So a woman from the escrow industry just left me three phone messages complaining about my recent story about four lawsuits against escrow companies.

Her main complaint was that it was one-sided, and she's right. Here's why.

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UPDATE: Appologies to Kennedy Associates, a Seattle-based company that also is a finalist. Kennedy's Responsible Property Investing program targets Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design silver certification for all development projects and Energy Star benchmarking for all existing buildings in its $9.6-billion portfolio, believing sustainable principles bring a competitive advantage.

Seattle is home to three of the 20 finalists for the first in what are planned to be annual Sustainable Cities Awards.

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Here are two big, old homes that just hit the market in Northwest Seattle.

Both have four bedrooms, two bathrooms and cool yards, and claim to be in the "Ballard area," meaning they aren't really in Ballard.

Contestant No. 1 is a 2,540-square-foot Loyal Heights Tudor built in 1930. Check out the parlor with a (baby?) grand piano, which I'm assuming doesn't come with the house.

No. 2 is a 1925 Greenwood Craftsman with 2,112 square feet. Take a look at the second bathroom, where the sink is in the shower.

Thoughts?

Courtesy Nyhus Communications

Bellevue Towers cemented its title as the tallest building in Bellevue (thanks in part to the elevation of its site) and the largest residential high-rise project in the Puget Sound region Wednesday, with the topping out of the South Tower at 43 stories.

The project, by Portland developer Gerding Edlen, will include 540 condos in its 42- and 43-story towers and is seeking a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design "gold" rating, the second-highest level in the U.S. Green Building Council's environmentally friendly building program.

The appraisal for these condos, which were involved in a mortgage fraud, said they were recently renovated to include Brazilian hardwood and granite countertops and were worth $275,000, according to the FBI.

Mortgage-related suspicious activity reports by financial institutions increased 31 percent, to 46,717, in the 2007 fiscal year, according to the FBI's newly released 2007 Mortgage Fraud Report.

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People want more from Real Estate (and other) Web sites and they want it in one place, executives from Google, Zillow and Realtor.com said on Friday.

The subtext of the talk – at the National Association of Real Estate Editors' annual conference, in Dallas – appeared to be that Seattle startup Zillow and Realtor.com want to be that one destination for real estate and Google wants to be the one stop for all information.

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The mortgage industry's current disarray is like New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, an industry executive said Wednesday.

"Nobody knows what it's going to be like, but it will be different," Steve O'Connor, senior vice president with the Mortgage Bankers Association, said during the National Association of Real Estate Editors' annual conference, in Dallas.

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I'm in Dallas for the National Association of Real Estate Editors conference. I'll have more from here later, but to start out, here's a provocative comparison regarding real estate agents' complaints about the media.

A session about the current state of the market inevitably led to real estate agents' blaming reporters for the slowdown. One of my colleagues, who I'll decline to name, for his protection, likened it to members of the Bush administration complaining of a lack of reporting about the good things happening in Iraq.

Thoughts?

Typical homes in the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue area were worth $376,922 in the first quarter of 2008 – down 4.2 percent from the first quarter of 2007 and 5.3 percent from the market peak in the third quarter of last year, according to a report Zillow released Tuesday.

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An Indian industrialist is building the world's first billion-dollar home, which actually will cost $2 billion, according to a story in Forbes (complete with pictures).

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