I just downloaded the 100+ page National Association of Realtor’s 2011 Profile of Buyers and Sellers.  Obviously there’s a lot to read there but these are the highlighted stats listed for buyers:

Writing for me is like going to the gym.  Love doing it but get out of the habit and it’s hard to get back to.  Today’s release of RMLS Market Action should get me back in the groove.  Inventory is four months lower than it was this time last year.  That partially because there are currently only 9,451 active residential listings and partially because closed sales are up 18.9% from November of 2010.

Average price is down 4.6% from this time last year but edged up .3% from October.  Can we be cautiously optimistic about the Portland housing market going into 2012?  I previously wrote about the Case Shiller article predicting gains.  Yahoo/CNBC wrote “Residential Housing Ready to Waken?” on Friday of last week.  We should note that Portland has typically been about a year late to the party.

“It has become increasingly apparent to us that the pieces for a housing rebound next year are beginning to fall into place,” declared Barclays Capital analyst Stephen Kim in a recent note to investors.

Affordability and interest rates are as good as they have ever been in recent years.  There’s plenty of reason to be a pessimist too: jobs, politics, Europe being just a few of them.

We are excited to announce that we are now the Turner Team, Inc at Atlantic & Pacific Real Estate (US), LLC.  The decision to leave Prudential Northwest Properties was the hardest business decision we have ever made. We leave our old home with nothing but fond memories and the nicest things to say about their tools and people.

Atlantic & Pacific Real Estate is full-service brokerage with locations across the country and this is their introduction to the Pacific Northwest.   Founded in 2008, we are a part of the Carrington family of companies. The entire Turner Team has moved with Jenny and I.

We’re making the transition as quickly as possible but if you see something out of place we apologize.  If you need any assistance with anything let us know and we’ll be happy to help.

Happy Thanksgiving!

RMLS Market Action for October 2011 was released yesterday.  The average price of residential property in Portland is $258,700.  The median price is $221,000.  So what does the NBA lockout have to do with that?  CNBC reports that the average NBA player has lost $220,000 in wages thus far due to the lockout (Kobe has lost over a million dollars).  That means the NBA’s 450 players could have purchased 5% of Portland’s housing inventory and reduced the current 6.8 months of inventory to 6.5 months just by playing some basket ball.

In reality most of that salary income would not have been spent in Portland and it is not the players losing out.  The economic impact to Portland is of far greater concern than the impact to millionaires fighting with billionaires.   The NY Times which has a documented love affair with Portland reported on how cities that are a one-team-town suffer the most (they failed to acknowledge the Timbers).  Joe Freeman at the Oregonian also wrote of the impact to the local economy which was repudiated by economist Patrick Emerson.  The Rose Garden employs 900 people a night and the City gets $77,000 for its coffers on games days.  Six games of revenue would have paid for the police overtime last weekend at Occupy Portland protests.  All the money referenced above will be spent one way or another but a large portion probably won’t be spent in Portland.

Moving off the soapbox, let’s go back to RMLS Market Action.  The average and median prices referenced above are both declines on both an annual and monthly basis.  Inventory has pretty much remained static, up just one tenth of a month.  6.8 months of inventory is lower that it was at any point in 2010.  A positive note is both pending and closed sales are up compared to October 2010 and year-to-date compared to 2010.  More houses are selling but for less money.

We’ve updated the flowcharts that we created to explain the short sale process.  There are three perspectives: Short Sales for Buyers, Short Sales for Sellers and an Overview of the Short Sale Process.  Those are the links to the original posts.  These are the revised charts:

Every short sale is different and may or may not mirror the charts presented here.  As of 11/11/11 there are 667 properties listed as short sales of the 3459 homes for sale in Portland (19.2%).

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  It’s also a copyright violation.  This post should duplicate, just like all of my other posts, on http://www.portland-property-management-companies.info/blog/.  It’s a site that I have no affiliation with and have certainly not given them permission to repost my content.

Looks an awful lot like the post I wrote that day:

I’ve always taken pride in writing my own copy and citing what isn’t mine. Apparently not the case here. Who is affiliated with the site is a little murky but my call to the domain registrant has yet to be returned.

I asked our fans on Facebook for a topic idea for today.  Raqon was the first to respond with: “How about this: Switzerland- country with one of the top income per capita,yet 70% of all Swiss are renters.”  Interesting unto itself but a little hard to tie back to Portland real estate which is something I always try to do (no farmer’s market schedules here).

Home ownership as the American Dream has shifted in the last few years.  In the first quarter of 2005, the national home ownership rate was 70.4%.  For the third quarter of 2011 it was 68.0%.   76.1% of West Virginians owned their homes at the end of the third quarter compared to 54.5% of New Yorkers (Hawaii close behind at 55.0%).  Oregon is a little below average at 66.4%.  The Portland Metro MSA (the same area used by Case Shiller in their reporting) has a home ownership rate of 64.1%.  The District of Columbia has the lowest home ownership rates on the list at 44.3% but as 51st state…  All of the data above is from the US Census Bureau “Housing Vacancies and Homeownership” site. (more…)

We hear a lot of talk about the shadow inventory that banks are holding off the market so that they don’t flood the market. We ran some searches in RMLS to count how many homes for sale are bank owned. We didn’t look at every single metro Portland location but our fifty searches revealed that both Washington and Oregon are carrying 6.6% of the total listings as bank owned. Outlying areas tend to have a higher percentage than the closer in locations. The map is interactive so you can click around it to view specific ranges.

View Portland and Vancouver Bank Owned in a full screen map

We’d had a trip to Vegas planned for some time and when we received an email from Prudential Americana Group, Las Vegas agent Nancy Storey. We met Nancy at the Summit Conference in San Francisco in September and decided that we should drive around and take a look at some areas.  We also have local Portland friends who have recently bought a couple of houses as rental property in Las Vegas.

Her email included a condo that originally sold for $504,900 and then resold for $87,500!  On our drive out to Red Rock Canyon we drove through Summerlin where a home sold for $340,000 and then resold for $170,000.  Summerlin is on the west side of Las Vegas.

The Summerlin subdivision that we drove through had about ten for sale signs.  Only two had flier boxes which were both empty and none of them had any sort of permanent/eco flier that we are seeing more and more of in Portland.  We’ve been using permanent fliers for a few years now as we we constantly losing the battle to keep boxes full with readable fliers- every time it rains they turn into a solid mass.  Different markets utilize different tool to market homes.

We didn’t enter any of the gated communities but what was most striking was how many gated communities there were- they don’t feature a lot in the Portland area until you hit much higher price points.

A few more of Nancy’s examples:

• 2 bedroom with 1 car garage 1,054 square feet in Henderson $69,900 originally sold for $223,500.
• 2 bedroom with 1 car attached garage 1,031 square feet in Henderson
  $69,900 originally sold for $200,000
• 4 bedroom 2 ½ bath 2,067 square feet located in Summerlin $188,000
  originally sold for $399,950
• 1 bedroom Palms Place Resort 25th floor 1220 square feet $274,900
  originally sold for $746,900

For comparison purposes, Case Shiller’s August 2011 report show Las Vegas at 95.18 and Portland’s at 135.91.  The Index was set to 100 January 1, 2000.  Las Vegas peaked at 234.78 in August 2006.  Portland was at 181.71 at the time and reached its peak in July 2007 at 186.51.  By February 2008 Las Vegas had dipped below Portland, never to regain the lead.

Multnomah County property tax statements came in the mail yesterday. We got three yellow statements which means we do not owe- our mortgage company pays the bills out the our impound accounts. Green statements mean that you owe by November 15th in full to get the maximum discount. You can pay in thirds but pay extra for the privilege. Readers have pointed out in the past that they have received the wrong color statements for their situation so be extra careful if you have refinanced or purchased recently as they are not always correct. The complete 2011 Property Tax statement guide, included in the mailing, can be downloaded here.  If you have any questions about your statement, contact the Assessor’s office as your statements may not be represented by mine.

There are two property value amounts on your statement: 1) the Real Market Value (RMV) which is the amount the tax assessor’s estimate of what your house would have sold for on January 1, 2011; 2) the Tax Assessed Value (TAV) which is the amount your tax bill is based on.  Your tax assessed value cannot increase more than 3% from the previous year by law (Measures 5 and 47 in the 1990s).  You are actually taxed on which ever value is lower but RMV has always been higher in every case I have seen.  My Excel sheet comparing RMV and TAV put the tax assessed value at 55%, 44% and 37% of RMV on the three statements.  RMV declined on all three statements and the TAV went up on all three.  All three bills are more expensive that last year’s.  Since the Tax Assessed Values are so low compared to RMV I clearly don’t think I would have anything to appeal.  If I did, Multnomah County Property Tax appeals must be received/postmarked by January 3, 2012 (usually 12/31 but New Years falls on a weekend). (more…)