Bellingham Real Estate Blog

Looking to sve on those energy bills. Think copnservation, I just found this interesting website called the Power Bill Diet it is all about simple strategies to reduce your power bills without changing your lifestyle. The ideas are for both residential and commercial applications.

They claim you can save 70% of your energy bill with a variety of fixes, from solar tubes to reduce the need for artificial lighting during daylight hours, tankless water heaters, sealing leaky windows and doors to elastomeric coatings to reflect up to 90% of the heat from the sun in the southern states that need lots of air conditioning.

This certainly is one small step towards our nation being energy independent.

$479,900    3 BR, 2 BA, 1448 Sq Ft, 4.85 acrers

You have to see it to believe it! Lotsa privacy with lotsa land. Your own camera security system. See what's going on at home or where ever you are. Spectacular view of the Canadian Rockies, the Cascades and sunsets. Additional building that could be for many uses. Radiant heat sauna. Completely upgraded inside & out. New roof, carpets, appliances. Updated & buried electrical. Professionally-designed landscaping. Hot tub right out the back door.

$329,900 3 BR, @ BA 1415 Sq Ft on .23 acre lot

New house in great location, just steps away from Wiser Lake. You must see the inside to appreciate the workmanship and design. Wiser Lake view and access. This beautiful home sits on a arge lot with fruit trees. Quiet neighborhood at the end of a cul-de-sac. Cathedral ceilings give this a very open feeling. Ceramic tile floors, premium carpet and pad. Upgraded fixtures, patio plumbed for gas.

There are loads of great camping spots around Bellingham, Larabee state Park is one of the closest camping spots to town. It is just a few miles down the beautiful, scenic Chuckanut drive. There is camping out in the San Juan Islands, one of my favorite spots is on Lopez Island, right along the coast. The North Cascades are not far away and Mt Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest has some excellent camp spots. I really like the Silver Fir campground on the Nooksack River on the road to Mt Baker.

But the inspiration for this post was the how of camping. Some do it in tents, some RV's. I once had a beautiful old VW van complete with camper package, skylights and an opening sunroof. It was a lot like this one picture here to the left. I drove it cross country and lived in it one winter in the Southeast when I was itinerant tree-planter travelling from site to site from Florida up the Eastern Part of the country to Maryland.  Remember those vans lots of fun.

Well guess what, they are coming back Green,  A Montreal-based comp[any, Verdier has redesigned the iconic Volkswagen camper van, into a modern-day RV, with a hybrid gas-electric engine to power it on the road and solar panels on the roof to power all the gadgets you need to operate while parked. It also comes outfitted with  other features of a standard RV: doors that unfold into storage shelves, storage units that fold out into cooking ranges, couches that turn into beds and passenger seats that turn into stairs that lead up to said beds.

There will be a small amount of them and they will be expensive, but a good start towards the greener RV of the future.

Old VW courtesy of Flick By helena.40proof

The Chinese New Year, also known as the Lunar New Year, is  a two week celebration observed in Asian countries including China, Thailand, Vietnam and South Korea. The 2008 new year begins on Feb. 7.

Each year is named after one of 12 symbolic animals, 2008 is the Year of the Rat.

The Northwest Chinese Cultural Association will present a Chinese New Year Celebration at the Bellingham Hampton Inn on Sunday Jan 27. It will including traditional Chinese dances and music.

The Mount Baker Theatre will host a celebration of the Chinese New Year on Feb. 17, including performances by the Whatcom Symphony Orchestra, the Chinese Peking Opera Orchestra, the Washington Chinese Orchestra, and guest performers from China.

Photo courtesy of Flickr By Brisbane Is Home Is...

Here is an interesting site I discovered today.

Oh Don't Forget - It is a FREE service that let's you input reminder messages for yourself on their website, including your cell phone number, and date and time you would like to receive the message ................ and then they send you a text message as a reminder.

This could certainly come in handy some days, remind yourself of Birthdays, appointments, whatever.

They have been included in TIME magazine's 50 Best Websites of 2007 list! The service is FREE but they will gladly accept donations.

Bald eagles from Alaska and British Columbia, gather in large numbers this time of the year on the Nooksack and Skagit rivers. They are here to get their easy prey, spawning salmon on these rivers. In the winter, dead salmon wash up on the sandbars created by the many channels of the river.  Bring a pair of binoculars to see the action close up.

There is a Eagle Sanctuary on The Skagit near the North Cascades Highway, also known as Highway 20, just outside of Rockport.

The Deming Homestead Eagle Park is small detour off the Mt. Baker Highway where you can also observe the eagles. This was once the site of a pioneer dairy farm ever that Hank and Lorrell Rensick inherited from Hank's parents, Peter and Martha, who homesteaded this area.

You can also see the eagles from the river on a raft. Both rivers have outfitters running weekend trips this time of year to see the eagles.

I did a Skagit river raft trip last winter and it was great. I also did one several years ago on the Nooksack where we spotted over 200 eagles on a half mile stretch of the river and in that stretch we counted about 25 eagles in one tree. It was an amazing site.

 Photos courtesy of Flickr By controltheweb &  By Rich Anderson

Here are some stats for Skagit County. Looks like things are still pretty good in this beautiful, quiet, rural part of the state.

Looks like a 1.4% increase if we are looking at the average sales price and a 3.1% increase if we are looking at the median sales price. The number of sales is down by 21 and they are sitting an the market a few more weeks.

These statistics are from the NWMLS.

If you would like any more information about Real Estate or Real Estate statistics visit my website at BellinghamProperty.com

This or something like it could be the car of the future.

The compressed air car! That's right compressed air, talk about green cars, I think this idea has a lot going for it. More than hydrogen which seems to be the future of the automobile if you look at what Detroit is thinking for the future. The Air Car, could be one of the biggest technology breakthroughs in a long time. They are not expensive and they don'pt pollute. The ultimate commuter car.

It looks like Tata Motors, India's largest car maker, will be manufacturing these some time in the future.

Let's hope Detriot jumps onto this bandwagon.

Luxury, High End, Green, and Manufactured Homes in Bellingham? I don't know if there are any of these in Bellingham or Whatcom County yet, but there could be. Livinghomes is a company that is building this new breed of high end manufactured homes. These homes are architecturally designed by world class architects, built in a factory and can be delivered to your site and assembled there in just days.

They use up to date form and function, and use sustainable materials and energy systems.

 "Our first home was designed by Ray Kappe, FAIA, and was installed in eight hours on April 13. It was recently certified LEED® Platinum by the United States Green Building Council, the first home in the nation to achieve this distinction."

Check them out