About Austin
Managing Broker with LPT Realty, working from an office in Sumner, a short drive from the plateau, the Carbon River valley and the road to the mountain.
I started HomeSquatch for a particular kind of buyer.
You’re the person who scrolls past the kitchen photos to find the one showing the back of the lot. You want to know how far it is to the nearest trailhead before you ask about the countertops. You don’t mind a gravel road, but you want to know who maintains it. You would trade a few minutes of commute for a view of the tree line and a place to stack firewood.
That buyer needs an agent who asks the rural questions early. Foothill searches tend to go sideways in a familiar way. Someone falls for a cabin, writes an offer on feeling, and learns about the tired drainfield or the unrecorded road easement after they are too invested to walk away. Most of that is avoidable. It takes a search set up around the right filters, and it takes someone willing to slow down at the right moments.
What I do
I set up your search around trailheads, commutes, acreage, water systems and winter access, so the homes you see are worth the drive. Tours are planned as a cluster in one area, with time to drive the roads between them. Some questions I can’t answer from the driveway, like the condition of a septic tank or the flow of a well, so I point you to the county records and the inspectors who can. From the offer through closing, we go one document at a time.
I don’t have private listings to sell you, and there is no secret inventory. Every home we look at comes from the open market. I also won’t promise you a price or a closing date. Rural property moves at the pace of its inspections and its loan approval, and I’d rather tell you that on day one.
Why Sumner works as a home base
My office is at 1230 Fryar Ave in Sumner, close to where SR 410 meets SR 167, and that junction does a lot of the work. From there, Orting and Buckley are close, Enumclaw and Black Diamond are an easy drive, and Wilkeson is up the road past Buckley. The I-90 towns take longer, so those tours usually become a full day in the Snoqualmie Valley.
The Homexa network
HomeSquatch is an initiative by Homexa®, a network of 300+ agents across 25 states. Homexa is not a brokerage; my brokerage is LPT Realty. If you’re moving here from another state and need to sell a home there, or if your search wanders out of the foothills into a part of Washington I know less well, I can introduce you to an agent who knows that ground.
How I like to work
The phone is the quickest way to reach me: 206.940.0942. I’ll tell you when I think a house is wrong for you, even if you love it, and I’ll explain why. You make the decisions. My part is making sure you make them with the facts in front of you.
About the name
The Northwest has a long tradition of a large, shy creature who lives in the deep woods and is rarely seen. The best foothill homes can be a little like that: set back from the road and easy to drive past. That is the whole joke, and the last you’ll hear of it.
If this sounds like the way you’d want to buy a home out here, call me or send a note. Tell me where you want to wake up and what you want to see out the window. We’ll start there.
OrtingUp SR 162 from the office. Rainier at the head of the valley, and one of the town’s lahar sirens.
Let’s find it.
Start with a call or a short note about where you want to be and what the house needs.