One Windermere R.E. / Mercer Island listing will be open on Sunday, January 29th, 1-4 PM. It’s a house-sized condo (2300+sf) in Watercourse, located on Mercer Island’s north end. Details about the open house are below.

Mercer Island
$550,000 l 9320 SE 36th St l 291248 l Erin Ewing l Sun, Jan. 29th, 1-4PM

If you are thinking about buying a home, an important first step is to examine your finances. If you have not checked your credit reports in the past year, take the time now to check them. You are eligible to receive a free credit report annually from Experian, Equifax and Trans Union. If you notice any errors on your credit reports, or they contain negative information, you can work on cleaning up your credit reports before you start looking for a home.

One of the things that heavily effect your FICO score, which lenders look at to determine if they want to approve you for a home mortgage, is how much debt you currently carry. In fact, your outstanding balances category is the second most important one of the five categories used to calculate your FICO score. When you reduce your credit card debt, along with paying bills on time and cleaning up delinquent debts, your credit score will become stronger as time goes along. Below is an infographic which outlines a terrific, simple strategy to decreasing your credit card debt.

What are your thoughts about the feds’ decision to keep the interest rates low through 2014? Are you taking a look at your finances to see how to strengthen them?

Having some sort of connection to the Super Bowl, through special deals and bowl ads, nets quite a bit of revenue for companies. Papa John’s is offering their rewards members a free 1 topping pizza if the correct Superbowl coin toss result receives the most votes their website prior to game day. By offering a free product in a contest manner, with a connection to one of the most popular events of the year, Papa John’s is betting they will clear more revenue in future sales than they will spend on their Super Bowl offer. And chances are good that their bet will pay off. Take a look at how much companies spend on Super Bowl ads: the total ad revenue for 2010 was $205.2 million, at $2.9 million per 30 second ad. For the 2012 game, a 30 second spot costs $3.5 million. This money is spent knowing that in today’s electronic age some of the Super Bowl commercials are leaked about two weeks before game day (and 57% of Americans take note of this trend!). And that’s okay, because those same bowl game ads live on after the Super Bowl, thanks to the same digital era tools. The infographic Super Bowl a& the Digital Water Cooler details how 48 million Americans plan to re-watch Super Bowl ads after the game and 40 million Americans plan on sharing their favorite game day ads online.

In addition to the anticipated revenue from game day advertising, food and beverage companies bank on bringing in some major bank on Super Bowl Sunday because football fans love their tailgate fare. According to the infographic below, the average amount of money spent last year for the big game was $59.33 per viewer, for a total of $10.1 billion — and a good chuck of that change was for food and drinks! Chipotle is hoping to share in this game day party food revenue by offering 1/2 off an order of a burrito box (which contains 6 or more burritos) for orders called in on the February 5th game day.

Free Tax Filing, Efile Taxes, Income Tax Returns – TurboTax.com

Now it’s your turn— are you going to spend some of your hard earned dough for game day noshing? What are your thoughts on the amount of money spent by Americans for Super Bowl Sunday?

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grant funds received by Mercer Island covered the total cost of $75,000 for the charging units, the necessary infrastructure, and installation. The Charge Point units installed here on the island were manufactured by Coulomb Technologies, a company working closely with the Department of Energy to build a network of stations to charge electric cars throughout the U.S.

You Nissan Leaf, Chevy Volt and Mitsubishi-i owners, get ready to Charge It! right here on the island. And it means saving money, rather than spending it like Betty and Wilma did. For now, the topping off your car at one the three Mercer Island Charge Points is free!

Photo Courtesy of the city of Mercer Island

In less that 2 weeks, Windermere agents from across the western United States will gather in Seattle for Windermere Symposium. During this annual event, agents will learn about new products and services to help them better serve their clients. They’ll network with their peers while discussing today’s important real estate topics and sharing ideas. During the Symposium, Windermere agents will also help kick off the company’s 40th Anniversary celebration in style!

While reminiscing about the past 40 years, some interesting statistics caught our eye.

Even though purchase & sale agreements contain more pages and Windermere now has 300 offices, that same 1972 business ethos, centered on community and mutual respect, remains the Windermere cornerstone. It remains central, even over the years, because it helps us every day to give you, our clients, the best service possible.

2011-12 Summary

2011-12 Mercer Island

2011-12 Eastside

2011-12 Seattle Metro

2011-12 King County

Congratulations Mercer Island High School Marching Band for your spectacular performance in the 2012 Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade!

Members of the MISH Marching Band traveled 952 miles to march in this year’s Rose Parade. With 280+ members, the marching band represents approximately 1 out of every 4 students who attend Mercer Island High School. In addition to playing at MIHS football games and the annual homecoming parade, the MIHS Marching Band has performed in China, London and at a Seahawks game.

The Mercer Island Marching Band directors are Parker Bixby and Ryan Lane. Thank you Mr. Bixby and Mr. Lane for all you do for Mercer Island’s band students!

*video tip from Cherrie Lee

The cool, new “Discover Your Neighborhood” feature on Windermere.com enables searchers to look at community details either through a specific address search or basic search. With the basic search, the state must be identified along with one “radio button” — the button choices are city, zip code, county, school, district or neighborhood. The community information includes demographics, local school information (both public & private) with ratings, nearby businesses and recent home sales data. Searchers can also generate a comparative community overview by picking that tab, located in the second row of tabs along the top of the “Discover Your Neighborhood” search results. The comparative community overview generates a side-by-side comparison of the demographics of both neighborhoods.

In addition to the new features listed above, registered users of Windermere.com can save listings and searches. Plus, the listing result detail pages contain more mls data fields and are integrated with Bing maps. The Buyer and Seller sections on Windermere.com have been expanded, and the agent / office search has been upgraded. The nice write-up about the updated Windermere.com in InmanNews outlines these new features and upgrades.

The redesign of the company website is part of a company-wide technology upgrade spearheaded by Windermere Solutions, a technology company spun from the real estate branch of Windermere. In November, new agent websites were launched. In January 2012, upgraded office websites will launch. Both of these products have been designed to smoothly integrate with Windermere.com.

If you are a Mercer Island resident with yard waste service provided by Allied Waste, your holiday trees can be recycled in your yard waste bin. The undecorated, unflocked tree needs to cut into 4-foot long pieces and tied into bundles less than 2 feet by 3 feet wide. Biodegradable string or twine needs to be used to tie up the bundles.

Has your holiday tree been sprayed with flocking material? Your only disposal option is to cut up the tree and place it in your garbage can.

EDIT: The Mercer Island Lacrosse Team is also recycling trees for their annual fund raiser. If you are an island resident interested in recycling your tree through the team, they will start taking reservations on Friday, Dec. 30th. To place your reservation with the team please call (206) 659-5529. The undecorated, unflocked trees will be collected curb-side on Jan. 7th and 8th.

The #1 question on the list is about the WSDOT Good To Go pass– are you set if you purchased the pass? It’s not enough to just purchase the sticker pass at a retail location. You also need to establish a pre-paid Good to Go account and activate your pass. Once you’ve activated your pass, the sticker needs to be placed on your car, using the included instruction that come with the pass.

The cost of the 520 toll is also high on the list. Here’s a handy-dandy toll rate chart. The toll cost fluctuates depending on the time of day, and if it’s a weekday or weekend day. The rate chart also shows the difference in toll costs for those who have a Good to Go pass versus those who choose to pay by mail.

A few of the questions on the list inquire about other routes around Lake Washington, like I-90 and 522, and how the toll will effect the traffic on alternate routes. While the WSDOT can’t predict traffic flow, the general consensus is these routes will experience heavier traffic once the 520 toll begins. More traffic on the already busy I-90 bridge is an important subject to Mercer Island residents, since the traffic flow on I-90 impacts their ability to commute off island.

Now if you are interested in alternatives to paying the 520 bridge toll, seven phone apps have hit the market to help local drivers navigate around the 520 toll. Five out of the seven apps are compatible with Windows phones. While that’s a large number of Windows phone apps, for a platform notorious for being app deficient, it’s not surprising when you consider the Microsoft presence on the Eastside, especially at the other end of 520. GeekWire’s article on the apps shares detailed information about each of the seven, along with GeekWire’s recommendations based on the smart phone platform.

Now it’s your turn— what are your thoughts about the 520 toll impact non-toll routes like I-90? If you are a Mercer Island resident, how do you think your off-island commuting will change based on the 520 toll?

Photo Courtesy of the WSDOT