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Nearly 60% of consumers who claim to live in a haunted house say they didn’t know their house was haunted until after they moved in, reveals a new survey from realtor.com®.

What makes a house haunted? Strange noises and shadows are the spookiest occurrences reported by homeowners. Forty-eight percent of survey respondents said items inside the home shifted on their own, 47% said certain rooms felt haunted, 46% said they would feel touched, and 44% said their home had hot and cold spots, according to realtor.com®’s fourth annual Haunted Real Estate Report.

“Moving into a new home is a really exciting time, but finding out that your new abode has an unwanted guest can definitely put a damper on the celebration,” says Nate Johnson, chief…

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In a recent ad campaign, real estate startup Bungalo has announced that throughout the month of October, they will be checking their listed properties for paranormal activity.

The real estate company even hired actual paranormal investigators to visit their properties in order to find out if they have ghosts. The investigators include Jeremy Rettig of Genesis Paranormal Services, as well as Becky Vickers who has appeared on the television shows Ghost Adventures and Ghost Stories.

Josh Stolz, who is the creative director at Bungalo, stated, “This is our first real campaign that takes a step into a bit more of a creative territory,” adding, “We wanted to show both aspects: the regular inspection combined with the paranormal inspection.”

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Over the  years many of us have come across this with buyers, so in light of the new commission changes I have reached out to many of our agents from here and across the country  and locally here is the Seattle market for their best objections to buyers when they say: “I only want to work with the listing agent.”

The overwhelming number of responses lead us to a lot of good material, including simple explanations of what listing agents do, giving advice, one-liners and the all-powerful “good luck.”

Here are our favorite responses. Try out the ones you like the next time you come up against this objection.

Use a one-liner

Sometimes, all you need is a sentence or two to get the job done. Short, sweet and to the point, here are some of the…

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Public Display of Agent Commissions Begins now on www.TheCascadeTeam.com 

Read More: Conversations On Real Estate Commissions
  

In an attempt to get ahead of looming outside forces, broker-owned multiple listing service Northwest MLS is changing its rules to allow the public display of buyer broker commissions, starting October 1.

The rule changes will allow the NWMLS’s 30,000 agent and broker members to publish the amount of commission the seller is offering a buyer’s broker on the subscribers’ websites along with other listing details.

“Making this information readily available to consumers will allow for complete transparency with regard to buyers’ broker’s compensation and provide consumers with additional information at the outset of…

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It’s not Malibu, Beverly Hills, or The Hamptons, but Sammamish that tops the 2018 census list of the richest city in the United States. While many people look at the median income in Seattle topping $93,000 and feel staggered by that number  it was Sammamish, which had a median household income last year of a whopping $183,000, that ranks No. 1 among all the 630 cities for which the Census Bureau produced 2018 income data. It also marks the first time that a Washington city has come out on top for household income.

And not to be left behind, three additional eastside cities: (Redmond, Kirkland and Bellevue) also top Seattle!

See the income chart provided by The Seattle Times below:

 

Gene Balk / FYI Guy: gbalk@seattletimes.com

The…

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