The questions people
actually ask me.

Yes, and it is the largest part of my business right now.

Relocation buyers have a different problem from local buyers. You are choosing a neighborhood you have never lived in, often on one visit and sometimes on none, while coordinating a start date and a move. The work is narrowing the map before you get on a plane, so the trip is spent confirming a shortlist rather than discovering the region from scratch.

Earlier than most people do. Sixty to ninety days before your start date is comfortable. Thirty is workable.

The reason is sequencing, not urgency. Talk to a lender first, because what you actually qualify for sets your price range, and your price range determines which areas are even on the table. People who call an agent before a lender routinely spend two weeks looking at the wrong price point, and that is two weeks they do not get back.

That tradeoff is the most common relocation question I get, and I am not going to email you a list of neighborhoods, because the list changes completely based on your budget, your schedule and whether you have a car.

What I will do is walk you through commute times at the hours you would actually travel, not the times a map app shows at 2pm, what your budget buys in each area, and what the daily routine looks like in each one. Then you pick. The people who end up happiest with this decision are the ones who saw the real tradeoffs rather than a ranked list.

For most of the last four years, buyers here had very little leverage. That has changed, and it has not changed in the way people expect.

King County has been running around 3.9 months of supply with homes closing near 99 percent of list. That means inspection contingencies, repair requests and seller-paid rate buydowns are genuinely negotiable again. What it does not mean is falling prices. If you are waiting for a crash, you are waiting for something the data does not support while ignoring the concessions sitting on the table today.

The full breakdown with current numbers is here.

Yes. Primarily off-market acquisitions, land and infill, development deals with builders, and buy and hold.

I started wholesaling and flipping in 2013 and bought my first rental in 2018, so this is not a service line I added because it sounded good. Most of my own transactions never touch the MLS, which is also why public estimates of my average sale price run lower than the real number.

A property that sells without being publicly listed.

It matters because the MLS is where every buyer in the region is already looking, and that is where competition lives. Off-market deals come from relationships, direct outreach, and knowing which owners are considering a sale before they have called anyone. That work is slow and unglamorous, and it is most of the reason the numbers on an off-market deal look different from a listed one.

Sometimes. The honest version is more complicated than the version sold online.

There are loan programs with low down payment requirements. There are seller financing and creative structures that work in specific situations and fail badly outside them. There are partnerships. What none of them do is remove the requirement that the deal actually make sense on its own numbers.

I wrote a book about this because the short answer misleads people in both directions. Before you talk to anyone about strategy, talk to a lender about what you qualify for today. I am a broker, not a lender, and that conversation is theirs.

Start with what is adopted, not what is proposed. Seattle changed its Neighborhood Residential rules in January, and that change is in effect. The larger rezone covering centers and transit corridors is still a proposal that has been trimmed at least once.

Automated valuations are valuing your house. If your land is worth more than the structure on it, no automated tool is going to tell you that. I wrote about how to tell the difference here.

I still list, still sell, and still take the calls. Licensed since 2009, and ranked among the top agents in this market since my second year.

A broker who has stopped transacting is giving you advice from memory.

Greater Seattle and King County, including Seattle, Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond, Issaquah, Renton and the greater Eastside. I am licensed in Washington State only.

Start with an instant valuation, which gives you a real number in about a minute from available data. Then understand its limits.

Automated estimates lean on recent comparable sales. In a market where the zoning rules just changed, many of those comparables predate the change. And if your property has development potential, an automated estimate will almost certainly understate it, because it is valuing the house rather than the land.

No Money No Problem is written for real estate agents first, and first-time investors second. It is about acquiring property without conventional financing, strong credit, or cash sitting in savings, which is exactly the position I was in when I got licensed in 2009 after being laid off as a union ironworker.

It is not a motivation book. If you want someone to tell you that you can do it, this is not it. If you want to know what to do next, it is. More about the book here.

Yes, Washington State only.

Compensation is set per agent rather than from a published tier chart. The brokerage handles lead generation, brand and content production, and transaction operations. Every conversation is confidential, nothing gets said to anyone at your current brokerage, and if it is not a fit I will tell you on the first call.

The full version is here.