I told a friend of mine I was writing my “appreciation” newsletter and she said “who are you appreciating”? We both laughed at that but it caused me pause to think about who I do appreciate, especially in my real estate career. I have a team of people behind me that I appreciate during every transaction.

My principal managing broker, John Deely, is a great resource as he has been in the real estate industry for over forty years and sits on the board of the multiple listing service.

Sophie is our transaction manager; she sifts through and files the transactions of multiple brokers in our office and keeps everything organized.

Jan, of Rainier Title, is always available by phone for any odd-and-end questions. She frequently teaches a class called “As the Title Turns”.

I’m currently working with Radha, at Escrow Professionals of Washington (EPOW), on my latest transaction. Their service is above and beyond – they recently sent a courier to pick-up an earnest money check from a buyer’s agent I am working with as she was sick with the flu and couldn’t drive. As earnest money checks are due two days after mutual acceptance time was of the essence.

Both Rainier Title and EPOW are affiliated with Coldwell Banker Bain and so add to a great team!

I also appreciate the rest of our staff – Barbara, Katherine and Kacey who alternate between reception and in generating many of our marketing pieces for listings.

Meanwhile, here is the latest MarketFlash with appreciations rates from Rainier Title! Downtown Tacoma still has the record with a 20% appreciation rate; it has had 312 closed sales this year. Nearby Gig Harbor has had 938 closed sales with a 12.5% appreciation rate.

Belltown/Downtown Seattle is showing 104 closed sales in August with a 16.8% appreciation rate for the year. In June we had zero so one can only assume this must be related to condominium sales; it turns out the new Insignia building closed 267 listings in the last ninety days.

Just for fun I ran two more reports on downtown Seattle condominiums:

The first is the list-to-sales price average, and the second shows the number of sales with the dollar volume, showing some interesting trends.

Speaking of condominiums and downtown views, it seems there are at least three new high rises slated to be built in the future. Antioch University seems to be selling to a developer on the east side of Insignia and another will be to the west at Fourth and Bell. The latest in the planning stages will be taller than our Columbia Center.

Thinking back to when I moved to Seattle (on Halloween, 1979) it is amazing the changes we have seen. I remember walking past ghosts of old buildings and wondering where all the people were. Now we have exquisite architecture and traffic jams; go figure!

Being a dog lover, I have one adopted dog and one dog that I found while searching for a listing.

Ci Ci was bred to be a champion Rottweiler, however she was too shy when moving about the show ring. Watson, a standard poodle, was racing around at night in a storm with no identification. He was about seven months old and had been seriously neglected. I couldn’t find his owner so I began grooming and training him. The rest is history – he is a wonderful dog.

It is because of this love I am very excited about our corporate company’s recent dog project!

Coldwell Banker Homes for Dogs Project: The Story of Owen & Haatchi

Here it is. The amazing story of a boy and his adopted dog as seen at the Chicago Theater as part of the opening of the Generation Blue Experience. Congrats to all for your helping in achieving our goal of finding homes for 20,000 adoptable dogs in 2015!

We’ve teamed up with Adopt-a-Pet.com, North America’s largest non-profit pet adoption website, to help 20,000 adoptable dogs find a loving home this year.