a photo and some info on it, it'll be fun!

Submitted by Steve Hurley

This is 3rd hand news, but it's funny:

From Paul Krugman’s Op-ed piece Bursting Bubble Blues [NYT subsc]

(1) Housing bubble? What housing bubble? “A national severe price distortion [in housing] seems most unlikely in the United States.” (Alan Greenspan, October 2004)

(2) “There’s a little froth in this market,” but “we don’t perceive that there is a national bubble.” (Alan Greenspan, May 2005)

(3) Housing is slumping, but “despite what you hear from some of the Eeyores in the analytical community, a recession is not visible on the horizon.” (Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, August 2006)

(4) Well, that was a lousy quarter, but “I feel good about the U.S. economy, I really do.” (Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary, last Friday)

(5) Insert expletive here.

Submitted by Steve Hurley

I can't help it. Every time I drive by one of those "Jungle Houses" I want to buy it. Ya know the kind I'm talking about. The lawn has turned to weeds that are about two feet high, the windows have never been washed, the thing has never been painted, there's junk everywhere and the gutters are falling off the roof.

My brain goes into "Fix & Flip" mode. (Buy it, Fix it, Sell it, Lay on the Beach for a month in Mexico from the profits). Most of the time just cleaning up the junk and re-painting the sucker will net you 20 grand. But unfortunately, when I look at the gas gauge on my piggybank it almost always says EMPTY, so I just continue to dream on and drive by.

Others are smarter than me however and actually do what I dream of and buy homes in various stages of disrepair in order to fix 'em and live in 'em or sell 'em for a quick buck.

If you're one of those brave real estate "Disaster Commanders" or if you just want to sell your home and need to drastically change the Junk to Equity Equation, I stumbled upon a really fun company to call. They call themselves 1-800-Got-Junk? After reading through their website I came to the conclusion that their motto ought to be: "We make taking out the trash fun!" because some of their marketing and brand-building materials are just hilarious.

There's plenty of phone numbers you can call from the classifieds or Craigslist with names like "Bob's Hellacious Hauling Company" or "Two-Men-And-A-Dump-Truck-R-US", but the 1-800-Got-Junk operation seems to work a bit differently. For me at least, it's not as scary to call a national 800 number, or better yet for us digital heads, a request for junk removal can be booked completely online.

Once you punch in your basic info, the website tells you what their schedule looks like and you can click to choose your pick-up date and time. It's a national company (Canada too) that uses local-level franchise partners to service customers in various geographical territories.

According to Hal Smith, the Tacoma area franchise owner, his company also works directly with real estate agents as an "on-call" service for clients who are preparing their homes for sale. That's a good idea in my opinion because it makes it MUCH easier to sell a home if it's clean and tidy. I love the idea of just tossing stuff into a pile in the garage and having it magically disappear.

In reality the home will sell with or without the junk. The only differences will be how long it takes to sell and how much more a buyer will pay for one that is neatly presented. This is a classic example of a time when (if you're not willing or able to do it yourself) paying someone to do something will result in a significant net gain at sale time. :)

Submitted by Steve Hurley

www.Tacondo.com