Kennewick Real Estate Blog

We haven’t done of these in a while, so let’s get caught up on some recent Kennewick business news.

• New York Richie’s is a new pizza parlor that’s now open at 5011 W. Clearwater Avenue. The restaurant serves New York-style pizza and sandwiches, Philly cheese steaks (as a Philly native, I’ll be able to judge the authenticity), and a couple pasta dishes.
• Sandstone Creamery is now open at 104 West First Avenue in Kennewick. The ice cream parlor is a sister business to Sandstone Cafe, an eatery that offers breakfast and lunch.
• Rainier Patents now has an office at 7025 W. Grandridge Blvd., Suite A, in Kennewick. The company helps tech sector companies protect their intellectual property.
• Meadhow Hills Veterinary Center opened a new clinic at 3711 Plaza Way in South Kennewick a couple months ago. MHVC does great work with all kinds of pets — we’ve been taking our dog to their Richland location for more than a year now.

As always, if you have any Kennewick business news to share with us and our readers, please contact us!

In case you missed the news from last week, it looks like Benton County is looking to build a new animal shelter in Kennewick in the area of Quinault Avenue and Canal Drive. According to the reports, the city and county have already begun the permitting process so the county can build on land it already owns in that area. It sounds like it could be a couple months before final approval is given to start the project.

Cari has written recently about the Tri-Cities real estate market staying strong in 2010, and I’m sure most real estate pros in the area would agree that we’ve survived better than most places across the country.

But it’s also nice to see the local real estate market recognized by outsiders, too. That happened this week when CNNMoney listed Kennewick at #2 in a feature about “Best recovery bets” in the U.S.

Here’s the ironic thing: There’s really nothing to recover from. As the image above shows, next to “Value Lost Since 2006,” our real estate market has actually gained 5.7%. That’s not recovery; it’s consistent growth and strength. Here are some stats that CNNMoney includes in its piece:

The median income for the metro area is more than $61,000 while home prices, at a median of $172,000, and other expenses remain low. The cost of living is about 27% lower than Seattle. That should keep housing markets on their steady uphill climb.

I trust that’s all accurate, or pretty close to it. But if you need more details about how the market’s going, give Cari a call. Her number’s right below here.

If you’re new to Kennewick, or just don’t know where the Tri-Cities Convention Center is, don’t rely on Google Maps to help you find it. If you click this link to see West Kennewick and the area around the Toyota Center, you’ll notice that Google has the Convention Center a little too far to the north.

That building isn’t the Convention Center; it’s the old Joe’s Sporting Goods/Wal-Mart building. Odd to see a mistake like that on two well-known buildings, neither of which is exactly new at this point.

Hey small business owners — sorry for the late notice, but there’s an excellent online marketing workshop happening this Thursday (yes, two days from now) in Kennewick. It’s called Learn About web, and we’ll be sharing actionable ideas and tips on things like web design, SEO, social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), and local search (Google Maps, Yelp, etc.).

If you’re interested in learning how to get more customers via the Internet, please come out and join us. This isn’t one of those lame, fly-by-night seminars with people coming in from somewhere else promising instant riches. No, all the speakers are local to the Tri-Cities and we know there are no shortcuts to online success. It takes hard work and a plan, and that’s what we’ll helping small business owners do.

You can check out the full schedule and from there, you can sign-up online. Registration is only $99, which is a bargain compared to what you’ll pay for hourly consulting. It’s happening at the Home Builders Association facility on Clearwater Avenue.

Here’s a video we did in which I explain one of the sessions I’ll be giving, about SEO and Local Search:

Hope to see you on Thursday!