RMLS Market Action for September 2011 was released on Friday afternoon.  I’d consider the report mostly neutral.  Inventory, median price, pending and closed sales were up but average price and the number of new listings decreased compared to August.  Note that an increase in inventory is not considered a positive though at 6.7 months it is lower than it was at any point in 2010 and all but one month in 2009. (more…)

There are currently 3386 homes for sale in Portland according to RMLS.  703 (21%) are listed as short sales and of those 251 do not have at offers that have been submitted to the bank for approval.  There are 278 “pending” sale which means that new offers won’t be submitted to the bank until the current offer runs it course.

The short sale process requires constant communication by the listing agent with the bank in order to get the transaction approved.  That communication requires incredible attention to detail and persistence that most Realtors don’t have, me being one of them.  I’d probably have a few choice words and slam the phone down.  Fortunately, Vicki on our team does all of our short sale negotiation and she’s good at it. (more…)

The Home Buyer Credit came to an end on September 30th, 2010 and is now mostly forgotten.  Now’s as good as time as any to remind you to consult your accountant about the Credit if you received it and are thinking about selling or moving out.  There were various iterations of the Credit.  The 2008 version was basically a 15 year interest free loan that starts to get repaid in the 2010 tax year ($500/year).  The 2009 First Time Buyer Credit and the 2010 Home Buyer Credit (which was not just limited to first-time buyers) do not have to repaid unless the property claimed stops being your primary residence in the first three years of ownership (there are exceptions such as death, destruction of the home and divorce, so do your homework).  From the IRS’s Buyer Credit Resource Page: (more…)

Traffic notwithstanding it takes about twenty minutes to get to Portland International Airport from downtown Portland.  Its convenient  proximity to so much of Portland also means that flight paths can be disruptive.  Though the majority of takeoffs and departures run along the Columbia River, that isn’t always the case.  The cool factor of living on the river near the airport can be tempered at times by aircraft noise.  Figuring out flight paths isn’t as easy as looking for railroad tracks.  There are currently 76 residential homes and condos for sale north of Columbia BLVD and between Interstates 5 and 205.

www.PortlandMaps.com has some static maps that show flight information under the “noise” tab under specific address searches.  There is an airport zone that restricts building and tree height.  The Port of Portland has a noise management department and a flight tracker that shows what flight paths are being used in a nearly-live format (either the clock is off two hours or it is delayed by that amount).  You can go back in time and watch at an accelerated pace to see what flight paths look like over time. (more…)

I’m sitting here listening to Steve Job’s commencement address to Stanford’s class of 2005 for the second time (on my MacBook).  It’s 15 minutes well spent.  Five minutes into the speech he says that, “you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.”  He was talking about his time at Reed College and how what happened there would greatly impact the development of the Mac ten years later.

Heeding his advice, looking forward is a speculative business at best.  The Wall Street Journal in conjunction with Case Shiller put this map together of predictive real estate prices between the first quarter of 2012 and the first quarter of 2013.  Portland’s prediction is for a 5.9% increase.  Bend is considerably higher up the list at 13.7% as are some of the other Oregon markets.  Put that with CNN’s report today that interest rates for a 30 year fixed conventional loan are under 4% for the first time ever at 3.94% and you might have a reason feel a little more optimistic.

A note about this table. Width limitations make it necessary to scroll over to the right in order to scroll down the list. If you want the full size of this map, click here. I’ve fixed the embedded image twice now so if it disappears again, just use the link.

Portland Real Estate Blog | Presented by the Turner Realtors Team

A little Friday afternoon fun for you.  Gregory Kloehn has taken your standard dumpster and turned it into a luxury “home.”  There are granite counters and hardwood floors, an outdoor shower and grill.  Relax under the rooftop awning and enjoy the sunset (and pray the garbage truck isn’t in the neighborhood). (more…)

“Housing prices looking up, sort of.”

“Portland Home Price drop 8.4%“

The first headline is by Eliot Njus of the Oregonian (print version, I can’t find it online).  The second is Wendy Culverwell’s of the Portland Business Journal.  Both headlines refer to yesterday’s release of the July 2011 Case Shiller Index.  The two articles are an complete study in contrast.  The Oregonian article leads with the Index being up, though barely, for the fourth consecutive month and then discusses the fact that over the last 12 months the Portland real estate market has dropped 8.4%.  The Business Journal story is all about the twelve month decline in the first half of the story.

The Business Journal story was a part of the DailyUpdate email I get daily from the Biz Journal yesterday afternoon.  I had this comment, posted on their site yesterday: (more…)

RMLS Market Action for August 2011 the Portland Metro area was released last week.  Inventory dropped to 6.2 months from July’s 7.0 months, and average and median prices slid a little.  This month’s report seems to continue a recent trend of a combination of good news tempered with not-so-good news and vice versa.  Inventory is the ratio of homes for sale to the number of closed transacti0ns.  The market has remained largely flat through the summer.

We’re in San Francisco right now at the Prudential Real Estate Summit Convention.  It’s a gathering of some of the top Prudential agents across the country and our discussion of markets yesterday provides some context to our market.  Washington DC has remained one of the strongest markets despite what the rest of the country has experienced because, “politicians come to DC as elected officials but they never leave, they become lobbyists.” (more…)

One man’s garbage is another man’s treasure.  He might want to walk for exercise while she may want to walk from restaurant to shopping to more shopping.  Walkscore.com has become a very popular real estate resource.  Enter and address and based on its criteria it gives a score between 1-100. According to WalkScore, Portland has an overall walkability of 66.  The best area: downtown (96).  The worst: Forest Park/Linton (12).  He’d probably love walking in Forest Park!

PortlandMaps is another great resource.  We’ve cited it many times before but they keep adding new resources so we’ll keep writing about it.  We use it to check the status of permits (or whether one was issued for a project) and to look for evidence of oil tanks (under the historic permits heading).  From the  zoning map you can click on the zoning map you can click through to overlay districts (historic, flight, etc.  You can even find out who is the local garbage hauler is for a property.  Note that the information found on these websites isn’t always 100% accurate. (more…)

Can I have my house listed for sale and rent at the same time?  In theory yes.  For practical purposes I would advise against it.  Possible perceptions of  three key players:

The potential renter: I don’t want to move into a house that is listed for sale because I may get evicted (within the framework of Oregon/Tenant law) because it is only a month to month contract.  Even if I sign a lease the landlord will probably list it for sale before my leases ends and it may become a hassle to keep everything tidy so it can be shown and I really don’t want people tromping around my house.  I’ll find something else to rent.  The landlord probably isn’t that committed to the house if they are trying to unload it.

The buyer: What’s wrong with this house?  They can’t sell it which means it is overpriced and a renter doesn’t want it either. They’re probably not that serious about selling it if they can keep it as a rental and probably won’t entertain my offer, which is going to be low, anyways.

The Realtor: I’ve got a long list of potential houses and in talking to the listing agent they really don’t know how much interest it is getting as a rental because they don’t have any part of that.  We write an offer only to be informed that “the seller signed a lease yesterday.”  Our offer  is how the listing agent finds out that they have lost a listing (this has happened). (more…)