Portland Real Estate Blog

I flew home on Horizon Airlines University of Oregon logo-ed plane a couple of days ago. It got me to thinking. How does a Beaver fan like being trapped in a plane with the Oregon logo staring back from the wingtips. In the event of a crash, the last thing they see is the O smiling back at them. Being a Lewis and Clark graduate, the rivalry is mostly a fair weather fan thing for me. If it will help one team advance to the top of the rankings, I’m all for it. When it comes to selling real estate, does an affiliation (sports, political or otherwise) make a difference? Does a Duck think another Duck has built a better nest? Is one Beaver’s dam the best damn house on the market? I once sold a house to a die hard OSU fan where we knew the seller was a Duck (his 2004 Rose Bowl photo as a player was on the wall). We didn’t mention the connection.

Politically we could ask the same question: Obama or McCain? There are lots of yard signs out there.

This thread is mostly for fun but not totally? I’m not aware of any Realtors marketing exclusively to one specific team or political affiliation. Is there an Equal Housing Opportunity thing going on here at all? As a buyer or seller, would you choose or not choose a Realtor based on the knowledge of the agent’s support for one group over another? Would you choose one offer over another?

The Federal Reserve held interest rates today. What does that mean to a buyer? A 30 year loan at 6% interest costs $500 per month per $100,000 borrowed in interest. Add .25% and the payment goes up to $520.83. On a $400,000 loan, that’s an additional $999.84 a year in interest payments. A drop in rates has the same effect; saving $999.64 a year.

Today’s Case Schiller Report has Portland up .3% between April and March (click on the image to enlarge). One month of positive after months of decline doesn’t give us much to sink out teeth into. It could be caused by an actual improvement, a seasonal up tick, or any number of other factors. Only time will tell if we are looking at the bottom or not.

Using data from the June Report, I compared the Portland Housing Market to the 20 City Composite Index. Both were added to Case Shiller’s tracking in 2000. I think it is interesting that the two have come back together but I don’t have any conclusion as to what that means. Both started with an index of 100 1/2000. Portland is now 174.87 (high of 186.51 July 2007) and the Index is 169.85 (high of 206.52 July 2006).

What to do with $125 million burning a hole in your pocket? You could by 372 homes at Portland’s average price of $335,700 (year to date) or you could buy Donald Trumps house- the one he doesn’t live in.

You can watch the youtube version here. Or the Forbes.com version here. Neither allows for embedding but the youtube one doesn’t have a commercial at the beginning.

If Trump’s pad is too modest, you might want to try Billionaire’s Row in London. At $117 million British Pounds (117 000 000 British pounds = 228.8052 million U.S. dollars as of now according to Google), this house is being purchased for the buyer’s son.

We had a very isolated storm yesterday at 2356 NW Hoyt. During the process of replacing the sewer line yesterday the backhoe nicked the waterline. There’s no fault as “Call Before You Dig” had been called and the utility lines were all marked. Turns out that the waterline is not a straight connection. They caught it four+ feet from where it was marked and the leak was running at the rate about half of what would come out of a garden hose. A City repair crew showed up and I was gone less than an hour but when I came back, the hole was full of water and the trees were dripping water from above! The hole, 11 feet at its deepest, is now filled in and ready for asphalt.

The sewer line is “burst” from the street into the basement. I’m not exactly sure how it works but the machine goes through the old sewer line busting it up as it goes and drags a new line into the basement. The plumber can then connect the new lines that are being run inside the house. In this picture you can also see the mark on the right wall where the chimney used to be and the lip of the Waterguard waterproofing along the perimeter.

The Mercer 2008 Quality of Living Survey was just realesed.

The rankings are based on a point scoring index, which sees Zurich scoring 108, while Baghdad scores 13.5. Cities are compared to New York as the base city, with an index score of 100. The quality of living survey covers 215 cities and is conducted to help governments and major companies place employees on international assignments.

Portland (100.2 score) ranks 48th, down two spots from last year:

Canadian cities dominate the rankings in the Americas. Vancouver (4) has the best quality of living followed by Toronto (15), Ottawa (19) and Montreal (22). In the US, after Honolulu (28) comes San Francisco (29), Boston (37) and Chicago (44). Washington, DC, ranks 44, above New York (49).

NO US CITY RANKS IN THE TOP 50 FOR SAFETY!!! If you don’t want to cross an ocean, head to Canada where Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver all ties for 22. “Chicago, Honolulu, Houston, Lexington, San Francisco and Winston-Salem all share rank 53.”

For lack of a specific topic today:

Heard somewhere: Foreclosures are up 50% from this time last year nationally. Nevada is worst off.

The Oregon Association of Realtors held a very nice fundraising event that the Oregon Golf Club Thursday night benefiting OAR’s Home Foundation.

8549 NW Ryan is now $679,000. Down $20,000 from the original listing price. The cost of the sale fail is higher than the earnest money the seller got to keep. Since we don’t know why it failed, it is hard to analyze it. It does illustrate the importance of the beginning of a listing period.

Our NW Hoyt project is going well. I’ll post more in the next few days with pictures. John’s Waterproofing installed the WaterGuard system on Thursday. That allows us to finish the basement out without the future risk of water damage. We haven’t had much rain since we took possession so it is largely an insurance policy aswe never saw water in the basement.

May was better than April but this May was worse than last May. For the second consecutive month, both median and average prices declined. Inventory declined 1.1 months (11%) between May and April (it increased in 2007 by .1 month (3%)). My prediction for May stating that May might be “surprising” landed with a bit of a thud. I had expected that the numbers would be better (and yes, 8569 NW Ryan is an active listing).

Matt Lauer just interviewed Barbara Corcoran, “Today Show’s real estate guru”. I was typing as I listened- I doubt the interview is online. I’ll let folks comment (or not) and then chime in later.

1. Under-price your home 10-15% compared to the rest of the market.
2. Get rid of clutter.
3. Take pictures on a sunny day (she doesn’t live in Portland). Lauer adds no Photoshop to make it what it isn’t.
4. Hire a top “killer broker.” Twenty percent of agents do 80% of the business.
5. Pick the right town.
6. Buy a house with character.
7. Buy a brick or white house. Says that surveys show they are preference
8. Buy in the middle of the price range.

I didn’t attend NAR’s chief economist, Laurence Yun’s, speech last week but here is KOIN’s news story on the event. He is confident that in five years that Portland prices will be up 30 percent. It’s a bold statement and I think I betting on Big Brown on Saturday to win the Triple Crown would have been a safer bet but we all saw how that worked out.

He does retierate the “real estate is local” theme and even brings it further to neighborhood specific. I think we’ve seen that.