About King County, WA

Seattle City of Seven Hills: In the late 1800's real estate developers decided to make Seattle be the city of seven hills similar to Rome and there have been varying theories through out the years ever since as to what are those seven hills? The fact of the matter is Seattle is full of hills and slopes and steep bluffs, so picking just seven will always be a challenge.

We can probably all agree that Queen Anne Hill, Capitol Hill, and First Hill surely qualify, but Magnolia is pretty high up there, too, and no one ever mentions Maple Leaf which to me is very high... The debate will go on, but one of those hills is lost forever: Denny Hill. In 1900, the city decided to basically eliminate a whole hill which covered 62 city blocks. They did it in two parts, but literally razed the hill.

This can not be good environmentally, I am thinking and I have to wonder what the area North of Pine Street would look like with a big hill covering it.... Today it is part of Old Belltown and South of the Space Needle. The landscape would be quite different if the hill was still around! Here is a view towards Downtown from the South slope of Denny Hill in 1886 (photo courtesy of Seattle Municipal Archives Item # 2869):

Denny Hill height: Look how high that hill must have been! The removed over 6 million cubic yards of earth to get rid of it!

According to NWDA:

"Before the regrade, Second Avenue rose 190 feet in the twelve blocks between Pioneer Square and Lenora Avenue, causing traffic and transportation problems in the area. The project began by flattening First Avenue between Pine Street and Denny Way. "

190 feet???? So Denny Park would have been pretty high and full of Puget Sound and mountain views back then, but instead is a flat park with huge sweeping views of nothing. One man wants to change that: Denny Park plan to restore the view given to Seattle's first park back to the citizens. It is a little nuts, but he does have a point.

What the heck was the city of Seattle doing? It was apparently a infrastructure nightmare to have this beautiful hill smack dab in the middle of the city so they just got rid of it and dumped the dirt into Elliot Bay or used it to fill in the soggy streets of Downtown Seattle. Wow.

Denny Hill would have sloped right down North practically to the Space Needle if it were still here and might not make the needle rise up so obviously although the space needle height is a little over 600 feet.

The Denny Hill regrade was done in two phases. I found a really cool before and after shot from the second phase which then adds the Space Needle after that to give you an idea. I am still amazed that they would knock Denny Hill down. It was so beautiful!

Besides the fact that the city's first park was basically lowered to flat acerage with no view, one of the truly most amazing things to me about the city's decision to raze Denny Hill was the loss of Denny Hotel (later called Washington Hotel). Theodore Roosevelt slept in this hotel and they knocked it down to lower the hill.

This picture shows what was left of Denny Hill at the beginning of the second phase of the regrade in 1928 then after the regrade in 1936 and then again after the addition of the Space Needle to Seattle's skyline in 1964 (Picture Courtesy of Seattle Municipal Archives item # 28958).

So I went to the SDOT site and found a list of highest elevations in Seattle:

"NAVD88 stands for North American Vertical Datum

High Point above sea level, 6 parcels south of watertower at 35th Ave SW and SW Myrtle Street - 520 feet - NAVD88

Near Bitter Lake, on N 145th St just east of Greenwood Ave - 493 feet - NAVD88

NE 92nd ST and Roosevelt Way NE - 466 feet - NAVD88

Queen Anne Hill, at First Ave N and Lee Street - 456 feet - NAVD88

Highest point in Volunteer Park - 453 feet - NAVD88"

This list is interesting to me - Queen Anne and Capitol Hill seem to dominate here, but I was definitely right about Maple Leaf - it is in there! Let us know if you are interested in learnign more about a particular Seattle neighborhood history!

Downtown Bellevue real estate home sales are up thanks to a boost from the first time home buyer tax credit. The Downtown Bellevue(98004) area is from I-90 North to Highway 520 East to I-405 and west to Lake Washington.

If your looking for more information on homes sales in the Downtown Neighborhood of Bellevue Washington simple give me a call(206-818-8816) or contact me, and I will be happy to get you the information you seek.

It is my goal to help buyers and sellers. If you are a home owner and you would like to know more about how I sell homes for top dollar with my Marketing Action Plan simply sign up for a Market Snapshot and I will contact you for a private review of your homes market value.

-Dan Edwards, REALTOR(r) Northstone Real Estate, Inc. 206-818-8816

Home Loans in Kenmore, WA - pre- approval

It is getting harder and harder to get a Home Loan Approval these days. We have never really seen this level of necessary paperwork ever. As a loan originator and a real estate agent, I prepare my clients from day one to be ready for everything they can imagine to be asked for and then some. But every time there is a new deal, I am surprised at what problems can arise in getting a Home Loan Approval. I just had an FHA loan denied, after we already had a Home Loan Approval from the lender pending results from a 4506T response from the IRS. That form is used to verify that they indeed did file tax returns.

It turns out, however, that my client had not filed her 2007 Tax returns. She owned no money, we had the necessary W2 forms. Not only did they deny the loan, but they would not even put the Home Loan Approval process on hold until she filed the tax returns the next day and wait to send out another 4506T. We had to start the loan all over again at a different lender and she may need to go look for a different home . These lenders are getting more black and white in how they see everything with less and less exceptions possible.

And, by the way, we had to wait over 5 months for the short sale approval from the 2 different banks so we could buy this home and get the Home Loan Approval in the first place. Now, after she gets the Home Loan Approval all over again, we have to hope that the 2 lenders will give us an extension so she can still buy the same home.

So, I learned again, not to assume anything when getting a Home Loan Approval. I assumed because we had W2's that she had filed a tax return. It just goes to show you that we have to ask questions no matter how obvious we think the answers are when we are going for a Home Loan Approval.

Happy Friday to all!!

I hope this finds you having a wonderful day! It is a great day at my house. My husband is cooking our Thanksgiving turkey! Yep, turkey day is here (well almost). We are celebrating tomorrow with our daughter and her new husband. Our daughter, Angella, has not been with us for about 4 years on Thanksgiving and her husband, Dan, never has. So we are pretty excited!!

Since I won't say HI again until next Friday, I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving with your family and friends.

See ya next Friday :) ...geri

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If you spend your whole life waiting for the storm, you'll never enjoy the sunshine. -Morris West

Fascination is one step beyond interest. Interested people want to know if it works. Fascinated people want to learn how it works. -Jim Rohn

A tongue three inches long can kill a man six feet tall. -Ancient Japanese Proverb

The reason so few people are successful is no one has yet found a way for someone to sit down and slide uphill. - W. Clement Stone

One cannot help being old, but one can resist being aged. -Lord Samuel

Did the CRA (community Reinvestment Act) of 1977 combined with the Fannie & Freddie act of 1992 have something to do with the housing crisis? These combined ACT's required banks to lend to low & mod income borrowers, aimed to reduce discriminatory credit practices... Was this the fuse and the fuel for the housing bubble? I find it interesting that within 3 years of the second act passing low down payment lending from private lenders went from 8% to 25% and then just kept going up from there... This seems to have set the standard of providing loans to high risk buyers, I would venture to say that poor underwriting or “flexible” underwriting was also a large contributor. Did you know that CRA commitments from 1992-2009 are $6 trillion dollars?? WOW Something to think about, I'm sure these Act's had good intentions but again when Government is in charge there is always a larger risk factor involved for the tax payers.

Did you know 1 & 4 FHA loans are either delinquent or in foreclosure that is 25% of the all FHA loans are in trouble, now you have Barney Frank trying make the FHA limit of 800,000 permanent Are we making the same mistakes again with a new name? Folks this is a HUGE warning. Regulators are horrible at regulating when times are good… but they seem to over regulate when times are tough.

Top foreclosure states are Florida (12.7%), Nevada (9.4%) and Arizona (6.2%) per the WSJ.

Something I was pondering over a cup of coffee this morning

~John