insideABODE is a podcast that gives you an unfiltered, honest, inside look at the Real Estate industry like you've never heard before.
Windermere Abode is a boutique real estate brokerage located in Old Town Tacoma. We are changing—and elevating—real estate in this community. Windermere Abode intentionally maintains a small team of amazing agents, to focus time and energy focused on creating the best experience possible for buyers and sellers.
What are the top five things you need to know about living in East Tacoma? Abode broker Melo Hogan lives there, and she answers like a neighbor, not a brochure.
She starts with the people — the kind of neighbors who'll strike up a conversation with someone they just met. Then the small businesses around McKinley Hill: Dusty's Hideaway, the Filipino-Latin fusion spot El Lechon Loco, and a Mexican market pop-up off East 72nd where she went for elotes and came home with a puppy. Reason four is the one commuters care about: 38th Street gets you downtown, Portland Avenue gets you onto I-5 north, and the Amtrak and Sounder at the Tacoma Dome are about five minutes away, depending on where you live. Reason five is how her family spends its time — volunteering at Eloise's Cooking Pot food bank and the community center off Portland Avenue, something they've done since 2015.
Then the story underneath it. Melo came to the US from the Philippines, landed in California, and found her way to East Tacoma — and after most of her adult life there, it's home. Dave and Melo get into why Tacoma still feels like a small town even as it grows, and the episode closes with a rapid-fire round: Practical Magic 2, empanadas from El Parche, a hot take about puppies, and the finger rule for perfect rice.
For anyone moving to Tacoma or Pierce County, buyers comparing neighborhoods, and locals who already know.
MEET THE GUEST
Melo Hogan — Broker, Windermere Abode
📸 Instagram → @melohogan.realtor
🌐 melohogan.com
📞 253-304-8058
CHAPTERS
0:00 Top 5 things to know about East Tacoma
1:31 #1 The people
1:54 #2 Small businesses on McKinley Hill
3:04 #3 The Mexican market pop-up off East 72nd
3:36 #4 Getting around: 38th St, I-5, Sounder & Amtrak
4:34 #5 Volunteering and community
5:15 From the Philippines to East Tacoma
6:20 Tacoma's small-town feel
7:53 Moving here? Who to call
8:36 Rapid fire: movie, food, hot take
10:07 Rice with every meal
10:47 The finger rule for perfect rice
13:06 How to reach Melo
#InsideAbode #Tacoma #TacomaRealEstate #PierceCounty #WindermereAbode #PNW #RealEstatePodcast #EastTacoma #EastsideTacoma #McKinleyHill #MovingToTacoma #TacomaNeighborhoods
📲 FOLLOW & CONNECT:
📸 Follow us on Instagram → @windermereabode
🌐 Visit us online → windermereabode.com
😍 Go crush on a house → abodecrush.com
🏠 Read more on fair housing → tacomafairhousing.com
🎙️ Listen to the insideABODE Podcast on all podcast streaming platforms
23 Sept 2026
How She Bought Her First Home With Zero Down (VA Loan, Pierce County) | Sorelle Okoli + Brianna Minor
Every real estate podcast gets you one side of the story. This one gets you both.
Sorelle Okoli represented the buyer. Brianna Minor was the buyer. They sat down together and walked the whole thing back — start to close, hiccup by hiccup.
Brianna came up from Southern California when her partner got stationed here, and all she knew about a VA loan was the one line everybody repeats: no down payment. That line is the reason she bought this year instead of waiting three or four more. Worth sitting with — for a lot of first-time buyers the down payment is the entire wall, and a VA loan is one of the few doors through it. If you have access to one, you should know how it actually behaves.
So here's how it actually behaved. The first offer got a no the same day it went in. On the house they landed, the seller rejected every single inspection request out of the gate. Then the appraisal came in low and the price had to be renegotiated all over again. Sorelle breaks down what she asked for and where they found the middle. Brianna tells you what it felt like on the other end of the phone — the weekends where nothing moves, the days that feel forty-eight hours long, calling her dad and her grandpa for a second opinion after every update.
They also kill a myth: the VA appraisal was not slow. It came back on time and it did not delay closing.
And the part that mattered more than either of them expected — the lender was local. George Lane picked up, ran numbers on every property they were curious about, and his name on the pre-approval letter meant something to the listing agent on the other side. Sorelle explains why a local pre-approval can get an offer taken seriously when a call center can't.
Closing got moved up. It landed the same day as Brianna's bingo night, and Sorelle showed up with champagne.
For VA buyers, first-time buyers, military families landing in Pierce County, and any agent who wants to hear a client describe the process in her own words.
Connect with Sorelle Okoli:
📸 Instagram → @sorelleokoli
✉️ sorelle@windermere.com
Connect with Brianna Minor:
📸 Instagram → @briannaminor
🎉 Tacoma bingo nights → @hotgirlsplaybingo
#InsideAbode #VALoan #VeteransHomeLoan #PierceCounty #Tacoma #WindermereAbode #FirstTimeHomeBuyer #MilitaryFamilies #JBLM #RealEstatePodcast #PNW #HomeBuying #Appraisal #HomeInspection #TacomaRealEstate
📲 FOLLOW & CONNECT:
📸 Follow us on Instagram → @windermereabode
🌐 Visit us online → windermereabode.com
😍 Go crush on a house → abodecrush.com
🏠 Read more on fair housing → tacomafairhousing.com
🎙️ Listen to the insideABODE Podcast on all podcast streaming platforms
21 Sept 2026
Highest Chance to Sell in Pierce County Belongs To... | Sept 2026 Market Update
Pierce County is a buyer's market on paper. Zoom in and it's a very different story depending on where you live.
Dave pulls up the numbers and walks through them fast. Overall, a home in Pierce County has a 34% chance of selling right now, with 2,469 active listings against 843 pendings, a $559K median sold price, and 34 median days on market. That's close to balanced, but the gap between actives and pendings has been widening since April.
Then the part that matters: the area rankings. North Tacoma sits at the top with the highest chance of selling in the county, 19 days on market and about two months of supply, still a seller's market. University Place is second. Parkland is a surprise third at 51%. Central Tacoma right behind it. Bonney Lake and Lake Tapps land mid-pack. South Tacoma comes in lower than you'd expect, and Anderson Island, Key Peninsula, Lakewood and DuPont round out the bottom.
Here's why it matters now. August is usually peak inventory for the year, and rates just went up. That hits buying power hardest for the people who were already stretched, and plenty of Pierce County households can't make the math work at today's rates. Dave calls it what it is: a K-shaped market, where the top end keeps moving and the affordable price ranges get harder to reach. Inventory is likely to come down from here, but the buyer pool is shrinking with it. How the year ends is the open question.
This one is for Pierce County sellers deciding whether to list this fall, buyers who are still active and want to know where they have leverage, and agents who want the county-wide picture before they price anything.
Questions about your area? Email davidjones@windermere.com or reach out to any Windermere Abode agent. They can get into what sold, why it sold, and what's moving on your street.
Market data shown from courted.io / NWMLS as of mid-September 2026.
#InsideAbode #Tacoma #TacomaRealEstate #PierceCounty #WindermereAbode #PNW #RealEstatePodcast #MarketUpdate #NorthTacoma #UniversityPlace #Parkland #BonneyLake #LakeTapps #GigHarbor #Lakewood #HousingMarket2026 #BuyersMarket #InterestRates
📲 FOLLOW & CONNECT:
📸 Follow us on Instagram → @windermereabode
🌐 Visit us online → windermereabode.com
😍 Go crush on a house → abodecrush.com
🏠 Read more on fair housing → tacomafairhousing.com
🎙️ Listen to the insideABODE Podcast on all podcast streaming platforms
Inside a recent episode
AbodeLife: A Sit Down with Anne and Dave Jones on Leadership
Published 17 Dec 2019 · Transcript excerpt
[…] And every time I have the opportunity to share those titles with people, I do. Just because white fragility is not a hard read. There's other reads on around race that are either very textbook. So they did very dry and it takes a while to move through them. Or they're just really challenging. I think people emotionally challenging people put them down because they're too tough. White fragility is you can you can get through it in a reasonable time. I've passed it along to everyone I know who was willing to take it and some who aren't probably. And then the color of law, though, is a dry read, but a really important one for anybody in our industry that just talks about like our participation in redlining and segregation. […]
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