Portland Real Estate Blog

Home Owner Association (HOA) dues are a function of most condominium complexes.  For this search in RMLS, I ran condos sold in the last 12 months between 950 and 1050 SQFT in the Pearl District’s 97209 zip code.

There were 25 results and one without the HOA dues listed so based on 24 properties that averaged 997 SQFT, the average HOA dues were $333 per month.  The average HOA cost/SQFT is $.33 and the average $335/SQFT.  At least in this case, we can take the first two numbers of the price/SQFT and get the HOA cost.  I ran a second RMLS search around 1300 feet: average HOA dues: $.33/SQFT.  There is a spread of $350-$475 per month at the 1300 SQFT range.

One thing to consider is that no two HOAs charge for the same thing or have the same costs.  Within the search results, I cannot list what each HOA includes automatically in its charges which will make it a bigger research project for another day.  There is no APR-like metric for dues like there is for financing.

Is the Portland’s South Waterfront competitive with the Pearl District? Let’s look at the two areas of concentrated high rise buildings and see how they compare according to RMLS.  Note that the stats here rely on what was entered into RMLS so probably does not include most sold by the sales office directly to buyers.  I drew the map based search areas and limited it to buildings built in 2005 or after (100% of the SWF and 59 of 162 current active listings in the Pearl).

Pearl District condos (59 Active):

• High Price: $2,500,000
• Low Price: $215,000
• Average Price $752,900
• Median Price: $599,900
• Average Cost Per SQFT: $548

South Waterfront condos (35 Active)

• High Price: $2,499,000
• Low Price: $189,950
• Average Price $570,879
• Median Price: $424,000
• Average Cost Per SQFT: $361

The Pearl’s current asking price per square foot is $187 higher than the South Waterfront.

Flash back to 2006.  Both areas had 12 sales recorded in RMLS of 2005 or newer construction.  The average sold $/SQFT in the Pearl was $470.  In the South Waterfront it was $451.  Nineteen dollars per square foot separated the areas.  The asking price in the Pearl District is now 116% higher than the cost per square foot in 2006.  In the South Waterfront, it is 80% of the 2006 sold price!

We can’t tell what is for sale through other sources.  The Awater Place auction has a low bid price of $169,000.  There is a reserve-not-met auction at Realtybid.com that closes today priced at $232,000 for a loft in the Elizabeth in the Pearl District.

Disclaimer: I lived in the Pearl District, in an apartment built as condos, for five months at the beginning of this year.  We have never sold to the buyer in the South Waterfront but have in the Pearl District.  I have shown property in most but not all of the buildings that fit into this search criteria.  I took the photograph in 2005 as part of a post on new construction condos,  The cranes are working on the Meriwether Towers, the first condos completed in the South Waterfront.  The second photo is the Pinnacle in the Pearl shortly before move-in.

This offer came as part of an email I received and is reprinted here (including this paragraph) with Hoyt Street Properties’ approval.  They provide “courtesy to brokers” so the buyer can work with their existing Realtor (or us) as their representative without affecting the offer.  The seller can adjust the unit prices at any time without notice.

I closed the door at our apartment for the last time at 6:20 AM this morning.  CBS Films has left town and we are back in our house.  The experience of living in the Pearl District in just over 1000 square feet with a wife, dog, toddler and home office proved very doable but at the same time we are glad to be home.

Things I will miss:

• The bright open feeling
• The views
• Covered, secure parking
• The right-out-the-door access to everything, including groceries
• The less than 15 minute walk to the Rose Garden for Blazer games
• The patio and high solid wall which minimized toddler interest
• Having a competent maintenance staff on on site

Things I won’t miss:

• The 18 floor elevator ride to the car followed by a three floor drive to street level
• Dacor
• The one butt kitchen
• The shower in the second bath and tub in the master bath
• Having a home office in the master bedroom
• The patio and high solid wall which was noisier (from I-405) than expected and blocked views when sitting on patio furniture

I’m sure as we settle back into our house there will be other items to add to both lists.  For us, one of the biggest challenges was storage.  There never seemed to be enough of it so making sure that there is space for your lifestyle is important.

The fire alarms went off in the Wyatt last night at about 6:30.  A pleasant voice states, “a fire has been detected on your floor.  Please  evacuate the building by the stairs; do not use the elevators.”  We packed up the toddler, dog and dinner guest and headed out into a smokey hallway and down 15 flights to street level.  Three things become apparent:

1. there is no smoke billowing from the building
2. there is only one fire truck (Lovejoy’s fire merited 7)
3. there are a whole bunch of our fellow residents watching from their balconies

Sailing in the ocean, we have a “ditch bag” with the things that cannot or should not be lost in the event we end up in the life raft.  We didn’t leave the condo with any such thing, Jenny didn’t even put shoes on.  Hiking down the stairs I started thinking about a theortical ditch bag for real estate.

Most of our important documents are in the safe deposit box at Wells Fargo but some of the most recently used documents are locked up here.  Nothing irreplacble but not easy.  I didn’t pick up my camera (iPhone used for one above).  Most of our pictures are digital but most are not stored online.  They are backed up but most of the backups are here.  Both laptops remained in the condo.  We had keys to one of two cars (but since both are parked in the basement it might not have been useful).

Ultimately if the building had burned to the ground and we were standing out there in boxer shorts it wouldn’t matter if everyone was safe but it does give one pause to consider certain things and exit routes.  We had no way of knowing if it was serious our not from our vantage point so had to assume it was.

The four graphs in this post are from our monthly Market Tracker report which is delivered to your email inbox monthly.  You can subscribe to up to ten zip codes by contacting us.  You can read our privacy policy on either the TurnerRealtors or PDXRelocations website- we do not share your information. Today's report is from 97209.  I'll alternate posting reports between the east and west sides of the River. 

Somewhat regular commenter, Mr. Thrifty, poses the topic of this post on the recent thread about Details of $75B Loan Modifications and Refinances Released. 

Coming up with fresh topics isn't always easy so I think it's worth discussing regardless whether it is a perception or reality.  We are currently renting in a recently constructed building in the Pearl (why).  I like living here but it is currently a temporary situation and I can't say at this point whether I would want it to be "permanent".

The Pearl District started its shift from mostly industrial to mostly residential and business supporting the residential in the mid 90s.  My belief is that Chown Pella was one of the first residential spaces and that the building is on SHPO's Special Assessment program which froze the tax assessed value for 15 years.  A partial list of other buildings specially assessed includes The Avenue, The Edge, and Marshal Wells.  The annual tax bills in these buildings should be under $1000 for the most part during the program.  The program does not apply to new construction buildings.  The incentive is for historic buildings.

I like the accessibility.  We walk to Safeway, the Rose Garden and other services that we used to drive to.  When we do drive, I'm not  fan of winding up three floors of parking garage to reach the street.  Paying a meter or risking a ticket to run back inside (after unstrapping and therefore schlepping the toddler) because you forgot something is a pain.  A large percentage of the population commutes without a car (obviously that's not exclusive to the Pearl but the location makes that easier).

Clearly times have changed.  RMLS says that there are 348 "condos" listed for sale in the 97209 zip code.  Apartments were converted to condos (Lexis).  The Wyatt reversed that trend when the developer couldn't sell the units.  Like the Louisa, there aren't a lot of available units as rentals.  The Asa, built as apartments, also claims to be doing well.  The Sitka and 10th and Hoyt are two additional rental buildings, along with private party condo rentals, in the Pearl.  I don't know how the Encore and 937 are doing selling their newly constructed units.  The concept for these buildings probably occurred three to five years ago.b

Construction plans for Fields Park are firming up.  When the plans for Centennial Mills and the train crossing modifications are approved (eliminating the need for horns), construction of the first traditional park in the Pearl District will be possible (this month's Northwest Examiner newspaper has an article).

There's not a neighborhood in Portland (the country) that doesn't have pros and cons.  I expect that just about everyone has a, "I would never live in XXX, " for their own personal reasons.  The Pearl is no exception.  One man's garbage is another man's treasure.

There is a comedian’s sketch about baby proofing the stove: turn it on high and wait for him to touch it. Now baby-proof: he’s not going to touch it again. Maybe not the best method but effective and effective is probably all that matters in the long run. Our two-year-old survived living in our 1902 home relatively unscathed. Figuring out how to do things to protect him without inflicting damage on the house was a challenge. The baby gate at the top of the stairs is zip-tied to the posts rather than screwed in. The latches for the cupboards required a little modification since they are not designed to work with inset cabinetry.

It’s fair to say that a 2008 apartment that was built as condos didn’t have two-year-olds in mind when they were designed either. We’ve seen a lot of strollers around on the streets but none in our building. Dogs seem to out-number children by a factor of 10. All the door knobs in our house are the standard round type so we installed the Safety 1^st covers on the appropriate ones. I bought the leaver covers for the knobs for here but the commercial knobs won’t take the covers. They don’t recommend them for external doors but that would have been preferable to having run down the hall. Thankfully he can’t reach the elevator button, yet, if he was to escape.

We’re having the same challenge trying to do the safety stuff without inflicting damage. Instead of installing cupboard locks under the sink, we’ve got all the cleaners in an upper cabinet. The compression baby gate works well in the hall (though it required and extension piece). We didn’t feel the compression bar that we hung a curtain was strong enough so we did install one end of a closet bar cup and the put the other end of the bar on the window frame so it can’t be pulled down. We hung the magnetic knife rack on the wall in the kitchen out of his reach. We put some temporary hooks up to hang the blind cords up off the floor. It looks like the fittings on the cords are made to be mounted to the wall but the window frames are metal. The balcony has a tall solid railing. As long as we make sure there is nothing he can move to the railing it looks pretty safe. I think it is preferable to having the clear railings we saw in most of the other buildings we looked at but it certainly doesn’t do the view any favors.

Ultimately it is parenting and keeping an eye on him. The pitter patter of tiny feet is a dead give away to his whereabouts most of the time; an advantage of wood flooring!

Once we knew we were moving we pretty much had to decide right then where we were going to live. It was a very different experience from any housing decision we had ever made as a couple. I had my house when we got together and Jenny had hers. The subsequent houses that we bought came as a side effect of being Realtors; we came across what we bought in the course of business, never having to look at a selection of options and make (or not make) a decision – NOW. It’s a position that many of our clients find themselves in but not one that we had experienced from this side.

We pretty much knew we wanted to live in the Pearl District. We had a budget that we wanted to stay in and frankly, we wanted it all for that budget! We wanted a view, two bedrooms, some outdoor space and parking for two cars. No matter what we did, coming from 5000 square feet was going to be an experience in closeness. There are two primary sources for rentals: the leasing offices and individuals on Craigslist (though the leasing offices post heavily on Craigslist). Over three days we whittled the list down to four units and discovered that to stay close to our budget we were not going to get it all:

1. A one bedroom with an AMAZING corner view. We couldn’t figure out a good sleeping arrangement with a two-year old. One of the features of many of the units in the area is a lack of a true door to sleeping spaces. There was no outdoor space but this was the least expensive of the options. Best view but lacking almost everywhere else.
2. The next unit had we figured our two-year-old would have the master and we would sleep in the living room. It had everything else we wanted sans the second bedroom. It too had a great downtown/Mt. Hood view.
3. The third unit was what a friend described as “a bar with a bedroom.” He had lived in the same floor plan previously. It had one true bedroom and a nook where we could have put our son. It was the largest space, had a good view and is located closer to what one would consider the center of the area.
4. We’re completely moved in to the fourth option. 1054 square feet with a Fremont Bridge north facing view (though right now I can barely see the edge of the balcony through the fog). The downtown/Hood views are more appealing to me but I’m not complaining about what we have. It has one true bedroom and a second bedroom where we have installed the baby gate and hung a curtain for our son’s room. Toddler-proofing is proving to be a challenge: the first night he walked out the front door into the hallway- he couldn’t open the exterior doors at our house. Child-proofing is a topic unto itself though.

We did push our budget a little but negotiated to get ourselves into a unit that we really like and will be happy in for close to what we wanted to pay. What it really boiled down to was the addition of a toddler; we couldn’t make a one bedroom work and the two bedrooms units in our budget gave up some of the features that we wanted. Two of us and the dog could have done any of these units or even something smaller and we would have liked to have saved some money but we decided that even in a temporary six month situation we weren’t going to be happy. If Jenny had written this, there was a fifth option. It had two sleeping areas with no doors. She’s heavy sleeper. It never would have worked for me.

The leasing office behaved as I believe it should have. They didn’t show us the unit when we first came in because it was out of the price range that we’d given. When we started asking, this unit came up as a possibility. I’ve always felt that it is the client’s duty to push the price range, not the Realtor.

An unsolicited chain of events over the last couple of weeks has given us an opportunity that very few get: to downsize into a Pearl District condo without giving up our current home for a specified amount of time. Could we be happy in a condo that’s just over 20% the size of our current home? We have wondered about Pearl living and now we’re going to find out. We’ve rented our house out for six months, fully furnished. The 1902 house that we renovated in 2005 is nearly 5000 square feet and without a doubt more space than we need but it’s what we’ve got and we do love it.

We’re now living in 1054 square feet plus a balcony in the Pearl District; one happy family including a two-year-old toddler and Tasman, the 60 pound, nine-year-old, Australian cattle dog (red/blue heeler). We just spent our second night here and turn the keys over to our house at the end of the week. Our goal is not to have to go back and disturb the tenants for things we can’t live without. The move has been a much bigger chore than either of us expected. I think that’s partially due to the downsizing; picking what you think you’ll need but leaving everything else behind. We can’t just box it all up and figure it all out later. Though not a real estate transaction, the experience parallels it in an expedited manner. By the end of the two week Friday-Friday period we will have:

• Offered the opportunity
• Decided to move
• Researched condos and apartments
• Negotiated two contracts
• Decluttered as if we were listing for sale
• Bought and sold some stuff on Craigslist
• Packed
• Moved
• Assembled some Ikea furniture
• Completed (with help) a long list of “house projects” that as the owner you see every day but ignore with mild disdain. Every project we’ve done would also have needed doing if we were listing for sale.

I’ll be writing more details about what we’ve experienced with each topic above in the future along with the usual market reports and commentary. There will be a new Case Shiller report out tomorrow. I expect that the report will not be glowing and that market reports that reflect the Arctic Blast and holiday slowdown will be especially brutal. Antidotally, we’ve seen more client activity in the last three weeks of January than we saw in the last six weeks prior to that. That could mean anything in the long run but keeps us busy today.