Portland Real Estate Blog

Merry Christmas to all of our readers.

Charles, Jenny, Annie, Lisa, Susan and Vicki

This is a pretty cool fund-raising concept: the Pink Glove Dance. The email I received from my aunt, a nurse in Toronto:

Emily (MacInnes) Somers created, directed and choreographed this in Portland last week for her Medline glove division as a fundraiser for breast cancer awareness. This was all her idea to help promote their new pink gloves. I don’t know how she got so many employees, doctors and patients to participate, but it started to really catch on and they all had a lot of fun doing it.

When the video gets 1 million hits, Medline will be making a huge contribution to the hospital, as well as offering free mammograms for the community. Please check it out. It’s an easy and great way to donate to a wonderful cause, and who hasn’t been touched by breast cancer?

The video was shot locally at St. Vincent Hospital.

Here’s a reminder that The Oregon Remodelers Association’s 34th annual Home Improvement Show auction event will benefit the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Oregon and southwest Washington is at 5:00PM this Thursday, September 24th, the first day of the show. Like the rest of the show, is at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland (not the Expo Center).  Tickets prices, which include admission to the show all four days, are now 2 for 1.

Guests can enjoy the show, visit exhibits and bid on tremendous packages that will be auctioned off, while enjoying food and wine from local restaurants and wineries. 100% of the proceeds from the live and silent auctions will benefit the Make-A-Wish Foundation® of Oregon. [check out the website for a list of silent and live auction items].

Wristbands for the event will be pre-sold for $55 per pair and will also allow entrance to the show throughout the entire weekend. 70% from each wristband sold will benefit the Make-A-Wish Foundation® of Oregon.

The Home Improvement Show’s hours are:

Thursday, September 24th 2:00pm-8:00pm
Friday, September 25th 11:00am-8:00pm
Saturday, September 26th 10:00am-8:00pm
Sunday, September 27th 10:00am-6:00pm

The Oregon Remodelers Association’s 34th annual Home Improvement Show auction event will benefit the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Oregon (and southwest Washington).  The event is at 5:00PM on Thursday, September 24th, the first day of the show, like the rest of the show, is at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland (not the Expo Center).

Guests can enjoy the show, visit exhibits and bid on tremendous packages that will be auctioned off, while enjoying food and wine from local restaurants and wineries. 100% of the proceeds from the live and silent auctions will benefit the Make-A-Wish Foundation® of Oregon.

Wristbands for the event will be pre-sold for $55 and will also allow entrance to the show throughout the entire weekend. 70% from each wristband sold will benefit the Make-A-Wish Foundation® of Oregon.

The Home Improvement Show’s hours are:

Thursday, September 24th 2:00pm-8:00pm
Friday, September 25th 11:00am-8:00pm
Saturday, September 26th 10:00am-8:00pm
Sunday, September 27th 10:00am-6:00pm

This Saturday is the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Oregon Jr. Board’s Summer Wishes event at Motocorsa in northwest Portland. I am a member of the Junior Board.  The format is a repeat of last year’s event with a fashion show featuring local designers and a silent auction.  Online ticket sales ($35) go through noon on Friday and then tickets can be bought at the door for the Saturday 7PM event ($50).  Take a look at the Summer Wishes website for more information about the event or the Oregon chapter of the Make-A-Wish-Foundation site to see how your participation helps grant wishes in the Oregon and SW Washington area.  Please join us for an evening of fashion, food, and fun while raising money to support local wishes.

Screwed up yesterday. Could have been fined. Long story short: don’t touch a Portland street tree without a permit. We hired an arborist to clean up, not cut down, the street trees that haven’t been maintained in years at NW Hoyt (PGE cuts the portion in the wires but nothing else). Ironically, the stop work order came as I was at the Bureau of Development Services getting our building permit (issued and approved). I’m meeting with Urban Forestry (who issue tree permits) on Monday to discuss the street trees. City code has provissions for fining and/or jailing both the property owner and the contractor hired! Ignorance may not be bliss (or an excuse)!

Thanks to everyone that participated. It took only 10 days to reach 1 million clicks and for Make-A-Wish to receive $5000 donations from us and Kaiser.

Today is the K103 Radiothon for Make-A-Wish. We’ll be on the air at 1:30 as part of the kick off for A Million Clicks for Make-A-Wish. Make-A-Million for Make-A-Wish started out as a drive to raise 1,000,000 pennies for the Foundation. That’s $10,000 and the average wish cost is up over $7,000. This is the first year of A Million Clicks for Make-A-Wish and we are one of the ifive sponsors. Now it is up to you to help hit the goal of 1 million clicks on the special Make-A-Wish logo on the K103 website in the next month. When the goal is met, we will write our $5,000.00 check to Make-A-Wish along with the four other sponsors for a total of $25,000. It’s us, not Prudential Northwest Properties as a whole, that are the sponsors.

Regular readers know that I am on the Junior Board for the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Oregon and that we support them with our charitable dollars. This Friday is the K103 Radiothon being held at the Macy’s from 5AM-7PM in the Clackamas Town Center. It is also the kickoff for your opportunity to spend $5000 of ours! Stay tuned.

I put this under the “Because I Can” category instead of “Real Estate General” mostly because I can.

1) The Portland Trail Blazers- who would have thought? I could attempt to weave some comparison to our real estate market but the Blazers should get to stand alone on this one. Both could hit a wall.
2) Andy Rooney does his 60 Minutes segment on Sunday on how great of an invention the umbrella is. I don’t know where my umbrella is and most Portlanders would agree.
3) For the 37th MSA market, Portland is still is getting national attention and it isn’t even the New York Times this time. Bon Appetit does Portland in the travel section on page 30 of the Feb 2008 print version. I can’t find it online. Some of the mentioned are the Ace Hotel, Lovely Hula Hands, Toro Bravo and Rocket.

On a different note, this is interesting: Win a $2.1M house in a raffle or take $1.7M cash. Unless I am unclear on the concept, you’d have to finance about 50% to pay off the IRS.

If Portland is so green, why don’t we see more hybrid cars? When I went to visit my dad in the hospital (doing fine and home now after 7hrs of elective back surgery) in Marin on Friday, I drove his Prius. At the traffic light there were two other Pri-i in front of me and one behind me- four in a row. Anybody seen that in Portland? I was surprised that our neighbors hadn’t realized that the TurnerRealtor vehicles are Lexus hybrids.

I’m showing the one LEED Certified single family residence listed in RMLS on Saturday. That should be interesting. Its unfortunate (or fortunate depending on how you look at it) that the Earth Advantage program is so busy that they can’t certify remodels, only new construction. We tried with our current project.

So there you have it. Some real estate crept in there: occupational hazard.