Watch this space!  We'll be updating it periodically with information about our favorite island.

Moving to Whidbey and bringing your cell phone?  I'm going to help you.

I've spent a lot of time and money finding cell providers and phones that work well on the island.  Population density is too low here to motivate the providers to install an adequate number of towers.  Consequently, there are a number of locations where your cell connection will work some of the time, and a few locations where it won't work at all.  My office here in Clinton is in one of those some-of-the-time spots.

Here's the information that matters:  If you're shopping for a phone on the mainland, the helpful staff member at the telephone store will probably tell you that all of the phones he or she sells will transmit and receive equally well.  That's true, on the mainland, because tower saturation is so high that you'll be able to use any phone anywhere.  You might find a staffer who knows that there is a difference.  Then again, you might not.  (Just one of the four mainland phone purveyors that I've patronized gave me good information about connectivity.)

Fortunately, I had the good sense to marry a woman who's much smarter than I am.  Laura told me to quit bothering with the mainland stores, and to go phone shopping in Oak Harbor, instead.  There are knowledgeable people in the world who can recommend a phone that'll work on Whidbey Island. They're living and working on Whidbey Island, not on the mainland.

Here's what I know about the providers:  The two largest cell phone companies have the most towers.  I'd been with Verizon for that reason, despite the relatively expensive service, but switched to Sprint, because Laura's Sprint smart phone worked at our Hastie Lake Road house, and my Verizon smart phone did not.  I can't tell that I drop any more calls with Sprint than I did with Verizon.  I think thats's because the cell phone companies have cooperation agreements, allowing them to route calls over each other's networks.  The downside to using Sprint is that Is have to pay extra to use the internet in areas where Sprint doesn't have its own towers.  That's easy enough to cope with.  I simply restrict my mobile internet use to places where Sprint has its own towers.

Whidbey Island is simply a great place for them.  We still have ample space, and a great number of folks who are interested in having a close relationship with the earth.  What could bring you closer to nature than turning sun, soil, and water into food for your community?  All of that, plus the sweat of your brow, naturally.

The Bayview Farmers Market is located in Bayview, of course, and is open Saturdays from ten 'til two, April through October.  To get there from the ferry in Clinton, drive right on up the highway to the third stoplight and turn right.  You'll find the farmers market on the left, along with a nursery, a bike shop, a pretty decent restaurant (The Basil Cafe), and the historic Cash Store.  The Bayview Farmers Market maintains a website here.

The Tilth Farmers Market is another half-mile up the highway past the third stoplight, on the corner of SR525 and Thompson Road. It's open Sundays from 11:30 to 3:30.  Yes, there is a website.  I haven't included a link; now that you have the location and schedule, you have the meat of it.

If you live here, you'll find a vendor for fresh eggs.  They're everywhere!  The eggs aren't defined as organic unless the hens have been dining on organic mash, but you'll notice a difference anyway - Whidbey chickens forage the old-fashioned way, adding color and flavor to their eggs.

Moving on beyond Vegan and Ovo-lacto will take you to the Three Sisters Beef Company, near Oak Harbor.  They don't run a farmers market, but they are farmers, and they market locally and naturally raised beef, chicken, and pork.  They have a website, too.  (Doesn't everyone?)  You'll find it here.  

A "spec" home is one built on speculation, by an investor or builder, with the expectation of profit once the home is completed, marketed, and sold.  Most builders and individual investors have quit building spec homes on Whidbey because there are so many vacant homes currently available.  The bank owned homes, especially, tend to supress prices.

However, vacant land prices have gotten low enough to put the profit back in to property development.  At the top of the bubble, a vacant lot on South Whidbey with no issues (perc problems, lack of a water source, steep slopes) commanded no less than $60,000.  Now, you have a choice of vacant building lots with city water available for $30,000, or even less.  One of our local builders will erect a 1700 square foot home with a two-car garage for $78,900.  There are additional costs, of course, including site preparation, water hook-up, and a septic system.  But with an approximate final value of $240,000, one should hope to earn a pretty good return on their investment.

I'd been keeping track of the homes that sold through the multiple listing service here on Whidbey Island on a month to month basis through 2009.

I checked back to October of 2009, and found that seventy-one Whidbey Island home sales closed.  ("Closed" means that ownership transferred to the buyers.  Most closings take around sixty days, so the majority of these homes actually sold in August.)  The median price was $292,000, and the median number of days on the market (without being tied up in a purchase contract) was 84.  The median price in October of 2010 for a Whidbey home fell to $267,425, and the median number of days on the market was a whopping 146.

The number of days that a home has been listed for sale, (known in the business as Cumulative Days On Market, or CDOM,) is actually a pretty good indicator of future prices. A high number (over 100) predicts falling prices.  A low number (under 60) is usually paired with increasing home prices.  The obvious conclusion is that we haven't hit bottom yet.

I'm sure I've said this before, but I'm not advocating that you wait for prices to go lower.  If you can afford a home now, and want to move, then why wait?  There's value in every day that you enjoy your own home, and if you're planning to stay more than a year or two, you'll end up with a good investment in any case.

I'm going to put my crystal ball back in the closet and add a caveat:  I can predict home prices with some accuracy because I know the business.  But I cannot predict interest rates.  If they go up, your chance of home ownership will go down.

If you're waiting for prices to bottom out before you buy a home, you have a problem:  You won't be able to identify the low point until prices have already escalated.  That's the only way to know for sure.

Here's an alternative investment strategy:  Avoid the top of the market, (unless you're downsizing,) and purchase a home when you want to move.  It's clearly too late to buy a home at the top of the market; whether this is a good time to become a homeowner or to step up to that special island retreat is up to you.  Prices could go down somewhat, but I wouldn't count on it. Here's what I know for sure:  In the long run, home prices will escalate, and interest rates will rise.

I happen to believe that we'll look back, someday, to 2010 as a time of golden opportunity for home buyers.  When that times comes, some of us will reminisce wistfully; others, smugly.

I was ten minutes late to work this morning.

I expected to catch the 124 car MV Kittitas at 8:30.  I was at the terminal on time, but the Kittatas was nowhere to be seen. It had broken down Saturday, and had been replaced by the older, slower MV Evergreen State.  The Evergreen State was only half-way across the channel at departure time, so I bought a newspaper and a cup of coffee and took an unscheduled break.

Well, that's life on the island, and a good reminder that the world doesn't revolve around getting to work on time.

There are techniques for handling your commute, if you live on Whidbey and work on the mainland, or vice versa.  Here are a few:

• Drive onto the ferry.  A lot of people do! Consequently, there's frequently a one-boat wait during commuter hours, which will add an extra half-hour to your trip to work.  You may run into a two- or three-boat line-up during the summer, or after holiday weekends.  Best price for the boat ride: $112.00 for ten round trips.  Freeway time to Seattle will vary due to (guaranteed) heavy traffic.  Theoretical time from the Clinton dock to the big city is about an hour, but I believe that the last light-traffic I-5 commute occurred some time back in the '80's.
• Keep a car on each side, and walk onto the ferry.  That used to be a popular option, but it's hard to arrange long-term parking in Mukilteo for your mainland car these days.  The trip from the Clinton dock to downtown Seattle will take about around ninety minutes, depending on traffic.  
  Time to the Clinton ferry dock will vary.  You won't pay to ride the Whidbey Island bus, which runs frequently.  You will pay $52.50 for a walk-on ferry pass, which should last all month long.
• Ride the train.  They've adjusted the schedule so that you won't have to sprint from the Mukilteo dock to the train station.  A leisurely three- or four-minute walk ought to do it.  You'll pay $144.00 per month for the train ride. The trip downtown will take seventy-four minutes.
• Take the bus.  Price is the same as for the train.  (In fact, you'll use the same monthly pass.) The advantage of the bus over the train is that you'll have a choice of stops in Seattle.  The disadvantage is that the schedule isn't quite as reliable, due to traffic.  Expect to get downtown in around eighty minutes.
• Ride a motorcycle.  You'll usually arrive on-time, and you'll frequently arrive wet.  Motorbikes enjoy priority loading, so a full ferry won't make you wait.  The trip downtown from Clinton will take about an hour on the days that the HOV lanes are relatively clear.  A ten-round-trip ferry pass will run you $48.80.
• You can always drive up to Deception Pass and down the I-5 corridor, if you have to.  That's usually a back-up plan if you live in Clinton.  The trip to downtown Seattle takes about two-and-a-half hours.
  This route makes more sense if you live in Oak Harbor.  Your commute will be less than two hours; about equal to driving down-island and catching the ferry to get to Seattle.  Of course, the ferry route gives you an opportunity to take a nap on the way in.

Well, that's life on the island!  It's a great alternative to a grueling drive to work.

I’ve lived in the Puget Sound region since 1965, and have seen towns and cities grow and merge into a gigantic metropolis, sprawled along the I-5corrider.  I’ve seen Whidbey change, too; but not much.  The commute to Seattle from Clinton, Langley, and even Freeland seems much more reasonable, compared to the old days, when Lynnwood was an outer limit for a “bedroom” community, so we have fewer farms and more residential areas.  And we’re squarely in the twenty-first century, with cell towers, internet hot-spots, and coffee booths dotting the landscape.  (So far, we’ve escaped the plague of “bump and grind” espresso outlets, thank you very much.)

Still, the ride on the ferry is very much like a trip in a time machine. You can count the stoplights from the dock to Oak Harbor on one hand.  The sidewalks in Langley and Coupeville can be crowded.  The streets, not so much.  The island is short on big-box outlets, but long on well-supplied hardware stores and family-owned grocery stores.

The trip to Mukilteo is another matter.  It’s necessary, and even helpful, from time to time, to return to the world of malls and Costco’s, but we tend to avoid it.  You’ll hear that someone is going to “America,” or to “the world,” or most commonly, simply “to town.”  These trips don't last very long.  When you live where other folks want to go for vacation, you tend to stick around.