You are negotiating for a new home to be built. The builder seems unreasonable. You can't understand why he won't pay for the Kohler Bowl you've picked out for the powder room. It's only $350 above your plumbing allowance and is miniscule in comparison to the $400,000 Continue Reading

     The Anchorage real estate market turned on a spring day last May and has been growing stronger every month as a result of pent-up demand from the prior four years of recession.  And with this turn-around the Anchorage condo market has sprung to life once again.  For the Continue Reading

     The Dow Jones Home Construction Index, which tracks seven publicly traded builders, is up 178% since it hit a two-year low in August 2011.  Alaska doesn't have any publicly traded builders but our local building permit activity indicates similar gains in new home Continue Reading

     The International Builder's Show in Las Vegas was brimming full of ideas for new designs and amenities. How much of that can be incorporated into Alaska home building is an open question, but there are some trends that just won't go away that local builders should pay Continue Reading

     Welcome to my "insider" column on real estate where I'm going to share my thoughts and ideas with you in hopefully what will be an informative and frank discussion about real estate in Alaska. So how come it is that two homes with the same floor plan and square footage Continue Reading

     The lower 48 is full of real estate headlines about how the housing market has finally bottomed out. But, that's old news for Alaskans who recognized that turnaround earlier this year. This past August there were only 986 homes for sale in the Municipality of Anchorage. Continue Reading

     With Anchorage's rental vacancy rate at only 2.3% as reported by the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation's annual statewide rental report, a lot of small real estate investors are picking up condos to use as rentals.  The Anchorage rental market has a plethora of Continue Reading

     If you're an Anchorage home buyer looking to buy a foreclosed property, you better act now. Anchorage defaults decreased over 50% for the first six months of this year compared to 2010.  In fact, the 289 recorded defaults on mortgages are the lowest in four years.  In Continue Reading