Not so long ago I lived in a place far south of here, where there were many more homes and many more people. But the Riverside-San Bernardino area, like Pierce County, had become an affordable alternative even as median home prices wildly appreciated. People sold their homes in Orange and Los Angeles counties and brought their newfound cash east, buying big suburban spreads with pools and room for their RVs.

While the inventory levels are starting to feel a little painful in Pierce County, check out what it looks like in the Riverside-San Bernardino area: 50,527 condos and homes for sale, according to Housing Tracker. Pierce County, according to the Northwest Multiple Listing Service? 8,039. Yes, it’s Southern California and the area is bigger than many states, but Riverside-San Bernardino is a bedroom community widely pitched as THE place to buy, to settle, to live a life you can afford.

Just thought I’d share a little perspective from somewhere else very different yet kind of the same.

I see a good bit of real estate marketing that touts the proximity to one thing or another. Hospitals and parks seem to be clear winners. Then you start getting into certain restaurants, YMCAs, busy roads.

And what about retailers that could very well turn off some buyers. whether it’s because they don’t need a twice-weekly trip to Costco or the congestion that comes with it. Or maybe a buyer just doesn’t like Wal-Mart.

Here’s a sampling:
• Minutes from shopping, the YMCA, Costco, and the new hospital.
• Road extension from the Wal-Mart down to cross street makes it very fast and easy to get to Meridian, Wal-Mart, shopping and the new Applebee's.
• Close to shopping and town, freeway. New Costco and future YMCA coming close by.
• Enjoy the privacy of a gated community--and proximity to I-5, Costco and South Hill Mall.
• Near Wal-Mart, schools, buslines.
• Close to shopping: Fred Meyer shopping center, the new Wal-Mart, and Winco is coming soon!!

Is it risky to play up the proximity to any one thing? Or does such marketing appeal to the kind of buyer who would be looking in a typically more suburban area already?

(This is usually a Monday feature, but I figured you were all barbecuing and water skiing yesterday so decided to do it today instead.)

Every now and then you’ll find a South Sound home with a flaky exterior and sweet, creamy middle. These are what are advertised as “cream puffs.”

Look today and you’ll find one in Puyallup, Tacoma and Auburn. A sampling: "This one is a creampuff! A must see!" These three range in price from $174,999 to $299,950.

While I can appreciate the desire for creative language that makes a listing stand out, I’m not sure what image I’m supposed to take from the “cream puffs.” A synonym for sweet or adorable? Maybe. One of these homes, however, did not rate very high on the attractiveness scale from the outside, at least according to the pictures.

Any thoughts?

We all know location is among the most important attributes of a home up for sale. Usually, it seems that the location plays one way or the other – favorable or not.

But I’m sensing something of a love-hate relationship with Meridian, the road lined with retail and often clogged with traffic that runs through Puyallup and, importantly, to the South Hill Mall.

Take a look at these snippets, all taken from recent listings:
“Easy to get to Meridian”
“NO Meridian traffic”
“Avoid the Meridian mess”
“Located near Meridian”
“Why live any further down Meridian?”
“Keeps you away from that infamous Meridian traffic”
“Easy access to Meridian and 176th”

So knowing there’s a split between whether it’s better to easily get to Meridian or avoid it, how wise is it to play up or down a home’s proximity to the busy road? Are sellers going to turn buyers off from Puyallup/South Hill by reminding them what a mess Meridian can be? What about the rest of the South Sound – any other local hot spots buyers and sellers can’t agree on?

In the second installment of Real Speak, let’s look at “new price.” I was going to write about the recent proliferation of “reduced price” in fliers and ads but became more intrigued by the attempt to positively spin the need to cut an asking price.

I saw it here:

And here:

And then in this ad for a Tacoma house listed at $295,000:
“Wow!! Hot new price!! Just reduced again!! Will sell fast!!”

So why “new price” instead of “reduced price”? A better ring? Is it something like pricing a home at $399,900 rather than $400,000? Don’t buyers know that a new price is the same as a reduced one?

John L. Scott agent David Gala, who's selling the first house pictured (in Fircrest for $249,950), said he's been using the term "new price" for about 10 years.

"Through the years, it’s amazing how many people have said I don’t like price reduced, because it makes it look like we’re desperate. But they don’t mind new price," he said.

What do you think?

I'm going to try something new on Open House that I hope to make a regular Monday feature: Examining the language real estate agents use when trying to sell a house. It will be called Real Speak.

I plan to pick one or two phrases, put them out there, expound a bit and then see what you think. I’d love to get some feedback from real estate agents. And sellers. And buyers.

Let’s start with this one:

In randomly selecting 10 ads around the South Sound, I found variations of “bring offers” two times. One was for a supposedly immaculate house with new Pergo flooring. Doesn’t calling for offers automatically dilute the ability to get the best offer? Doesn’t asking for offers scream to buyers you don’t have a hope of getting the price advertised? And why would sellers be interested in putting their property in such a position?

P.S. A huge round of applause to biz reporter superstar John Gillie, who came up with the superb name for this new feature.

One of the things I noticed when I recently bought a condo is how readily people ask: How much did it cost? It strikes me as a somewhat personal question, though I usually answer it. And the price is public record, and it’s a question I obviously want people to answer if I’m doing a story. Not to mention the info is increasingly available without having to visit the assessor’s office.

But I wonder if anyone out there finds the question a little much. Does it rank somewhere near asking how much someone makes for a living – a question I think a lot of people don’t want to answer. What about dress size? Or what you paid for your car?

I wanted to let you all know that the first sentence from today's home price story was cut off in print and online.

It should have read:

Pierce County’s median home price hit a record high of $282,000 in February as sales activity cooled.

Followed by:

New figures released Wednesday by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service show more than 6,000 homes were for sale in February – an increase of 45 percent from the same month a year ago. The crush of listings hit elsewhere too, with double-digit percentage increases in all but two of the 19 counties tracked by the MLS.

The TNT was having major technical difficulties yesterday afternoon and into the evening, which also prevented me from posting to the blog. So while embarrassing and unfortunate, the story has been fixed online.

So I relaunched Open House this week, and I want to thank you in advance for reading and encourage you to pepper the blog with questions, observations and witticisms. Real estate-related would be good, but I could also sustain online conversations on the best Americano in town, favorite travel destinations or what to do when your car is stolen (yes, mine was taken and recovered last month).

Feel free to suggest real estate topics you’d like to see better covered, anything odd or interesting you’re seeing in the market or a great Web site you’ve stumbled upon.

Let’s start things off with Zillow.com. You might have already visited the Seattle company’s Web site to check out the value of your (or your neighbors’) home. The company provides data on millions of houses and condos, including charts that track supposed values for up to 10 years once you type in an address. The Seattle company won’t reveal how it derives the values, called “Zestimates," which pop up alongside number of bedrooms, bathrooms and square footage.

I ran my mom’s house in Kitsap County. The value looked good (maybe a little too good), but most of the stats listed were inaccurate, including square footage, number of bedrooms and acreage. A spokesman told me that such statistics are pulled from county records so the county must have it wrong.

How does your house (or your neighbors' – you know you’ve looked!) stack up? (See our previous blog coverage of Zillow here.)

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.