Spokane summer highlights!

MUSIC!

We all know this is my favorite category, and fortunately there are many places you can enjoy fantastic outdoor concerts no matter your music genre preferences!

Check out the following sites for some great ideas:

https://www.spokanepavilion.com

https://foxtheaterspokane.org (fun fact: you’ll catch me in the violin section for the SSO Fourth of July concert just before the fireworks at the Spokane Pavilion!)

https://www.northernquest.com/live-events/upcoming-shows

https://www.arborcrest.com/2023-event-calendar

OUTDOORS!

Did you know there are 76 lakes within a 1-hour drive of Spokane?! I always love seeing these from a birds eye viewpoint when I fly in or out of Spokane, and love even more all of the options for swimming, paddle-boarding, boating, swimming, etc when the temps are sizzling. Our family loves boat camping, especially out on Lake Roosevelt. Put your boat in at Porcupine Bay and find a great spot on the shore to anchor and set up camp for a few days! While the area campgrounds tend to book up quickly, this is a first come, first served option. Pro tip—go on a Wednesday or Thursday before all of the prime locations are taken for the weekend!

Our favorite campgrounds are in the North Idaho area and include Round Lake State Park for a chill weekend—no motorized boat allowed in this lake, but a great dock and beach area with gorgeous trails all around.

Farragut State Park is the complete opposite. A HUGE campground with every activity under the sun from boating, hiking, biking, disc golfing, challenge course, learning centers, and much more. Not a chance of getting bored here!

One more great boat camping option with bathroom options (always a perk!) is Mowry Bay on Lake Coeur D’Alene. We’ve had HUGE groups here with some camping for several days, and other friends/family coming in and out for day trips. This is a great place for a low-cost but ultra fun birthday party with a huge covered shelter and picnic tables, docks, and swimming area. If you decide to visit any of these, be sure to let me know what you think!

https://parksandrecreation.idaho.gov/parks/round-lake/

https://parksandrecreation.idaho.gov/parks/farragut/

https://www.lakecoeurdalene.com/on-the-water/campgrounds/mowry-park/

Fresh Fruit!

Definitely don’t miss out on all the fresh fruit picking up on Green Bluff. Strawberries, cherries, apples, and so much more!

https://greenbluffgrowers.com/this-month-on-greenbluff/

Farmers Markets!

Check out the following link from EverydaySpokane for a comprehensive look at the locations, dates, and times of farmers markets in nearly every corner of town! Here is what they say:

Spring, summer and early fall are typically the best seasons in Spokane (in our humble opinions!), and one of our favorite parts of these seasons is the arrival of Spokane farmers markets! Spokane and the surrounding areas have delightful farmers markets, and you can visit a farmers market in Spokane almost every single day of the week. How incredible is that?

According to Spokane County’s Community Services, Housing, and Community Development website, there are over 28,000 farms in our area. It makes sense that there are so many farmers markets to choose from all around Spokane County given this bounty of farms!

Most of these farmers operate seasonally, which means we only have a certain number of months to take advantage of the bounty offered by local farmers markets.

Luckily, farmers market season here starts early and lasts fairly long – if you’re looking for a farmers market near you, chances are one exists!

https://everydayspokane.com/spokane-farmers-markets/

Hopefully this gives a fun variety of things to check out and enjoy! If you ever need any more specific recommendations or have people coming to town that you want to impress with an amazing itinerary, reach out anytime!!

Take action-Protect your assets!

INSURANCE. We frequently deal with this for our health and auto policies, but with homeowners insurance it’s so easy to “set it and forget it” for years at a time. It is typically lumped in with our mortgage payment instead of paid separately, so extra easy to overlook the nuances of our policies.

For many reasons, this is a dangerous oversight. Home and construction prices have increased 20%+ just over the past three years alone. This means that your home values and respective coverages may be severely outdated if you have not made any changes to your policy since you purchased your home.

This blog post is especially important to me now as our family recently endured the unthinkable—our home burned down from a freak accident in May and we are facing the worst case scenario in insurance terms. Thankfully all people are okay but we lost our lifetime of possessions-many of which held extreme sentimental value from our children-along with three of our precious pets. There are so many unfamiliar decisions that need to be made in the aftermath of such a tragedy, and these are especially stressful when coupled with the emotional turmoil and overwhelm. I will have much more to say on the subject as time passes, but for today I want to share three important action items I would love for you all to take TODAY.

Action Item One: Log into your insurance records and do an audit of your coverage. Policies typically have options for “Replacement Cost” or “Actual Cash Value”. Make sure you secure Replacement Cost coverage!

Insurance.com defines these terms here:

Actual cash value (ACV):

An actual cash value policy takes deprecation into account when calculating your payout. Depreciation can make a huge difference on a large claim.

While every insurance company has a different formula for calculating depreciation, a standard method is to determine a product’s expected lifespan and subtract a certain percentage for each year since it was purchased.

As an example, if your roof was 15 years old at the time of the claim and it had a 20-year lifespan, you will be covering most of a new roof’s cost.

The same goes for your possessions, although this falls under the personal property coverage and not the dwelling coverage.

Replacement cost coverage:

A policy with replacement cost coverage will cover rebuilding costs, regardless of depreciation, up to the policy's limits.

For example, if a fire destroyed your home and possessions, your homeowners insurance policy would pay to rebuild your house at current market prices, even though rebuilding costs have probably risen over the years.

The same goes for your possessions. If you had upgraded your homeowners insurance policy to replacement value on your personal possessions, you would be getting a TV of similar size and quality, regardless of the cost.

While most standard homeowners policies cover your home’s physical structure at replacement value, many assign actual cash value coverage to your personal property. You need to add replacement cost endorsement on personal property to make sure it’s covered that way.

In our situation, we have replacement cost coverage, but specified the fair market value of our home to determine the coverage limits-we now know we didn’t dig into that decision like we should have. In hindsight this number is fairly accurate for what our home would have sold for, but NOT what it will actually cost to rebuild the same square footage at TODAY’s prices. From consultations we’ve had with builders, this will be $250/sf at the very low end. So using a 3000 square foot as an example, this would mean needing coverage maximums of at least $750,000!

If you’re not sure if your suggested coverage is accurate, please make sure you as extensive questions of your agent, or hire an independent appraiser—the peace of mind is likely worth their fee!

Action Item Two: Home inventory

Take the time today to walk around each room of your house and take videos of the overall space and photos of the contents of drawers/cupboards/closets/etc. Create a folder in your phone so these photos are easily accessible and organized, and also easy to update whenever you make new purchases or changes to your home. In order to be compensated, you will need to document EVERY SINGLE item in your home and without tools to jog your memory, this adds to the extremely daunting process.

It is also useful to request email receipts whenever you go shopping because these will be easy to search and retrieve if you ever need documentation in the future.

Action Item Three: Additional Living Expenses

During your policy audit, you need to make sure you have a clause that stipulates coverage for Additional Living Expenses that are incurred due to a catastrophic loss. This will ensure that you have coverage for hotels/apartments/rental homes for long periods of time that you may be displaced from your primary residence. Read this article for what is often included in this, and also calculate the typical rent in your area for a home similar in size/age/quality to yours to make sure you are covered for this amount for up to 24 months.

I know I will have so much more to say on this whole topic as we go through the process and I am committed to being extremely transparent about our experience so we can help others however possible. Be on the lookout for more updates soon! No questions are off limits and I am never too busy to chat, so please feel free to call or message me anytime. Stay safe out there and call your insurance provider today!! I have some great local agents you can call if you’d like to speak with a trusted, local, real-life person :)

Summer Market 2023

It is hard to sum up our “current” market in a succinct way as the past few months have been a confusing roller coaster! Some weeks are a flurry of activity and other weeks seem to come to a total standstill.

I’ve had recent sellers receive multiple competitive offers in the first weekend and others who are doing their best to wait patiently for the right buyer over multiple weeks. I’ve also had buyers experience similar—some in competitive situations, others getting accepted offers under list price with closing costs covered, and one buyer who was even able to do a loan assumption and keep the sellers’ 3% interest rate!! (Let me know if that process piques your interest and I’m happy to share the details on that process—it’s a test in patience but totally worth the end result).

Bottom line—it is truly important to speak with a trusted professional if you need any advice about planning, as the market movement is so varied depending on price point and location.

For my stat-loving friends! Overall data comparing May 2022 to May 2023:

• Current median sales price is $412,750 which is down 8.3%

• Closed sales are down 19%

• New listings are down 17%

• Active inventory is up 39%

• Median days on market up 75% to seven days

While housing prices have slightly softened, 2020 and 2021 were “unicorn” years that experienced unprecedented, unsustainable home appreciation. Now that we’re well past that time we have not experienced any sort of “crash” in our area, but those feeling the hardest hit are folks needing to sell after only living in their home a year or two. They likely had to bid quite high to secure the home in the first place which will mean any equity gains may be slim for the time being, and some could be upside down if their downpayment was very small (0-5% down). Whenever possible, a great strategy in this case is to hold onto the home as a rental and find a tenant who will cover the mortgage payment while the home can continue to rebound and appreciate for years to come.

We continue to see an inventory shortage which has kept buyers active despite the interest rates. Please keep in mind the 2-3% interest rates were also unicorns and there is no expectation we will be seeing those again for a . The $300k-$450k price range is where we see the most competitive activity and if interest rates soften down into the mid-5% range late summer and into the fall (thus increasing affordability), expect that activity to increase exponentially.

For anyone needing to sell quickly, having the best presentation and pricing accurately is 10000% essential. “Accurately” often means just below the comparable data to be the first to grab a buyer’s attention. With the interest rates making the payments so much higher, buyers are being as selective as they can be even amidst the low inventory.

For the investors out there, cash buyers can still find tremendous opportunities. Anyone needing to finance through the traditional route will have a harder time producing monthly cash flow, but if you are interested in exploring home-flipping or wholesaling, there are also many creative financing options I can help you find.

Thanks for reading and please be sure to throw any and all questions my way!