Six continual months of (minimal) Portland real estate price appreciation has slipped away in the last two month.  The Case Shiller Index, released this morning shows Portland lost 2.18 points to end November at 133.26, essentially the same level as February of last year. The Case Shiller Index reports “Portland Metro”

Here’s four real estate related stories in the media this week. The first is yours truly on OPB’s Think Out Loud discussing the same year end Portland real estate market data cited in the second Portland Business Journal article. The third article from the USA Today is more of a national story but interesting nonetheles

I’m just heading down to the OPB studio for this morning’s Speak Out Loud segment at 9:00 AM.  Here are the links to the December 2011 RMLS Market Action reports: - All Areas (68 pages) - Baker County - Columbia Basin - Coos County - Curry County - Douglas County - Grant County - Lane...

Yesterday I wrote Buying a Bank Owned Property Part 1.  Today we’ll dive right in with more of the FAQs from Atlantic & Pacific Real Estate with my commentary added in italics. Will the seller make repairs? Most foreclosures are sold “AS IS, NO DISCLOSURES.” This means the property is offered “as is,” without

In its simplest form purchasing a home can be broken into three parts: 1) find house; 2) buy house; 3) get keys to house. Generalizations pretty much end there. The three legs of the current real estate market are the traditional sale, the short sale and bank owned property (aka: Real Estate Owned (REO)). There...

RMLS has released the year end December 2011 Market Action report.  Portland Metro inventory is 5.3 months.  This is the lowest inventory level since June of 2007 (5.0 months).  Inventory is the ratio of the number of closed listings for a month divided by the number of active listings.  There are fewer closed sales and

I collected a few real estate related articles this week. The first couple of paragraphs of each are quoted here and the complete stories are linked. All three are somewhat interrelated.  The first, from the National Association of Realtors says that the market is picking up on its own.  The third article suggests that th

Predictions for Portland’s real estate market is that it will either go up or down.  Or be flat.  Depends on who you ask.  Housing Predictor gives their 2012 prediction: Portland should witness an increase in sales in 2012 but a weak job market and lay-offs among high-tech firms in the region will keep home sales,...

If there is a legitimate endeavor you can pretty much guarantee there is a scam to go with it.  While most “for rent” postings are probably legit we’ve seen numerous scam attempts over the years using a property that is listed “for sale” as bait.  I wrote this post about Craigslist in 2009.  One of...

October 2011′s Portland Case Shiller Index was released yesterday.  Portland slipped slightly over the previous month from 136.10 to 135.44.  October’s pricing nearly mirrors January’s 135.80 but the 12 month average still makes the Portland Business Journal’s headline, “Home prices down 4.7% in past year.” Tr

I just downloaded the 100+ page National Association of Realtor’s 2011 Profile of Buyers and Sellers.  Obviously there’s a lot to read there but these are the highlighted stats listed for buyers: Characteristics of Home Buyers Thirty-seven percent of recent home buyers were first- time buyers, a drop from 50 percent in

Writing for me is like going to the gym.  Love doing it but get out of the habit and it’s hard to get back to.  Today’s release of RMLS Market Action should get me back in the groove.  Inventory is four months lower than it was this time last year.  That partially because there are...

We are excited to announce that we are now the Turner Team, Inc at Atlantic & Pacific Real Estate (US), LLC.  The decision to leave Prudential Northwest Properties was the hardest business decision we have ever made. We leave our old home with nothing but fond memories and the nicest things to say about their [...]

RMLS Market Action for October 2011 was released yesterday.  The average price of residential property in Portland is $258,700.  The median price is $221,000.  So what does the NBA lockout have to do with that?  CNBC reports that the average NBA player has lost $220,000 in wages thus far due to the lockout (Kobe has [..

We’ve updated the flowcharts that we created to explain the short sale process.  There are three perspectives: Short Sales for Buyers, Short Sales for Sellers and an Overview of the Short Sale Process.  Those are the links to the original posts.  These are the revised charts: Every short sale is different and may or ma

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  It’s also a copyright violation.  This post should duplicate, just like all of my other posts, on http://www.portland-property-management-companies.info/blog/.  It’s a site that I have no affiliation with and have certainly not given them permission to repost my content.

I asked our fans on Facebook for a topic idea for today.  Raqon was the first to respond with: “How about this: Switzerland- country with one of the top income per capita,yet 70% of all Swiss are renters.”  Interesting unto itself but a little hard to tie back to Portland real estate which is something [...]

We hear a lot of talk about the shadow inventory that banks are holding off the market so that they don’t flood the market. We ran some searches in RMLS to count how many homes for sale are bank owned. We didn’t look at every single metro Portland location but our fifty searches revealed that [...]

We’d had a trip to Vegas planned for some time and when we received an email from Prudential Americana Group, Las Vegas agent Nancy Storey. We met Nancy at the Summit Conference in San Francisco in September and decided that we should drive around and take a look at some areas.  We also have local [...]

Multnomah County property tax statements came in the mail yesterday. We got three yellow statements which means we do not owe- our mortgage company pays the bills out the our impound accounts. Green statements mean that you owe by November 15th in full to get the maximum discount. You can pay in thirds but pay [...]

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 thou

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 cas

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

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). Portl

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).

“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 In

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.  I

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,