Madison Park Times Real Estate 01-01-22

Real Estate Madison Park Times

Inventory to stay tight in the coming year

Goldman Sachs forecasting U.S. home prices will soar another 16 percent in 2022

Phew, it’s been a wild year!

Hope you had a very happy holiday season and wishing you a great start to the new year! We can take a look ahead at the market and a brief snapshot of the past 45 days. How does 2022 look?

To quote Goldman Sachs (October), they are forecasting U.S. home prices will soar another 16 percent over the next year; at press we have already seen a 6 percent rise. This is a slight deceleration in the growth of home prices —

which are up 17.7 percent over the past 12 months alone.

Inventory in 2022 will certainly remain tight, and interest rates will likely also rise. The hope is that wage growth will help balance things a bit!

Spafford Robbins Property Views

There is a lot of new construction that will be hitting the market, but builders are still dealing with labor and supply issues, so that is putting greater pressure on inventory.

Here is a snapshot of the past 45 days! These numbers certainly highlight the last of inventory.

By The Numbers (11/10/21-

12/25/21)

Denny Blaine, Broadmoor, Washington/ Madison Park (single family homes)

8 Sold homes

Average Sales Price $4,028,625

Average Days on Market: 27

Average Price Per Square Foot:

$866

Lowest Sales Price: $1,202,500

Highest Sales Price: $8,750,000

There are currently two active properties for sale, one at 1214 Parkshore Drive E. listed at $3,150,000 and another at 3338 Shore Drive.

There are currently three

THE NEW YEAR BLESS YOU WITH HEALTH, PROSPERITY, AND HAPPINESS.

moirαpresents

“Inventory in 2022 will certainly remain tight, and interest rates will likely also rise. The hope is that wage growth will help balance things a bit."

properties pending sale at time of print with an average list price of $2,725,000 and an average days on market of 65 days.

Denny Blaine, Broadmoor, Washington/Madison Park (condominiums)

3 Sold homes

Average Sales Price $698,333

Average Days on Market: 11

Average Price per Square Foot:

$779

Lowest Sales Price: $490,000

Highest Sales Price: $820,000

There are currently two active properties for sale one at 1616 41st Ave. E. #105 for $385,000 and the second at 1620 43rd Ave. E. #22B at $2,575,000.

There are currently four properties pending sale with an average offering price of $1,983,750, ranging from $595,000 to $4,850,000, with an average days on market of 125 days.

I am honored and happy to help with anything I can in maneuvering this ever-changing and dynamic Seattle real estate market. My team and I at GBK/ Compass are here to assist with the presentation of your home, thoughtful home search or just share some thoughts on where we see the market today!

Spafford Robbins, GBK/Compass SpaffordRobbins.com

Bark is beautiful

Summer’s flowers and fall’s leaves have fallen away, and the winter garden reveals a new world of beauty wrought in bark.

Like a sepia photo, without color to jostle for our attention, texture jumps into relief.

If you pause a moment, there’s riveting pattern everywhere outside — mottled, gnarled, gleaming, striated and speckled. This often-overlooked element creates a springboard to rich plant combinations that can get you through the winter.

Among flashy barks, probably the most popular is the stark white paper birch (Betula papyrifera), so much so that people buy real and faux logs and branches for decoration indoor and out.

Native to the northeast, it’s a winter icon, but unfortunately has become susceptible to bronze birch borer recently in Seattle. Alternatives include Himalayan birch (Betula utilis), which is white barked and grows 40 feet tall, and peachy tan river birch (Betula nigra), which comes in more compact varieties for urban gardens, like HERITAGE, featured in the Great Plant Picks website, https://www.greatplant-

picks.org/.

The maples have many beautiful bark offerings, perhaps none more so than the paperbark maple (Acer griseum), which peels in layers from glossy cinnamon to olive and buff.

To pump up the drama, find bark that contrasts with its plant partners or your house color.

Glossy evergreens can set off bark nicely, whether as a backdrop or a base. An unforgettable combination at a neighbor’s house last spring highlighted orange and red bicolor tulips framed by the mahogany bark. Luscious.

If the bark is colorful enough — like that of the “Pacific Fire” vine maple tree or some of the shrubby dogwoods (Cornus sericea and C. alba varieties) — it can hold its own against the ashiest Seattle sky.

Planted in community, red branches emit an ethereal haze that leavens stolid conifers and broad-leafed evergreens. Averaging about 8 feet tall and wide, these dogwoods take up some serious room. I had to remove a lovely Cornus “Bud’s Yellow” with lemon stems that was crowd-

“If you pause a moment, there’s riveting pattern everywhere outside — mottled, gnarled, gleaming, striated and speckled."

ing its neighbors and sending up colonies. For smaller spaces, seek out “Artic Fire” (sunset orange, about 4 feet) or “Kelsey’s Dwarf” (crimson, 2 feet-ish). Trimmings can spice up winter container plantings.

At Blooms of Bressingham’s nursery in the United Kingdom, Adrian Bloom uses these bark superstars liberally in his renowned Winter Garden.

White birches erupt from purple winter heath, as an apricot dogwood fog hovers in the background.

There are so many choices to add texture and color to your garden’s views this time of year.

Cherry trees’ horizontal hashmarks look like some kind of calligraphy waiting to be decoded, and some, like Tibetan cherry (Prunus serrula), shine in bronze tones. Stewartia and crepe myrtle sport mottled patches and drops,

SEE GARDEN, PAGE 7

”We were referred to Laura Halliday from a friend in Seattle who highly recommended her based on her own experience buying a home in Broadmoor. Because we were buying the house while on the East Coast, her partnership was even more critical and valuable. Laura was our eyes on the ground. She visited numerous houses on our behalf and was quick to point out potential pros and cons. After six months we found

on Mercer Island and Laura helped us structure our offer with the right

bidding process. We are very excited to move back to Seattle and have Laura to thank for

us our dream house. We highly recommend you use Laura to help you find your next house in the Greater Seattle Area.” - Ken and Alison Kido

Seattle Rep announces ‘Freestyle Love Supreme’

Tickets are on sale for the Broadway tour of “Freestyle Love Supreme” premiering in Seattle at Seattle Rep from Feb. 16 to March 13 on the Bagley Wright Stage. Purchase tickets online at SeattleRep.org, or by calling the Patron Services Office at (206) 443-2224.

“Freestyle Love Supreme” is the critically-acclaimed improv production conceived by Anthony Veneziale and created by Veneziale, Thomas Kail and Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Created before “In the Heights” and “Hamilton” and directed by Kail, “Freestyle Love Supreme” is a “thrilling, improvised musical comedy show that features talented performers providing non-stop action throughout this fast-paced evening, spinning suggestions from the audience into humorous bits, instantaneous songs and riffs, and fully realized musical numbers,” acording to a press release. The vocals of the performers – from singing to rapping to beat-boxing with harmonies and freestyle flow – are backed by tunes from keyboards and human percussion. The show is created live every night with the audience contributing words, ideas and inspiration. No two shows are ever the same.

Freestyle Love Supreme’s company on tour includes Andrew Bancroft, also known as “Jelly Donut;” Jay C. Ellis, AKA “Jellis;” Aneesa Folds, AKA “Young

From left to right: ‘Freestyle Love Supreme’ cast members Chris Sullivan, Wayne Brady, Anthony Veneziale,

and Kurt Crowley (on keyboard) perform at the Booth Theatre. The show is premiering in Seattle at Seattle Rep’s Bagley Wright Stage beginning in February.

Nees;” Kaila Mullady, AKA Kaiser Rözé;” Morgan Reilly, AKA “Hummingbird;” Chris Sullivan, AKA “Shockwave;” and Anthony Veneziale, AKA “Two-Touch.”

Special spontaneous and unannounced guests from Seattle are planned for select performances during the run and also may include Freestyle Love Supreme

members Lin-Manuel Miranda, Christopher Jackson, Daveed Diggs, James Monroe Iglehart, Wayne Brady, Ashley Pérez Flanagan, Arthur Lewis, Bill Sherman, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Alex Lacamoire and many more.

According to a press release, “Freestyle Love Supreme” pays homage to John Coltrane’s “A

Love Supreme,” with a nod to musical roots in jazz, soul, blues and hip-hop. Watch a message from the Freestyle Love Supreme cast at https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=rEckFNKHpEI.

WHEN: Feb. 16 - March 13

Performance times: Tuesday–Sunday Select Saturday, Sunday and Wednesday matinees at 2:00

p.m. and evening performances at 7:30 p.m.

WHERE: Seattle Rep’s Bagley Wright Theater, located at Seattle Center at the corner of Second Avenue and Mercer Street. For more information, go to https://www. seattlerep.org/plays/202122-season/freestyle-love-supreme/.

Interlaken Icicle Dash

At the start of every mayoral election, there are new sparks of hope. These sparks may be emotional or symbolic, but either way, candidates elicit sparks. And sparks are many things, but they always shed a little light. Which helps us to see our way forward.

Blind faith

Mary

Lou Sanelli Falling Awake

And that’s what we want, isn’t it? To see our way forward. To feel like we are doing something to move beyond our mistakes. Because a city is fragile, such a fragile thing. A city can fall faster than anyone imagines. But, like I said, new hope!

I wanted to like Lorena Gonza-

les, I really did. But her effects on me were two: First, I felt like she was putting our city at further risk, and I sensed a worrisome threat I could never completely shake off.

Secondly, and far worse, she, a few other council members, our out-going mayor and the head of Decriminalize Seattle who still wants added cuts to the budget of Seattle’s Police Department, well, these women have caused me to really question myself. I thought women would do a better job. By now, I think most of us know we cannot de-fund our way out of a crisis. Most people want a police response when they call

9-1-1. Because what does it really mean to have the police feel under appreciated, underfunded? Whatever it means, it is never good for a city, and the people who talk as if it is have almost never lived anywhere where this is so. Given the high stakes of a lawless city, who in his right mind wants to be a social experiment?

The point, or points, I mean to bring up is that from the very beginning, I feared these women would put their ideals above diplomacy, which they eventually did. I used to tell myself, any day now, I am going to feel confident that they know what they are doing. After a while, I just had to admit that gender has little to do with leadership skill. I mean it’s a fine enough word: gender — rife with significance, but I will now vote based on one human being at a time, regardless of it. Which is why, the day before the election I was texting everyone I knew, asking them, pleading with them, to vote for Bruce Harrell.

There are days, like today, when I see so clearly how being a visiting dance teacher has given me new perspective on our political challenges. See, even the most rundown town can have a ballet studio. And the thing that is most troubling to me is how rundown so much of our state is.

“By now, I think most of us know we cannot de-fund our way out of a crisis."

out there.

There are exceptions, such as college towns like Ellensburg. And Walla Walla has reinvented itself into a wine-tasting mecca, a little gem of Syrah success, triggering investors to buy up surrounding farmland and plow under the fruit and nut trees to make room for more and more vines while TRUMP 2024 signs shoot up as fast as vineyard stakes.

Why? Because the next generation who thought they’d be orchard farmers feel left out of the tech-affluent, investment, corporate culture of the coast.

There is a sense of despair when the only jobs to hope for are ones that are going to have you filling orders for Amazon in a windowless concrete hanger.

This is what I saw, and what I felt I understood, in eastern Washington: that people are put off by anything that seems to stand for “socialism,” and a tightfisted resistance to anything that might in fact be positive for their town if it presented by the “other side,” or, as a father of one of my choreography students put it and not all that jokingly, “you crazy folks in Seattle.”

I’d anticipated seeing a few towns that are down on their luck, but I didn’t think there would be so many, which is really how it is

GARDEN, FROM PAGE 2

like a watercolor of a pond.

Willows (Salix spp.) can have lovely red, yellow or like my “Haruko Nishiki,” burgundy bark to complement its pink and white leaves.

More subtle, but no less striking, include shrubs like oakleaf or climbing hydrangea vine, known for peeling bark, or roses like Rosa glauca, with dusky burgundy bark.

In my garden, I designated a corner seen from the dining room window as my mini-winter garden — and the changing view cheers me for months.

Hellebores ground the scene with leathery evergreen foliage in inky blue-green punctuated now with white flowers.

Backed by a robust — some might say overgrown — “P.J.M.” rhododendron, Kerria japonica (which later will bring acid yellow spring flowers) lights up the edge now with a scramble of chartreuse stems echoing the buttery witchhazel (Hamamelis) hybrid flowers. While I wouldn’t call it pretty in the same way, in the foreground our venerable plum tree’s nubby aged bark and gnarled fingers make satisfying viewing, as the wrinkles and knots spell out its history and speak of years of harvests, jams and pass-by snacking. The winter landscape repays slower, introspective viewing, and it just gets more beautiful the closer you look.

fully understand what employment-hopelessness feels like. But those that know what it feels like, know. My last tour helped me to realize there is another flicker of hope that people will put their faith in when they see no other spark of light: blind trust. I admire politicians who can face up to accountability on both sides, but I don’t meet a lot of them lately, do you?

I don’t know why I’m asking you this, except that I don’t believe Jenny Durkan didn’t run again because of threats; I think she gave up.

Anyone in the public eye receives threats. I’ve received a few just for writing this column. I once felt so threatened by a man in Magnolia I had to involve the police. I hadn’t felt so scared since enduring a peeping Tom while living in Port Townsend. I mean, I wanted to buy a gun.

Which makes me remember what a friend said after he recently did buy one to protect his Pioneer Square business. Gun sales are up exponentially in Seattle, which always happens when homicides are exponentially up (and they are), so he wondered aloud — then laughed at his own joke — if the real truth of our current City Council is that they are undercover agents for the NRA. I laughed, too, not wanting to admit, even to myself, the sudden constriction in my throat.

Friends in the city are always saying things like, “What is wrong with these Trump supporters? I just don’t get it.”

Well, now, I do get it. I also get that some of these friends don’t

Mary Lou Sanelli’s latest collection of essays, “Every Little Thing,” has been nominated for a Pacific Northwest Book Award and a Washington State Book Award.