Portland Real Estate Blog

Got to love jet lag at 5:30 on a Saturday morning. Regular readers know that I spent the last 10 days in England. I cringed at some of the comments that were posted here while I was gone. It’s been less than two months since I wrote “Why there is a Portland Real Estate Blog, again.” It may need reviewing.

New Year’s Resolution 1: Love thy fellow blogger. If we all had the same opinion and view of the market this would be one freak’n boring site. If we make 2008 market predictions, some are going to be right and some wrong. I’ve freely admitted when I have thought or proved to be wrong. JP sorted out the error of my math last week. Sometimes, looking at the data from a different prospective doesn’t produce valid results but the data as put forth may be equally untelling. I could make a policy of just cutting and pasting stories from other sources but what would be the point?

New Year’s Resolution 2: Remember there is a diverse readership. We have renters, one-home owners, multi-property owners, sellers, buyers, investors, want-to-be owners and never-want-to-be owners. What is right for you may not be right for any other reader. Respect the views of others even if they are not yours. Somebody is probably making money right now conducting real estate transactions in this great/awful market. Someone else is losing their shirt.

For the New Year: I am going to do my best to continue not to edit or delete comments (even Naysayer has made the occasional cameo appearance). If they get nasty, I’ll either call you on it or shut off the comments for that particular post and if necessary delete them and ask you to leave. I’ve closed the comments on RMLS November and MarketWatch since I don’t feel the current thread is heading down a productive road.

This is a great, well read, and highly regarded forum but everyone that uses it has some responsibility in keeping it that way.

Sitting in Chicago O’Hare right now waiting for our flight back to Portland. In the next day or two I’ll put my thoughts on the latest round of comments and our impression of English real estate up on the blog.

RMLS will go offline tonight for 24 hours for upgrades. RMLS.com and the agent-side RMLSweb.com will not work during that time. I can’t speak for other brokerage’s websites but I checked with our MIS department and our website, TurnerRealtors.com will continue to work using saved data from the last upload from RMLS through out the outage.

In order to make the enhancement process more efficient in the future, we will be upgrading our servers and re-writing code to work within the .NET Framework. The first phase of this process is scheduled to take place this week with maintenance beginning tonight, Friday, December 28th at 5PM and ending no later than 5PM on Saturday, December 29th. During this time RMLSweb.com, rmls.com, IMS and third party software will be unavailable for no more than 24 hours.

Toward the end of this outage, prospecting matches and auto e-mails to clients will be sent; however, you and your clients will not be able to access these listings until after 5PM on Saturday, December 29th.

Quick cheating cut and paste job while vacationing in England:

Home prices in 20 major U.S. cities were down 6.1% on average in the past year as of October, according to the Case-Shiller price index released Wednesday by Standard & Poor’s.

Since October 2006, prices in 10 cities fell 6.7% — a record drop. The prior largest decline was 6.3% in April 1991.

“No matter how you look at these data, it is obvious that the current state of the single-family housing market remains grim,” said Robert Shiller, chief economist at MacroMarkets LLC and co-developer of the index.

Eleven of the 20 metro areas posted a record low annual growth rate, and six of the metro areas posted double digit declines. Also, all 20 metro areas declined from the prior month.

San Diego posted the largest decline of 2.6%.

Miami sustained the largest drop over the past year, with a decline of 12.4%. Next came Tampa, with a drop of 11.8%; Detroit, with a drop of 11.2%; and San Diego, with a drop of 11.1%.

Home prices are going to decline “considerably further” in coming quarters, likely reaching a double-digit pace on a year-over-year basis, according to Joshua Shapiro, chief economist for MFR Inc.

“Given conditions relating to mortgage financing, and the number of unsold homes that is piling up, all regions are likely to continue on a negative trend in the months ahead, and those with the greatest oversupply (at the bottom of the pack at the moment) will continue to fall by the most,” wrote Shapiro in a research note.

Three areas — Charlotte, N.C., Seattle, and Portland, Ore., — were the only ones still experiencing positive annual growth rates in home prices, according to the report. Charlotte gained 4.3%, Seattle gained 3.3% and Portland gained 1.9%.

Both the 10-city and 20-city composites declined 1.4% from September — their single largest monthly decline on record.

October’s results mark the 10th consecutive month of negative annual returns, and the 23rd consecutive month of decelerating returns, according to the report.

Marketwatch 11:27 AM ET 12/26/07

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch)

My aunt and uncle live in Woking, about 30 minutes out of London. We walked through the high street yesterday. What was most striking is that the real property offices were that they are almost side-by-side in the center of town. Each had window displays of available listings, some on high tech screens, others with printouts taped to the windows. We dpn’t really see that around Portland. The only place that comes to mind is the Moda Realty office right next door to Windermere in Portland Heights. I think there were five offices within six available office spaces. It looked like there were probably 10-20 agents in each office; there are 70 in our office and no one is just going to happen by to browse listings from the street. I think our office is the rule, not the exception around Portland.

Where does you dollar go in Woking? Not far. With the exchange rate at almost 2:1, sticker shock prevails. Here are some listings in Woking by Foxton, one of the larger firms on the street. The house pictured above is listed for GBP425,000. That’s US$950,000 give or take not much. It is three bedrooms and 1324 SQFT.

We’re in England for the holidays with family. We’ve been here a couple of days which goes to show how much technology has affected real estate. We’ve checked voicemail, stayed current on the blog and replied to client emails without them having to know that we are not physically in Portland. Our business is covered by our assistant and if necessary, an agent in our office.

They do things differently here:

In British usage, however, “real property”, often shortened to just “property”, refers rather to land and fixtures as such while the term “real estate” is used mostly in the context of probate law, and means all interests in land held by a deceased person at death excluding interests in money arising under a trust for sale of or charged on land. (wikipedia)

Of course, there are no Realtors. That’s a National Assocication of Realtors registered trademark. Thier main body is the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveryors. Wikipedia continues:

Estate Agent is a United Kingdom term for a person or business that arranges the selling, renting or management of homes, land and other buildings, although an agent that specialises in renting is often called a Letting Agent. Estate agents are mainly engaged in the marketing of property available for sale and a Solicitor or Licensed Conveyancer is used to prepare the legal documents

Listing prices range from .5% to 4% which differs from a comment on a previous post. The article concludes with:

Since around 2000, online estate agents have provided an alternative to the traditional fee structure, claiming cheaper, fixed fee selling packages. These online estate agents claim to give private property sellers the ability to market their property via the major property portals (the preferred medium used by traditional high street estate agents) for a fraction of the cost of traditional estate agency.

New types of property portals based in the United Kingdom have started to encourage UK and worldwide estate agents to collaborate by showing all their properties, thus allowing site visitors to see a vast array of UK and overseas properties all on one website.

Many estate agents are using the latest technology to assist in the sale of houses, with companies enabling home buyers to receive property details while outside a house using a mobile phone.

Interesting to me so far that I have found nothing about agency and buyer representation.

We’ve got another week here so I’ll continue to read more about this and write new post.

Using the average sale prices for the twelve months that ended with November 2007 compared to the twelve months ending in November 2006, the average sale price appreciated 6.5% ($340,900 v. $320,100). Using the same formula, the median sale price also appreciated 7.0% ($288,900 v.$270,000).

Unless December is really bad, I may have spoken too soon revising down my 2007 numbers.

Buena Vista Homes held a massive auction over the weekend to sell of their inventory of home. I did not go but Adam Lake did and blogged about it.

The Oregonian reports:

Although the homes looked especially attractive with super-low starting bids, some brokers were concerned that the homes had a higher, undisclosed “reserve price” that was the lowest Pollock was obligated to accept. But Pollock said about 96 percent of the homes he sold went for below the reserve price. The reserve price, he said, was equal to his costs.

“We didn’t make any money on these homes,” Pollock said. “We lost money.”

They raised $65 million on the sale of 141 homes!

This is purely anecdotal based on what we are seeing at the end of the year. Almost on cue to what we saw last year, there was a definite upswing in activity with our clients last week. One of our longer days on market listings went pending over the weekend with multiple offers. We’ll close three more buyer-side transactions by year end (one closing today).

We’re preparing a few listing that will hit the market in January. They’re not ready to market yet but if someone asked today if they should list now or wait until after the New Year I’d say now if the property is ready. I think we’ll see a lot of new listings so getting out in front of those might be a good strategy. You won’t get an RMLS number starting with 8 but if you are accurately priced, you shouldn’t be sitting on the market!

The crystal ball is still a little cloudy on what ‘08 will bring. I’ll take a snapshot of the poll results before the next Market Action comes out and we’ll see if feelings change. November’s should come out in the next day or so. I expect that we will see more closed transactions next year than this but appreciation will stay fairly flat. I was surprised to hear that right now, PMAR, the Portland Metropolitan Association of Realtors has an all time member high. I would have lost money on that one.

Each case is different and requires individual professional advice but here is a good primer from our Principle Broker:

The first stage in the foreclosure process is Pre-foreclosure. This is when the bank files the foreclosure lawsuit. In some states, it is called the Notice of Default and in other states, it’s called a Lis Pendis. The bank can file the foreclosure lawsuit when the borrower becomes 3 payments behind.
During this period, the borrower has options to solve their situation:
- They can pay off the lender in full.
- They can bring the loan current for all of the past due payments and attorneys fees due.
- They can do a workout with the lender to negotiate a repayment plan, loan modification of forbearance.
- They can sell the house and move
- They can sell the house to an investor and lease it back
- They can refinance the home with an equity lender.
- If they owe more than the home will sell for, they can attempt to do a short sale with the lender.

The 2nd Stage in the foreclosure process is the Auction or Trustee Sale
- This is where the bank brings the property to public auction.
- The sale date is set by a hearing 3-4 weeks before the actual auction occurs.
- The homeowner has the right to attend the hearing and request an extension to get the home sold. Most of the homeowners we work with that attend this hearing can buy themselves an additional 3 days for a total of 60 days.
- 95% of the homes that go to auction go back to the bank as an REO.
The 3rd stage in the foreclosure process is the REO stage
- REO stands for Real Estate Owned. This usually costs the bank anywhere from 35,000 -50,000 to take a home back in foreclosure. This is the 3rd and last stage of the foreclosure process in a judicial state. The property becomes an REO if the property does not sell to a third party bidder at the auction

Oregon Foreclosure Law
Timeline: 120-180 Days
Redemption: Yes, only with Judicial Foreclosure
Deficiency Judgments: Yes, only with Judicial Foreclosure
Judicial Foreclosure: Yes
Non-Judicial Foreclosure: Yes
Security Instruments: Deed of Trust, Mortgage

Read the rest of this entry

I’ve been trying to write five posts a week but sometimes, coming up with meaningful material can be a stretch. Market trends, stats and predictions seem to be a favorite but there is more to real estate than that. I’ll take any ideas to heart. I don’t mind doing some research but can’t spend hours each day doing it!