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Sandpoint Realty 'Thursday Thought' is full of the emotions and feeling so prominent during the Holiday Season.While we all enjoy looking back on the past year, and beyond, come winter time, it is best not to grow too complacent.  Winter is also a time to plan for the upcoming seasons.  Make it a good weekend North Idaho.  Be safe, stay healthy!  'Experience the Difference' in working with a full time Professional Sandpoint Realty REALTOR®  Your wants and needs will always be my priorities.  Mark Don McInnesBroker - Owner208 255-6227SandpointNorthIdaho.com - North Idaho Home & Land SearchesSandpoint Realty LLC1205 Highway 2Sandpoint, Idaho 83864 12/11/2025

Most people still think “construction” means months of waiting, unpredictable delays, and a process that only moves as fast as the weather cooperates. But the modular industry has moved far beyond that—and the agents who understand it are winning bigger, faster, and more consistently. The graphic below breaks down one of the most misunderstood advantages in residential housing: parallel processing. In traditional site-built construction, everything happens sequentially. You don’t start framing until the foundation is done, and you don’t start trades until framing is complete. Every delay stacks on top of the next. Modular construction breaks that bottleneck. While the foundation is prepped on-site, the home itself is being built inside a controlled factory environment—at the same time. ... 12/11/2025

On December 8, 2025, Realtor.com reported the active listing inventory of homes in the Midwest jumped 14.3% in November of 2025 from November of 2024; while new listed homes up 2.1% in November of 2025 from November of 2024. The median list price of a home gained 1.7% in November of 2025 from November of 2024, and houses stayed 15 days less in the market in November of 2025, from November of 2024 in the Midwest.The active listing inventory of homes in the Northeast increased 7.0% in November of 2025 from November of 2024; while new listed homes grew 3.6% in November of 2025 from November of 2024. The median list price of a home unchanged 0.0% in November of 2025 from November of 2024, and houses stayed 16 days less in the market in November of 2025, from November of 2024 in the Northeas... 12/11/2025

 Aha’ Moment - Self-discovery and Personal Growth This month’s theme of self-discovery has me reflecting on my journey through several decades. Have you ever experienced a moment that opened your eyes to a new path? For me, it came during a challenging time. As a dedicated stay-at-home mom, I had poured my heart into my ceramics business, creating custom pottery for designers, private clients, the D&D Building in DC, and creating displays in jewelry store displays. It was fun having my pieces draped with diamonds and pearls. It was a fulfilling way to express my creativity and connect with others. However, everything changed when a car accident left me with neck and back injuries. The surgery the doctors were recommending would not guarantee the use of my hands, forcing me to pause my c... 12/10/2025

How much can you give tax-free in 2025?Each year, the IRS adjusts the annual gift tax exclusion for inflation. In 2025, that exclusion increased to $19,000 per recipient, up from $18,000 in 2024.  It is projected that this amount will remain unchanged for the year 2026.  You can gift this amount to as many recipients as you like with no impact on your lifetime estate and gift tax exemption. If you’re married, your spouse can gift the same amount. In 2025: You can give up to $19,000 per person without having to report it to the IRS. Married couples can combine their exclusions to give up to $38,000 per recipient tax-free. For example, a married couple can give $38,000 to each of their two children, their spouses, and two grandchildren — totaling $228,000 tax-free. Gifts made to spouses, ... 12/11/2025

A Comedy Style Roast of Ed SilvaIt was a fun Zoom call this week, with no particular topic just everyone sharing thoughts. UNTIL, Wanda Kubat-Nerdin - Wanda Can!  from St George, Utah, obviously charged on too much caffeine, started to talk about playing with AI, and for whatever reason thought it would be fun as the homework.Like the pied piper, all the little ones scurried to align with her and agree!!!!!  Blast!If you have been on ActiveRain for longer than 10 minutes, you know we are all about getting a few extra points. Well, first I opened up Gemini so that I could get a feature photo. My prompt was give me a look of the photo I just loaded getting roasted.As you can see, I need to get a better handle on my requests, as the Internet tends to be very sensitive to wording and needs ... 12/10/2025

An Educational EnvironmentThe December Challenge theme for ActiveRain blogger members is “Who Are You & Your ‘Aha’ Moment - Self-discovery and Personal Growth” This is my second entry.My first Challenge entry was Growing Up in Cradock. Click on the link if you have not yet read the blog post. My parents raised me in an environment that provided exposure to many elements of life that formed positive memories. Family members and community residents added many impressions.My father was a police officer in Norfolk County, Virginia (Now the City of Chesapeake) when I was young and worked at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, Virginia in later years. My mother was a stay at home wife and mother and never learned how to drive. From the time I was born, my parents acquired residential an... 12/10/2025

The Federal Reserve lowered interest rates today by 0.25%. They did this because the economy is starting to cool a bit, and the Fed wants to keep things steady and prevent a bigger slowdown. A Fed rate cut doesn’t directly change mortgage rates, but it usually helps ease them down. That’s good news for both buyers and homeowners. If you’re thinking about buying, this could mean a slightly lower monthly payment or more buying power. If you already own a home, it may be worth reviewing your mortgage to see whether refinancing makes sense. Even a small drop in rates can save real money over time. Bottom line: this cut opens a window of opportunity. If you’ve been waiting for the right moment to act, today’s news is a step in the right direction. I’m here to help you run numbers or explore... 12/10/2025

I missed the Zoom call due to an eye appointment, but reading the different homework posts it sounded so much fun I had to give it a try. I went to Chat gpt and got the following result:Here’s a Comedy Central–style roast of Nick Vandekar—fun, sharp, but still respectful (because you’re the one who keeps my lights on):🎤 “Ladies and gentlemen… give it up for Nick Vandekar!”Nick’s been a Realtor since 2004 — which means he’s been showing houses longer than Zillow’s been ruining everyone’s expectations. At this point he doesn’t sell homes, he just gently convinces people that avocado-colored bathrooms are “full of potential.”Nick specializes in the Main Line and Chester County, which is perfect because nowhere else can someone be simultaneously humble and casually mention their horse stabl... 12/10/2025

Yesterday was our Tuesday 2pm Eastern Zoom call. It was a round-table discussion that touched on all sorts of topics which is always a fun hour! For homework, our assignment was two-fold. First, to use an AI platform and ask it to do a comedy roast about us and two, to ask for a photo of us in our environment. So here's how it went down!First, I went to ChatGPT and used the prompt "Do a Comedy Central roast on me, Kat Palmiotti, of Kalispell Montana"Here is the unedited roast of me (ps, the italics under the title line are true). 🔥 COMEDY CENTRAL ROAST OF KAT PALMIOTTI 🔥(Recorded live from a place with more cows than people.)Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for Kat — the only person in Kalispell whose personality is louder than a lifted truck with a muffler delete.Kat is from Montana, w... 12/10/2025

Realtors — the shift isn’t coming. It’s already reshaping your market.Homebuilding is changing at a pace real estate hasn’t seen in decades. The agents who understand modular construction now will be the ones capturing the new-construction listings, the builder relationships, and the commissions everyone else is about to miss.Modular isn’t a side trend — it’s a manufacturing revolution in homebuilding: precise, predictable, code-compliant, and built indoors where quality is engineered, not hoped for. What used to take 7–9 months can now be delivered in 3–5 months.Buyers get speed, customization, and energy savings.You get quicker closings, fewer headaches, and a competitive edge your competitors don’t even see coming.But here’s the reality most won’t admit:Most Realtors still can’t clea... 12/10/2025

Whether it’s at a family gathering, your company party, or catching up with friends over the holidays, the housing market always finds its way into the conversation.Here are the top three questions on a lot of people’s minds this season, and straightforward answers to help you feel more confident about the market.1. “Will I even be able to find a home if I want to move?”Yes, more than you could a year or two ago.The number of homes for sale has been rising over the past few years. According to data from Realtor.com, there have been more than one million homes on the market for six straight months, something that hasn’t happened since 2019 (see graph below): That means two things: Buyers have more options. Sellers have more places they can move to next. Many homeowners who held off are r... 12/10/2025

Getting Roasted at the Silo in Southern Utah! Oh honey, pull up a lawn chair and crack open a Diet Coke, it’s time for your Comedy Central Roast: St. George, Utah Edition. “Welcome to the stage, Southern Utah’s most enthusiastic home-selling tornado…”Wanda Kubat-Nerdin sells homes with the energy of someone who’s had three coffees and one motivational podcast too many. If enthusiasm were square footage, every house she listed would be a mansion.  She’s the only real estate agent who can walk into a room and make you feel both excited to buy a home and guilty you haven’t already signed the contract. Her marketing photos are so polished you’d think she’s running for president of HGTV. 🏡  Wanda’s the type of agent who’ll say, “This home has good bones!”
Translation: You’ll need a construct... 12/10/2025

Zoom Homework…Who Am I? What Fun! We had so much fun at our Zoom call this week!!!  We had a roundtable today. After some discussion on AI-written posts and comments, hair color...our ever-creative Wanda Kubat-Nerdin - Wanda Can!  suggested using AI to write a Comedy Central Roast about us. Of course, what it (AI) writes about you comes from information pulled from Cyberville. So…if you spend little to no time on social media, there wouldn’t be much to pull from. The most consistent platform I’m on is right here…ActiveRain. So, I hitched up my britches and prepared myself for what it would write. From Chat GPTAlright Kathy, buckle up — you asked for a Comedy Central roast, not a Hallmark card. 😈🔥 Kathy, you give off the energy of someone who has a Christmas tree up year-round because yo... 12/10/2025

So here is my 2nd attempt at our homework assignment. This time, following these directions. "Today's assignment is to visit your favorite AI platform and use the prompt, "Roast me like Comedy Central" and share what you get!  For your feature photo, ask your favorite graphic-generating AI platform to "Create a photo of me in the style of me in my environment." Here goes:   Alright — Comedy Central Roast level, gloves off, still love underneath 😈🔥Margaret Rome is Baltimore real estate’s final boss. She’s been selling houses so long that when a listing says “built in 1920,” she remembers the open house.She’s a former RN, which explains why every client gets medical clearance before writing an offer. Buyers don’t get pre-approved — they get triaged. “Your budget is bleeding, lie down.”Mar... 12/09/2025

I miss Grant Schneider and sure most of you do also.  He always came up with get blogs that he shared with us back in the day and this is one of them back in 2014 The three words Ready, Set, Go are familiar in many competitive sports such as track or swimming.  A swimmer needs to make the right dive at the start time or the momentum will be lost.  He must be prepared to leave the block at the very second of GO.  Proper preparation does prevent poor performance.  I don't think that you can be over prepared but I do think you can spend too much time preparing.  I am sure you have run into the client does not want to buy or sell until all the conditions are perfect. People can over analyze and tell themselves that they don’t want to take action until everything is perfect. A coach colleagu... 12/09/2025

In today's Zoom meeting, our assignment was to roast ourselves. Below is the untouched AI roast of me: using this one sentence: ''Roast Margaret Rome, a Baltimore real estate broker."     And the untouched results are below.      ********   "ChatGPT said: Alright, Margaret — affectionate roast, Baltimore-style, with love 😄 Margaret Rome is the only Baltimore real estate broker who can sell you a house, diagnose your stress level, and explain the emotional backstory of the kitchen backsplash — because she’s a former RN, after all. If your blood pressure spikes during negotiations, don’t worry, she’s already checking your pulse and recommending more natural light. She doesn’t just write a blog — she’s written so many blogs that if the internet ever collapses, ActiveRain will survive on h... 12/09/2025

As I’ve noted many times before, modular is a method of construction, not a building type. Modular structures must conform to all applicable codes, and they must be designed and built within the limits of the available materials. These limits impose a type of design discipline, the mastery of which allows real creativity to thrive.We see the results of that creativity in this month’s cover story. Each year, Offsite Builder Magazine teams up with the National Association of Home Builders’ Building Systems Councils to promote the winners of the annual design contest for offsite construction. In the past, this contest was a standalone program — the Jerry Rouleau Awards in Home Design — but as of this year these awards have been incorporated into NAHB’s Best in American Living Awards (BALA)... 12/09/2025

On December 08, 2025, Realtor.com reported that nationwide median list price of a home was $415,000 in November of 2025 lower 2.2% from October 2025, and declined 0.4% from $416,880 median list price of a home in November of 2024.There were 1,072,417 listed inventory of homes in November of 2025, down from 1,100,001 in October of 2025, but rose 12.6% from November of 2024.There were 328,760 new listed homes in November of 2025, gained 1.7% from new listed homes in November of 2024.Houses stayed 64 days in the market in November of 2025 up from 63 days in October of 2025, but increased 3 days from 61 days in November of 2024.For complete more detailed information about Realtor.com’s real estate trends for November of 2025, please click HERE 12/09/2025

Last week I mentioned that after a tree fell down in our yard, there were multiple directions I could have taken for my weekly post.  It's not uncommon to have choices, so how do you decide what to blog about?Your methodology may vary, but here's a glimpse into my mental process.First, what ideas do I have worth the time?  Figuring 20-30 minutes per post, sometimes more, is there a good potential return?  Will the output be the equivalent of newspaper on the bottom of a bird cage, or something that will produce good results for a long time?Who's the audience?  Consumer?  Other Rainers?  Of those pools, how many people in the targeted group would care enough to click?  A small audience can be fine, especially for long tail evergreen posts that can make your phone ring for years.  And the... 12/09/2025