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Five Ways Around the Viaduct Closure

Posted by Johnine Larsen on April 26, 2016
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Starting this Friday, traffic is about to get a lot worse. The Alaskan Way Viaduct is shutting down for the next two weeks while Bertha tunnels beneath it. The closure will send 90,000 vehicles/day to alternate routes—and those alternate routes weren’t exactly smooth sailing to begin with, let alone during the morning and evening commutes… You can expect long drives, lots of traffic, and significant delays.

I’m not really looking forward to this. I drive all over this city during my typical day—showing houses, meeting clients, going to open houses, coordinating with contractors and photographers and buyers and sellers and agents. I see a lot of the city.

I looked into ways to minimize the time I’m going to spend stuck in this extra traffic, and I thought I’d share my findings.
 

Weird Hours

sunrise-173381_640

If you can, ditch the 9-5 routine. Avoid the morning and evening rush hours at all cost. I’ll get in a few early mornings these next two weeks, and I’ll have a few late nights, too. Variety is the spice of life, right?

 

Light Rail

I’m a fan of light rail. I can’t use it much myself yet (hurry up and get to West Seattle!), but I’m jealous of those who can. Traffic-free commuting from UW, Capitol Hill, SeaTac, Tukwila, Beacon Hill, Columbia City, or a number of other stops. It’s an easy way to get a little exercise, too, by walking to and from the stations. Win-win.

 

Uber

Have you tried Uber yet? It’s easy, not too expensive, and hip. You’ll still spend time sitting in traffic by Uber-ing, but at least you won’t be stuck in the driver’s seat. You could take this time to read, catch up on work, talk to your driver, or even take a quick nap.

 

Water Taxi

This is an obscure one. But King County Water Taxi is adding extra trips and additional parking at Pier 2 in West Seattle during the WA-99 closure. Most people won’t benefit from this, but if you will… commuting by ferry will always be fun in my book.

 

Cycling

white-737190_640

This one won’t work for me, either (imagine carrying a bunch of open house signs from West Seattle to Fremont by bicycle!), but for some of you, this might be perfect. The weather is great (for Seattle), the Burke-Gilman Trail is convenient, and Seattle has grown to include numerous bike lanes. As an added bonus, you won’t have to worry as much about danger from cars these next two weeks—they’ll be crawling in traffic and moving slower than you!

 

Any other suggestions? I’ll be driving in the thick of this during the next two weeks, so I’m grateful for any other ideas. Just let me know!

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    We had a fantastic experience working with the Real Estate Gals to buy our first home in Seattle! Johnine and Tonya met with us before the pandemic and remained super patient and helpful with us as we went hot/cold on whether or not to buy *several times* over the past few years. When we finally... found the home we eventually bought, Tonya's help, advice, and feedback were all invaluable to us. She was also super responsive to calls and texts, and was just great to work with in general! Hopefully we won't be looking for a new house again soon, but we will absolutely go back to the Real Estate Gals when we do!read more
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    Unfortunately, my wife and I had a bad experience with Johnine.We were FTHB in WS. Our search was fast (under contract within 2 weeks, involving only 2 visits with Johnine, and 4 with Tonya as we did a lot of open-houses on our own). We were on top of everything and had an excellent lender (Ryan... Maxwell from Homestreet) allowing us to close 3 weeks later.We reached out to this agency after having a mediocre experience with Redfin. Given their stellar rating, we were expecting to be more lucky with Johnine and her team.After an initial meeting with Johnine, we had some trial visits with Tonya over one evening, and it was excellent. Tonya was scouting the different homes, taking the time to discuss with us, and sounded very knowledgeable. We really enjoyed our experience and were looking forward to keep working with her.After these visits, we only got to interact with Johnine.To say that Johnine lacked professionalism or represents too many people is an understatement.We only had 2 visits scheduled with her, and she had been significantly late for both (15-30 minutes), even though she is the one that set the time. Both time was because she was touring homes with another customer on the other side of Seattle and couldn’t make it on time for our visits.This was mildly annoying, but the second property was one we wanted to put an offer on, so we stayed put.Then, things turned chaotic. As we signified interest in putting an offer on that second property, it was a nightmare to schedule a time to meet with Johnine. The offer deadline was on a Monday, but Johnine could only meet us on the Sunday before. She had to reschedule that meeting 3 times, even though she was the one setting the time every single time.During that meeting, Johnine did not remember the offer Deadline correctly and thought it was on Tuesday. If I didn’t bring it up, Johnine was only planning to work on drafting the offer the following day and might have missed the offer.After our offer was accepted, communication became really abysmal. As a FTHB, I do not expect to be baby-sitted, but I was hopping that Johnine would at least detail us what to expect and when. However, she took the fact that we were on top of things as an excuse to not do anything than the bare minimum. This caused unnecessary stress on our end as we were trying to figure out stuff completely on our own. All we had from Johnine for the following 3 weeks was a brief “next step” email with poorly worded shallow details on what to expect, and barely understandable instructions regarding utilities. That’s it. Even at open-houses, listing agents distribute printed PDF with more useful information than what Johnine provided us.At no point did Johnine mention anything regarding a final walkthrough that we had to schedule ourselves and that we didn’t even do with her.The ice on the cake was closing day, where we had literally no idea what to expect the day of.Johnine was out of town and couldn’t get the key for us, so Tonya was scheduled to do it for us and meet with us the following day.But the day of, Tonya informed us BY EMAIL that she couldn’t make it, and that the seller’s agent left our home key under a rock in the garden for us to pick up anytime.Neither Johnine nor Tonya tried to arrange for another agent/staff to pick up the key for us to make sure that we were able to enter our property. They did not even bother calling us to check what was the best option for us or apologize for the inconvenience.I had to interrupt my work day in panic to go figure out what rock was the correct one and pick up the key.Johnine received a $27,000 commission out of that purchase where I felt she did not represent us better than a Redfin agent and put no effort to represent us at any step of the process. Beware.read more
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    Paddy Lazar
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    I was lucky enough to work with Johnine and her very competent team to sell my home. I have to tell you how easy the entire process was. On her wise suggestion I had my home inspected, as there actually were a number of maintenance items that came up in that inspection and she even arranged to have... all of the repairs completed in a very short time. The only thing I had to do was to let the repair folks in. Then, to my surprise, Johnine , had all the windows and the whole house cleaned before listing it. She then had the house beautifully staged and had the yard cleaned up with even a little landscaping thrown in. The house sold within the week for OVER full price!Everyone I dealt with was always kind, helpful and professional, their communication was exemplary all through the process. I’ve decided to rent for a while but you can be assured that it will be Johnine and her team that I will go back to when ready to purchase a new house. I have sung her praises to all that I know.read more
    soumak ghosh
    soumak ghosh
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    Brian Heagler
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    Anne Slater
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