Cities Ranked and Rated: And You Are Who?

And the number one city is… Gainesville, Florida… for being hurricane prone and in a state with the nation’s highest new home vacancy rate!

Best-selling authors-come-lately Bert Spelling and Peter Sander have come out with a second edition of their highly-touted Cities Ranked and Rated, a power ranking of sorts of 400 of the nation’s metros and their consensus is that Gainesville, Florida is the best city to live in as of 2007. The only reason, in my not-so-humble opinion, that this book has achieved best-seller success is that everyone in every media outlet, convention center/tourism department, and public relations department of the 400 ranked metros had to go out and buy this work to see what the book said about its city.

West Seattle Real Estate Roundup: April YOY Sales, Prices Up and Up

The numbers are in and April showers do bring May flowers err–statistics? as the May reporting of NWMLS numbers (via the Seattle Times) paints a rosy picture for the West Seattle real estate market in April. MLS area 140, which includes Alki, Admiral, Fauntleroy, High Point, the Junction, and pretty much all the rest of West Seattle reported a year over year increase of 8.9% in closed home sales for the month of April and a 10.8% increase in  median sales price.