We hope that you all had a wonderful christmas and are enjoying the week in between. It’s one of those weird weeks where it is not technically a holiday, but tons of people are on holiday anyways. Businesses are operating (most) but often with diminished staff levels.

While various team members are in and out this week, we do have our office staffed, so if you have any real estate questions, please feel to call us at 360-527-8766 or drop by.

Happy New Year!

We are out of here for the weekend! We hope that you all have a wonderful Christmas filled with family, friends, laughter, food and hopefully a few good gifts too!!

The office will be closed on Monday and Tuesday, but we will be open from Wednesday - Friday. If you do need immediate assistance on anything, please call 303-2734 or call you agents cell phone.

Merry Christmas and to all a good night!

So there is a meme bouncing around the blogosphere right now and its running through a real estate thread. It was sent to the Johnson Team by Beau Betts from Seatle and since I am the main writer for the blog, I get to do this.

What is a meme you might be asking? See wikipedia to find out.

I’m supposed to tell you 5 things that you probably do not know about me, so here it goes.

1. I am bilingual. When I was 3 years old I started attending a French pre-school and from there went on to do a French immersion program who Kindergarten through Grade 7. I also know enough Spanish and Chinese to get by.

2. I lived in Taiwan for 14 months. About a year after I graduated from university, I was bored with my job so I took a position in Kaohsiung, Taiwan as an English Teacher with Hess Educational Organization. I had never been to Asia before, and within 5 weeks I picked up my life, sold/stored everything and moved to Taiwan by myself, without knowing a soul there. While I was there I taught kindergarten (the most adorable 3 years olds in all of Taiwan!) as well as cram school in the evenings. I also did every extra under the sun including becoming a manager, directing a play, coaching a speech competition, judging various English competitions and being a camp counselor.

3. I skipped a grade in elementary school (I did Grade 6 & 7 in the same year).

4. I am the first generation of my family to be born in North America. My mum (not a spelling mistake) was born in England and lived there until she was 12. My dad was born in Austria and lived there until he was in his late teens then headed off around the world. They finally met in Canada, where I was born and I now live in the US.

5. I am a horrible speller.

I am supposed to pass this on to 5 people, but instead of doing that, I will just invite the readers of this blog to do so. If you do it on your own blog, make sure you leave a comment on this post letting us know. If you don’t have a blog, you can write your 5 things in the comments.

Here are some other bloggers who have “answered” this meme.

Shotgun Marketing Blog
BrandSizzle
bizsolutionsplus
Customers Rock!
Being Peter Kim
NY Houses 4 Sale
360Digest
Ardell’s Seattle Real Estate Blog
Chicago’s Home Weblog
Bloodhound Blog
The Future of Real Estate Marketing
True Gotham

If you are looking for a fun family event this Christmas, don’t miss out on the Santa Train! The Santa Train is one of Fawn’s favorite Christmas events to attend. You ride a train through the Forest of Imagination that is twinkling with over a million lights! After the ride, you can sit on Santa’s knee, enjoy some hot chocolate and cookies and enjoy the festive atmosphere.

Warning: this post has nothing to do with real estate and everything to do with surviving enjoying the Christmas Season.

This morning I discovered a wonderful way to save time during the chaos that is Christmas time - shop before work! I have to be at the office by 9am so this morning, I made sure that I was in town by 8am to take advantage of several stores that open early. I managed to go to several stores, in different locations in only 30 minutes!

Here are the advantages of shopping first thing in the morning:

• Great parking spots! Since nobody is there, you can park right at the front! You don’t waste time hunting for a spot when you know you are going to end up at the far end of the lot and walking in the rain to the store.
• Lots of help. The store is fully staffed, but there aren’t too many customers first thing in the morning. You can’t walk 20 feet without hearing “Can I help you with anything?” My thought is, take advantage of this! Don’t wander around the store trying to find something, just ask them! They know exactly where it is, and you save more time.
• No lines. When you finally do make your purchase, there is no line at the cashier which means that you can get out quick.
• Less traffic. Although there is still the usual morning rush, there is not the press of cars that are usually there in the evening making it easier to get from one store to another.

So now that I have shared my genius tip and the advantages of it, I will be generous enough to give you a list of what is open early in the morning (this is just a partial list - if you know of any other stores open early in the morning please let me know! Leave a note in the comments).

Best Buy: 8am
GI Joes: 8am
Target: 8am
Fred Meyer: 7am
Bellis Fair: 7am (from now until Christmas)
Joanns: 8am
REI: 9am (instead of the usual 10am)

Check out the real estate Yankee Blog Swap going on today. A blog swap is when writters from different blogs within the same industry “swap” blogs for the day and write their posts on a different blog. My personal favorite is seeing Ardell from Rain City Guide posting on the Redfin blog while Glen Kelman of Redfin posts on Rain City Guide.

The real estate market is a fluid, dynamic entity. Even when housing prices are not rising or falling, the real estate market is not static because there are always other factors such as inventories and local the local economy affecting it. Therefore, it’s important to stay informed as to what the real estate market is doing. So read a real estate blog. Glance through that news letter from your agent and don’t automatically delete the email. Take a few moments to keep up with what is going on.

And don’t forget to ask questions! Just because you are not buying or selling right now, doesn’t mean that you are not entitled to ask questions. Whether you ask them in a comment on a blog, send through an email, or give your agent a call - make sure that you ask.

The moment that all have you have been waiting for (well, at least the bunch of you that entered the drawing) the winners of our $250 shopping sprees are:

Sandra Chorvat
Daryl Brown
Shane Wichers
Peres Hunt

These lucky winners each get a $250 gift card to the store of their choice!

 Here is one of our clients Kim Krey, picking the winner as I hold the cup (and don’t worry - she wasn’t entered in the draw!)

And thank you to all our clients who entered the draw - we appreciate your business and referrals so much! Look for our draws in the new year which will include our new theme of helping you build equity in your home while you live in it.

Sorry about missing last week’s statistics - I was out of town.

So on to this week’s real estate sales statistics for Bellingham, Blaine/Birch Bay, Ferndale, Lynden and Sudden Valley. The following are the pending ratios for each city:

Bellingham: 23%
Blaine/Birch Bay: 15%
Ferndale: 15%
Lynden: 14%
Sudden Valley: 16%

The pending ratio is the percentage of homes listed that currently have a sales contract pending. To view graphs of the real estate sales trends in Bellingham, Blaine/Birch Bay, Ferndale, Lynden and Sudden Valley, please click here.

And don’t forget - if you are interested in the real estate sales trends of a particularly price range, we can graph that out for you too! If you are interested, please email nickie@johnsonteamrealestate.com

It seems as though every family has some sort of holiday tradition. The type of tradition that without it being around it just doesn’t feel like Christmas time.  Well, The Johnson Team is no different, our tradition is Wassail. 

For those of you that are not familar with Wassail, it is a traditional festive drink made from a mixture of fruit juices and spices.  Everyone in the team looks forward to Lylene bringing in the Wassail pot.  There is nothing better than walking into the office at Christmas time and being greated with the wonderful scent of apples and cinnamon in the air!  If you are in the area, feel free to stop in and try some Wassial, we think you would be happy you did! 

Below is a recipe to make your own Wassail at home.  We use a coffee maker here, but it can also be made in the crock pot or on the stove.

Lylene’s Wassail

• 1 can frozen apple juice concentrate
• 1/2 can frozen apple/cranberry juice concentrate
• 1/2 can orange/pinapple juice concentrate
• 4 1/2 cans of water
• 3 cinnamon Sticks
• 10-12 cloves
• 1 tsp. ground nutmeg

Heat and enjoy!  Merry Christmas!

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