The upside of all this housing gloom is that homes that previously seemed unreachably expensive are now more reasonably priced - at least for those with cash and good credit.

We're planning a story or stories about the relative bargains that are now available on the market.

Real estate folks, e-mail me, John Gillie, at john.gillie@thenewstribune.com, with your nominations for the best bargain houses or condos available now.

Include your reasons for nominating the home. For example, it's priced substantially below what the neighbors paid for their homes, it's 60 percent of last year's asking price, it comes with a free cruise on the Amazon or the owner is willing to finance with zero down.

We're looking for a variety of properties at several price points and in several areas of the South Sound.

Our selections will be made somewhat arbitrarily with an eye toward providing our readers a broad idea of what's available on the market. If your nomination isn't picked, it's nothing personal. It may be that we just had too many nominations for 4-bedroom homes in Proctor.

A Wall Street Journal story examines some Puget Sound subdivisions populated by cottages centered around common courtyards. And when they say cottages, they mean small, particularly by traditional subdivision standards: 800 to 1,500 square feet.

Even some of the condos being sold as ideal for downsizing in downtown Tacoma are bigger.

From what I read – built-in bookcases, corner windows, skylights – there’s a lot to like in these houses, which also tap into today’s bent toward conservation. Less home takes up more space and uses less energy. But they tend to cost more for their attention to detail.

What do you think? Worthwhile or trendy or fine for the Prius set but few others? The big question: Could you be enticed to buy one?

Here’s an excerpt of the story:

While falling home prices and sluggish sales have slashed new housing starts by a quarter in the past year, Messrs. Chapin and Soules say they field a dozen calls a week asking, “When’s your next project?” They have one house left for sale, a two-bedroom, two-bath cottage of 1,000 square feet in Redmond.

At $599,950, it isn’t cheap. The median price last month for a single-family home in the neighborhood was $542,500. Residents of the tiny tracts say they don’t mind paying a premium for such touches are hardwood floors and custom cabinets because the two men develop more than just housing.

“We walk into each others houses and borrow sugar and do all the kinds of things you did in the 1950s,” says Pat Hundhausen, a retired special education teacher. Her Umatilla Hill development, like the others, is a throwback to the bungalow courtyard, a design that appeared in the 1920s, before traditional, single-family tract housing gave form to postwar suburbia. Mrs. Hundhausen and her husband left Waukesha, Wis., their hometown of 40 years, after visiting friends a couple of years ago in Umatilla Hill. It took the couple less than a week to buy a nearby lot.

The small-home buyers are a mix of single professionals, young families and retired empty-nesters. While aspirants to the traditional American Dream seek ever bigger, more secluded homes, residents here say they prefer making do with less. Getting to know the neighbors is a bonus. Todd Staheli and his wife are raising two daughters in a 998-square-foot house surrounded by people they greet by name. “There are a lot of eyes on them as they ride their scooters and bikes,” says Mr. Staheli.

The houses are painted in Easter-egg pastels of salmon, yellow and avocado green, adding to the tract’s storybook feel. Residents tend thickets of poppies, lavender, catmint, roses and lilies. Their front-yard gardens are surrounded by a knee-high fence, leading out to a sidewalk and the grass commons. Single-car garages are built along an edge of the tracts, which are usually set back from a main street or connected by private road.

Click below for the full story.

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Looking for an older home? Centralia was named one of the 12 best places in the nation to find one by the magazine, “This Old House.”

Along with old houses, you’d really have to enjoy small town life to warm up to most places on the list. Among those identified were neighborhoods or towns in just about every region, from South Carolina and Texas to Pennsylvania, New York and Michigan. Albany, Ore., also made the list.

From the magazine: Centralia is located halfway between Portland and Seattle (both are about 90 minutes away) and is close to both Olympia and Tacoma. For those who live in Centralia's Edison District—adjacent to the revitalized historic downtown—movie theaters, antique shops, and the Olympic Club, a brick 1915 tavern, are a block away.

Close to Tacoma? I think of Puyallup or Gig Harbor as close to Tacoma, not a small railroad/logging town about an hour's drive south. Always interesting to see how national publications view our corner of the world.

More on Centralia from the magazine: Most homes date back to the Victorian era, including sturdy Queen Annes and Stick Victorians. Craftsmans, many with full-length columned front porches, are also easy to find. Homes in the Edison District range from $250,000 for an 1,800-square-foot Craftsman to $600,000 for a massive Queen Anne.

If you’re in search of old houses closer to home, there’s also a list of best places to buy in what the magazine considers the Northwest, which turns out to be a pretty broad swath that includes Northern California and Wyoming.

Here are the other Northwest locales on the regional list:
North End, Boise, Idaho
Eureka, Calif.
South Central, Helena, Montana
Rainsford Historic Distric, Cheyene, Wyo.
Casey-Shattuck, Juneau, Ala.

The California mansion featured in my favorite movie, “The Godfather,” is for sale and could yield the largest residential transaction ever, according to The Real Estate Bloggers. (In the movie, it’s where Tom Hagen dines with the stubborn movie producer, who finds a severed horse head in his bed the next morning.)

The house is listed at $165 million.

The Real Estate Bloggers said the next biggest transactions include the Spelling mansion for $150 million and an Aspen home for $135 million.

The mansion, apparently, is shaped like the letter “H” and has 29 bedrooms and three pools. So enough room for you and a few friends. Could be just the thing for some of our Northwest executives looking for a Cali getaway.

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

"Thoughtless, developer driven tract homes" vs. "Beautiful, thoughtful, architecturally designed homes".

Whoa… those sound like Fightin' words!

Actually, they're phrases spoken kindly by Sausalito architect Michelle Kaufmann who has created several outstanding eco-friendly modular style homes.

I don't know about you, but this global warming thing is beginning to bug me in a subtle but un-nerving way. In my lifetime I've been about as good about following ecological guidelines as I have about following healthy eating habits… That is to say, not very well. I've always preferred a nice juicy double bacon cheeseburger to a plate of rabbit food.

But gosh darn it I'm determined to change my way of thinking. And if the truth were to be known, I might even decide to go nuts and go totally green someday.
The thing is, it's gotta be easy. Most people, I would say, would choose the path of lesser impact on Ms. Earth as long as it doesn't cramp their lifestyle. Well I might have stumbled on a way in real estate terms to have your carrot cake and eat it too.

For years you might have seen those modular homes along side of Hwy 512 (near the Steele Street exit) built and sold by Evergreen Modular Homes. Recently however, Evergreen was purchased by a company called MK Constructs. Are you catching on to the connection here? MK = Michelle Kaufmann?

Yup. Yesterday I talked to the president of the company, Paul Warner, a delightful man who says the former Evergreen Modular facility is being converted to manufacture the MK Designs homes utilizing the latest techniques in modular technology. And according to the website, the Lakewood factory will build homes for the California, Washington, Oregon and Hawaii markets.

For you architecture fans, Michelle K has some incredible educational roots as she was a student of internationally renowned architect Michael Graves at Princeton and also worked for Frank Gehry (Experience Music Project) in Los Angeles for five years before moving to the Bay Area to open her own office.

The whole idea behind the structures are to get as close as possible to that Holy Grail of ecology: "Zero waste produced and Zero energy consumed". I doubt if anyone has gotten any closer on a production level. I know that quite a few local builders are beginning to use Built Green standards in some of their construction, but it seems as though it's primarily marketing driven rather than a core part of their company philosophy.

All in all, this a refreshing trend in the building industry. And the builders who are participating in this worthwhile trend are to be commended.

I wonder if I'm still allowed to eat fries with my vegeburger?

Submitted by Steve Hurley

www.Tacondo.com

Just in time for Halloween, the MouseKingdom Blog reports that The Harry Packer Mansion is for sale for a cool 1.75 million dollars.

If the picture looks familiar but you just can't put your finger on it, ask your kids "what building in Orlando has 999 ghosts in it?" If they say "The Haunted Mansion in Disney World," they're right.

The Disney mansion isn't for sale of course, but this one built in 1874 served as the inspiration for the spooky manor that Walt built.

There's an interesting real estate lesson in this too. Apparently the home, now being run as a bed and breakfast, has been on the market for awhile. It seems to be priced to sell, but it isn't selling. The current owner is even willing to throw in all the furniture and still it sits without an offer.

Why? The location. It's waaaaaaaaaaay overbuilt for the neighborhood and even too pricy for the town itself. Seems the small town of Jim Thorpe in Pennsylvania has some of the lowest home prices in the area, with incomes to match.

So there it is again, you've heard it a thousand times before. It doesn't matter if you're buying, selling or remodeling, Real Estate is all about location, location, location.

(Thanks Derek for the tip)

Submitted by Steve Hurley

www.Tacondo.com

Last year I helped secure the permit for a "little house". It was kind of funny when we rolled out the plans at the Pierce County annex. The first thing the plans examiner asked was, "how big is this thing anyway?" "Oh, about 15,000 square feet", I said with a big grin.

The second thing he asked as he crooked his head sideways was, "how many garage stalls did you say there were?" As I recall, there were 11 garage stalls drawn on the plans.

Knowing that particular client, he's probably added a few more bays by now. But then again, he can pretty much afford whatever he wants, so it's not much of a stretch to imagine him throwing in helipad too just for the heck of it.

Here's an interesting twist. A couple of weeks ago I got a flyer in my inbox for a new development in Auburn called Pinnacle Estates. Steve Jensen Homes, (who happens to be one of my favorite builders), is the general contractor and the homes are "priced from the $700's"… (you know what that means, lol).

Anyway, I was reading through the features list and it looked like pretty standard fare for the price range, but then my eyes just about bugged out. Up to 6 car garages available! Whoa, hold on there trigger, did I read that right? Six car garages?

Yup, turns out it's a pretty popular option according to the listing agent. Now these are tandem style garages mind you. That is, they're basically "double-depth" 3 car garages. But if you back all the cars out you could still host a neighborhood roller rink night in that puppy.

I told my wife I need more garage space because my measly little 3-car garage just wasn't cuttin' it anymore. She reached into the cupboard and grabbed a frying pan to hit me upside the head… so I decided to drop the whole idea. :)

Submitted by Steve Hurley

www.Tacondo.com (it's a secret, but you can look)

Let's say you have relatives in Northern Vermont but staying at their place always seems a bit "confining." Let's also assume that you've got an itch to buy some vacation property. What should you do? Why, buy a castle of course!

Here's one that's For Sale by Owner. Listed at $795,000.

This 16 year old Bavarian Style Castle-Home features a Grand Hall, dumbwaiter, (no not the guy who wouldn't stop cranking the pepper grinder on your Caesar salad), aircraft hangar, airstrip, trout pond, and even a moat. (where's the drawbridge and catapults???)

Hmmmm…. better yet, how about if someone from around here builds one just like it on American Lake. Then you can invite me over for a trout dinner. :)

Submitted by Steve Hurley

www.Tacondo.com

A few days ago I wrote an article about how color is finally making a comeback around here. One reader from the North End was kind enough to send me a photo of her house, and I gotta say that when I clicked on the pic a big grin flashed across my face.

Once in awhile I see houses like this and I just love 'em. They have such charm and character. Yes, I've seen paint jobs that are just plain bizarre, but to me at least, artistic homes like this are just so dang cute they just make me want to sprinkle sugar on them.

A little history on this one. It's owned by Ana and her husband Lynn Jonsson. Lynn is one of our very cool local artists who certainly has a touch for the whimsical The house was built in 1920 and apparently this is only the 2nd time it's been painted… the previous paint job was only primer!

Now try to imagine an artist living in a house with just primer on it…. can you spell PAINTER'S CANVAS ??? Sure enough, Lynn couldn't resist getting out his paint brush and adding that "little creative touch" here and there, lol.

Anyway, it made me think that some new checkboxes ought to be added to the MLS search criteria. I'd like to be able to search the listings for homes with descriptions like, "charming" or "bungalow" or "cute". Wouldn't you?

Come on, jump on in with a comment. Tell us what kind of criteria buttons you'd like to see in that property search box. :)

And oh, BTW this house is for sale, MLS # 26110971

Submitted by Steve Hurley

www.Tacondo.com (shhhhh…. it's a secret)

When I grew up, the houses on our block were all painted different colors. We lived in a new subdivision and everyone chose colors that fit their personality, and oddly enough, it worked.

Then in the 80's, along came the "Northwest Color Palette." Some corporate design expert must have decided that if you were going to buy a new house it was going to be beige or grey or some other boring variant of neutral. All the houses looked pretty much the same and the architectural landscape became about as exciting as the finish on a cement sidewalk.

Lately though I've spotted shades of life sprouting from the paint bucket again. Here's a shot of some DR Horton (doesn't that name remind you of Dr. Seuss?) homes in Fife.

And one builder at The Buttes in Orting is even experimenting with using natural wood finishes for major accent areas.

But the area that takes the cake for color is downtown Tacoma of all places. The new condo explosion is spattering it's vibrant color swatches all over the Foss facing hillside landscape. The City Steps project is nearing completion and it's going to look great. Even the older buildings are beginning to show their colors.

So nowadays I look in my wallet and see the new multi-colored legal tender. And coincidentally as I view the new construction sites, it looks like the builders are following suit by infusing color into their housing currency too.

I think it's all pretty cool. Do you?

Submitted by Steve Hurley

Reprinted with permission from:
www.NewHomeReportBlog.com