Schmetzer RE Group AZ and WA

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Schmetzer RE Group AZ and WA

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Northwest grown and now reside in both Wa state and Arizona where I can be your one point of contact for all your real estate needs.

Imagine dealing with one trusted partner in your journey to find generational wealth with Real Estate My background in professional soccer and business has instilled in me a strong work ethic, strategic thinking, and a competitive drive, which I leverage in the Washington and Arizona real estate markets. Buying or selling a home is a major life decision, and I am committed to providing my clients with personalized attention, insightful market analysis, and unwavering support. My approach combines the competitive spirit I honed on the field with the analytical skills I developed in business to ensure a focused and successful real estate experience. I prioritize clear communication, proactive problem-solving, and a client-first mentality, striving to exceed expectations and build lasting relationships in both markets.

10/30/2026

**WARNING** opinion piece 😉

On Tuesday, Washington voters decide Initiative 645, a measure to repeal the state’s new 9.9% tax on household income over $1 million before it takes effect in 2028. Whatever the outcome, it will say a lot about where Washington is headed.

I’ll be upfront about where I stand. Those who know me know I lean conservative, especially on fiscal issues. I owned a small business for 30 years across King, Pierce, and Snohomish counties, and I learned one thing early: government rarely meets a tax it doesn’t like. Some of the things I was taxed on as a small business owner would make even my most progressive friends scratch their heads.

I’ve already written about businesses leaving the state, or at least leaving higher-tax cities like Seattle for places with a friendlier business climate. If I-645 fails, I believe that trend speeds up.

And it won’t just be the ultra-wealthy who leave. It will be successful, growing companies, the kind that employ 50 or 100 people. When the owner of that business decides Washington is no longer worth it, those jobs don’t stay behind.

How do I know this? I see it firsthand because I also work in Arizona, one of the most business-friendly states in the country. We regularly get calls from Washingtonians asking about housing, about where the business centers are growing, and about what it’s like to relocate. These aren’t just high-net-worth investors. More and more, they’re ordinary families who want to protect what they’ve built and who don’t trust that a tax sold as “only for the few” will stay that way.

In full transparency: I’m an Arizona resident now, so I don’t get a vote on this one. But I care about Washington. I’ve lived it, worked it, and built a business there, and I want the state to keep thriving.

Of course, if a lot of Washingtonians decide to head south anyway… I’ll be here to help. 🙂

What say you? And don't forget to vote!!

10/26/2026

Same house. Two timelines. Which one costs you more?

A lot of buyers are waiting for rates to drop before they buy. That makes sense. But when rates fall, buyers tend to come back, and prices usually climb with them.
Here’s the same home bought two ways. Both use a 30-year conventional loan with 10% down and 1 point.

🏡 OPTION A: Wait for rates to drop
Price: $700,000 at 5%
Down payment: $70,000
1 point: $6,300
Cash to close: $76,300
Monthly P&I: $3,381.98

🏡 OPTION B: Buy now
Price: $600,000 at 7%
Down payment: $60,000
1 point: $5,400
Cash to close: $65,400
Monthly P&I: $3,592.63

What buying now gets you:
✔ $100,000 lower price on the same home
✔ $10,900 less cash needed at closing
✔ Only about $211 more per month

And the rate doesn’t have to be permanent. Say rates drop to 5% two years from now. The Option B owner could refinance the remaining balance of about $528,600, and the new payment would be about $2,838 a month. That’s roughly $544 a month less than the buyer who waited, for the same house.

You can change your rate later. You can’t go back and change the price you paid.
Rates and prices aren’t guaranteed, and refinancing has its own costs and qualifying, so run your own numbers with a lender. But “waiting for rates” isn’t always the cheaper path.

Now who's to say you can get the same house for 100K less right now but it is certainly possible in this market and a good illustration of how to look at home buying in different perspectives.

📲206.819.7080
[email protected]

10/22/2026

Thinking about listing a home in Seattle right now?

The number that should worry you isn’t on Zillow—it’s in Redfin’s latest data release.
Pending home sales in Seattle just plunged 28.8% year-over-year.

That is the steepest drop of ANY major metro Redfin tracks nationwide.

Nationally, pending sales hit their lowest level since Redfin began tracking this data in 2021. Seattle isn’t just along for the ride—Seattle is leading the trend.

Here’s what sellers need to know today:

1. Your initial price does almost all the work. It’s not a soft starting point to adjust later. Buyers are fewer, highly cautious, and well-informed. Pricing based on closed sales from 6 months ago makes a home look stale, inviting lowball offers.

2. “Start high, come down later” is a dangerous myth. Chasing the market down means competing for a shrinking pool of buyers who watch price cuts happen in real time.
3. Strategy must adapt instantly. Price to the CURRENT 4-week trend, not older comps. Treat the first 10 days on market like the only window that matters.

If you’re deciding when or at what price to list your property, let’s talk through where the numbers actually land for your home.

📩 Shoot me a DM to connect.

10/12/2026

Starting January 1, 2027, Washington is changing how much tax you pay to sell your own home. Here’s the myth I keep running into already: “I should list for $549,000 instead of $555,000 so I don’t get pushed into the higher tax bracket.”

That’s not how it works, and believing it is costing people money.

Washington’s Real Estate Excise Tax is GRADUATED, like income tax brackets. The new 2027 state rates are 1.10% up to $551,000, 1.28% from $551,000 to $1,551,000, 2.75% up to $3,051,000, and 3.00% above that. Only the slice of your sale price that falls INSIDE each bracket gets taxed at that bracket’s rate ... not your entire sale price.

Run the actual numbers: a $700,000 sale owes roughly $7,968 in state R**T either way the math shakes out. Pricing $6,000 lower to “stay under a threshold” doesn’t save you $6,000 in tax. It costs you $6,000 in sale price to chase a tax savings measured in dollars, not thousands.

What I actually do differently before we ever talk list price: we run your real net proceeds ... mortgage payoff, state AND local R**T, title, escrow, commission, and any concessions. The list price is a negotiating number. Your net is the number that matters.

If you’re thinking about selling in Bothell or anywhere in Snohomish County before or after the bracket changes hit, let’s run your actual numbers together. Shoot me a DM.

📲206.819.7080
[email protected]
www.SoundandSouthwest.com

10/08/2026

6%.

That’s the share of people who told researchers at John Burns Research and Consulting they’d actually accept a mortgage rate anywhere close to 7.5% ... which happens to be almost exactly where rates have been sitting for months now.

Zillow’s newest market report, out this week, shows what that gap is doing to the market. Newly pending sales fell 8.5% year-over-year in September. Closed sales dipped too. The typical mortgage payment now eats up 34.4% of median household income, up from 33.7% a year ago. Meanwhile rents are climbing 2.7% annually ... the fastest pace since last spring.

The myth I keep running into: people are just “waiting it out” for a minute, holding their breath until things get back to normal. The reality in this survey is more specific than that ... most buyers have an actual number in their head, and John Burns found it’s 5% to 5.49%. That’s not “a little lower.” That’s a different market entirely, one that isn’t on the calendar anytime soon. However if sales continue to decline sellers may be more willing to make a deal that works in favor of the buyer

Here’s what I’m watching in my own two backyards. Seattle’s inventory is up 20.3% year-over-year right now ... buyers finally have room to be picky. Phoenix inventory is up a gentler 4.4%, still moving, still absorbing what’s for sale. Different pace, same underlying math everywhere: the “magic number” buyers are waiting for isn’t the number the market is actually offering.

What I tell people instead of waiting for 5%: build the decision around the payment you can live with TODAY, not the one you’re hoping shows up. A rate that’s merely high still beats a plan that’s stuck on pause indefinitely.

Is your “acceptable rate” closer to what the market’s actually offering, or closer to that 5% number everyone seems to be quietly waiting on?

10/01/2026

25,980. That's how many homes are active on the market across Washington state right now, as of this week.

The newest statewide numbers, out today: median active listing price sits at $649,900, with the median SOLD price over the past year at $625,000, a gap that tells you list price and reality aren't always the same conversation. Zoom into Snohomish County specifically, my own backyard: median sold price of $705,500, homes moving in a median of just 25 days, and sellers getting 98.9% of list price on average. Inventory sits at 3.4 months of supply, which is still a seller-leaning number, even though active listings here are down 5.6% year-over-year.

Here's what that mix actually means if you're trying to time this: fewer homes than a year ago, but the ones that ARE on the market are still moving fast, at close to full price. That's not the "wait, inventory's piling up" story some of the national headlines keep telling. Snohomish County isn't behaving like the rest of the country right now.

If you're weighing whether to list in Bothell or Snohomish County this fall, or trying to figure out what 25 days on market actually means for YOUR specific neighborhood, let's talk through it shoot me a DM.
📲 206.819.7080
[email protected]
SoundandSouthwest.com
Real Estate for WA and AZ

09/28/2026

This is gonna fly in the face of what you’ll hear many real estate agents say but numbers don’t lie, however they also don’t always tell the whole story
If you'd put your down payment into the S&P 500 instead of a house ten years ago, you'd have nearly three times the return today.

Economists Ray Fisman and Michael Luca ran the numbers this week: from December 2015 to December 2025, the Case-Shiller home price index rose 87%. The S&P 500, excluding dividends, rose 235%. So far in 2026 alone, home prices are up about 1.5% while stocks are up roughly 13%.

Here's the myth I hear constantly: "your house is your best investment." The reality is messier, Fisman and Luca's actual point isn't "don't buy a house." It's that people conflate two separate decisions, where you want to LIVE, and how you want to invest a big chunk of your life savings. Those don't have to be the same choice, and treating them as one often means overpaying on the investment case while underweighting the lifestyle case.

What doesn't show up in either number, is the years you actually get to live in the place, the tax treatment built into homeownership, the leverage of the value of the home as an asset, and of course the fact that you can't live inside a brokerage account. A house that "underperforms" the S&P can still be exactly the right call if it's the right house, in the right market, for how you actually want to live.

Where do you land — do you buy a home as shelter first and treat appreciation as a bonus, or do you want it to outperform like an investment too? Both are important decisions to contemplate and neither one is incorrect!

09/18/2026

Is Washington a buyer's market or a seller's market right now? Depends who you ask this week.
Statewide data released this week puts Washington at 3.9 months of inventory and calls it a "seller-leaning market," with prices down just 1.4% year-over-year statewide.
Zoom into Snohomish County specifically, though, and the story shifts: median sold price is down 5.3% year-over-year, sitting at $707,250, with 3.2 months of supply and homes moving in 22 days.
So which is it? Depends entirely on where you're standing. A county-level number and a statewide number can tell two completely different stories about the same market ... which is exactly why "the market" isn't a useful phrase without a zip code attached to it.
I'm watching this same pattern play out in real time between my two markets Snohomish County softening on price while overall inventory stays historically tight, and Gold Canyon/Apache Junction telling its own separate story entirely.
What's it actually feel like on the ground where you're searching or selling buyer's market, seller's market, or something in between? Curious what people are seeing.

www.SoundandSouthwest.com

09/17/2026

I lived in Everett for years and had my boat docked at the marina, so watching what's happening down at the waterfront right now genuinely gets me excited.
Waterfront Place, the Port of Everett's massive redevelopment of that old industrial shoreline just keeps building momentum. In the last year alone, Fisherman's Harbor has turned into a legitimate restaurant row, with the Net Shed Fish Market, Tapped Public House and its huge rooftop deck, and Agave Cocina & Cantina all opening up. Now a boutique fitness club is moving in too, signaling the next phase: this isn't just a dining destination anymore, it's turning into a full lifestyle district, dining, fitness, wellness, and retail all in one walkable waterfront neighborhood.
This is roughly a billion dollars in public-private investment transforming what used to be old shoreline industrial land into one of the most desirable areas in Snohomish County.
When I had my boat there, this was a working marina with a few good restaurants. Now it's becoming the kind of place people plan their whole Saturday around.
Everett feels like it's on the edge of a real renaissance.
So here's the question I keep asking myself: if this is the trajectory today, where do home prices along that waterfront corridor look in 5-10 years?

If you've got a stake in that area, or you've been eyeing it, I'd love to hear your take. 👇

📍 Curious what's actually available near the waterfront right now? I put together a list of homes and condos currently for sale near Downtown Everett's waterfront district — take a look here: https://portal.onehome.com/en-US/share/1792177T67869

If anything catches your eye (or you just want a second opinion on the area), reach out — happy to talk through it.

www.SoundandSouthwest.com
Let's chat - (206) 819-7080

09/16/2026

As the summer heat starts to slip away the prime Arizona weather is on its way! Now is the time to start thinking of a trip to the desert! 😎🌅🌄👍

Address

509 164th Place SE
Bothell, WA
98012

Website

https://SoundandSouthwest.com/

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