Spokane, WA - John Creighton with the John L. Scott agency in Spokane WA, has released his February 2011Spokane Real Estate Market Update, a comprehensive summary of real estate activity in the Spokane and surrounding areas.

A fixture in the real estate community for years, Creighton's Market Update is received by hundreds of Spokane area investors, buyers, and real estate professionals in the Spokane and Coeur d’Alene area

"February of 2011 showed an increase in existing home sales volume along with a decrease in prices for the third consecutive month. This is holding fairly consistently to normal seasonal variations in market activity."

He says the average price in the Spokane area declined by 6.98% versus the prior month (January 2011) with homes staying on the market 99 days on average.

"It is obviously still a buyers market, but there are still plenty of transactions happening. There are still families needing to move closer to jobs or into a bigger home to accommodate a larger family."

"On the other hand, we are seeing an increasing number of distressed sales including Spokane foreclosures and short sales. These continue to put pricing pressure on homeowners who find themselves needing to sell in this market."

From the perspective of the buyer, though, he says there's never been a better time to get more home for less money than today's market.

"The silver lining in this economic environment is that reduced prices make Spokane homes far more affordable for anyone needing to move. You can certainly buy a much larger home for less money now than you could a year or two ago."

About the Spokane Market Update

Published since 2006, the Spokane Market Update is written by Spokane Real Estate Advisor John Creighton, MBA, e-PRO, GRI, Licensed in Washington & Idaho. Subscription is free at www.SpokaneRealEstateAdvisor.com.

For more information, please contact:

John Creighton, MBA, GRI, e-PRO
Spokane Real Estate Advisor
John L Scott Real Estate
1338 N Liberty Lake Rd
(509) 979-2535

Seattle, Washington - As a Seattle Washington real estate agent, Shelly Hu has a lot of advanced tools at her fingertips for finding Seattle property such as foreclosures, condos, luxury properties, and waterfront properties. Now she's making those tools available to her website visitors for free with the launch of her new real estate search website that gives users a wide variety of choices in how they search for Seattle homes.

According to Hu, the new website uses powerful real estate search engine technology along with advanced localization of search results for buyers in the Seattle market.

"It has never been easier to find Seattle real estate than it is now. I wanted to make as much information available to homebuyers as possible," she says. "From the feedback we've received so far I can tell that people are really finding it useful. "

She says that the map search is the most prominent feature, but there are many other methods available on the site to search for Washington real estate.

"Some people prefer the visual interactivity of the map search, because you can see clearly where properties are in relation to other landmarks in Seattle. Others people prefer the advanced real estate search tool, which makes available many of the search criteria that would normally only be accessible to real estate agents."

As a result, she says, the site actually provides thousands of different ways for Seattle homebuyers to find the perfect property to meet their family's needs. Hu suggests that visitors spend some time on the site to get familiar with it.

"The more you use the tools, the more you are likely to discover new techniques to find the kinds of properties you are looking for. One of the best ways to search is just to enter a keyword such as 'Seattle foreclosures' into the text box at the top right."

But the most convenient feature, perhaps, is the property alert service that's built into the site. After a user creates an account, searches and listings can be saved to come back to later. They can also sign up for Realty Watcher automatic email alerts to let them know when new properties come on the market that match their search preferences.

"If you are in the market for Seattle real estate, we definitely recommend trying out the site," Hu says. "We believe this is the best way to search for–and find–Seattle homes for sale."