Portland gets another merit badge for their green, eco-friendly reputation.
The RMLS, the area’s multiple listing service, has released its latest database incarnation and it provides the ability to market homes with environment-friendly features, such as renewable flooring materials (cork or bamboo), solar energy, or 90%-efficient furnaces, for example.
Also, if a new construction home qualifies for Earth Advantage, Energy Star, or LEED standards for energy efficiency, agents can denote that as well in the listing. Potential buyers may be interested in the energy savings, but it remains to be seen if mortgages, appraisals, or home insurance rates will be positively affected.
I’m not sure if RMLS is the first multiple listing service to adopt ‘green’ features, but reports are that it is likely the largest. The green features aren’t searchable on the RMLS public website, but your agent or broker can filter for properties by your preferred criteria.
What little real property that changed hands in the past few months has not dampened the overall average sale price appreciation figures. RMLS reports that 12-month appreciation by county to be:
Clackamas: 16%
Columbia: 15%
Multnomah: 14%
Washington: 12%
Yamhill: 19%
It will be interesting to see how a relative glut of new listings, 60+ average timeframes on the market, and over 6 months of available inventory will affect sale prices. You can already see a few communities (West Portland, including downtown, NW Washington County, and some of the southern suburbs) taking some hits.
Here are average and median sale prices measured over the past 12 months, as well as appreciaton:
The pace of sales continues to drag in the Portland metro area, according to January 2007 results from RMLS, the local multiple listing service.
Seasonality is certainly a factor, but clearly sellers are anxious with longer selling periods–a trend that started back in July 2006. Buyers picked up the pace in January, consistent with last year–giving hope for a strong spring. However, new listings in January were up nearly 20% over January 2006.
Homes are now averaging about 65 days on the market (up from 44 at this time last year). At the current pace of sales, the 9,841 active residential listings at the end of January would take about 6.2 months (a five-year high) to sell out if no new inventory were added.
Appreciation for the area over 12 months was for most areas averaged between 12 and 16%. The average sale price for a home in the Portland metro area starts the year at $322,900 and the median at $275,000.
It used to be that you’d only find people using ticket scalpers to score Blazer seats when MJ and Scottie came to town. Now, you’re more likely to find Portlanders jonesing for Rummers and other modern home architectures to be cruising the black market for highly coveted tix to Portland’s only modern home tour this year.
I had intended to highlight the upcoming Street of Eames modern home tour (April 14), but clearly they needed very little promotion. The 2007 edition of the tour sold out in just 51 hours, which included the 250 additional tickets added for this year’s total. As of this morning, Craigslist included at least six pleas for tickets to the event.
Portland has a relatively small number of mid-century and contemporary modern homes but they have a rabid following. The nameplay on the annual “Street of Dreams” luxury home tour alludes to the influential modern design of Charles and Ray Eames. The Street of Eames tour started last year as a fundraiser for Chapman Elementary’s after-school education program for homeless and low-income students.
Brian Libby at portlandarchitecture.com did a nice write-up earlier this month about some of the homes on tour. Here’s the official Street of Eames site, where all you can do now is sign up to get advance notice about 2008’s tour.
Or, as my contact from the Tour said, “There’s always Craigslist.”
Normally, I wouldn’t jump up and down about being NUMBER 60!
But, according to Forbes.com, the Portland area is improving its national job ranking among the country’s top 100 major metro areas. Coming in at No. 83 last year, the Portland-metro area rates as the 60th-best this year. (By the way, Seattle ranked No. 34.)
As I answer questions about the state of the real estate market in Portland, I typically add some comments about the local job market. We’ve lagged behind the national averages for several years, but things have been improving slowly since the dot-com meltdown in 2000-2001. The Forbes article confirms some of the positive news we’ve been hearing.
Forbes annually ranks the top 100 metropolitan areas with five criteria: unemployment rate, job growth, income growth, median household income and cost of living.
Portland fared poorly in the unemployment index (88th), but ranked No. 27 nationwide in job growth.
The top three cities were Raleigh-Cary, N.C.; Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, Ariz.; and Jacksonville, Fla. The worst city was Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn, Mich. Here’s the article and the tabular breakdown.
Well, if you purchase a select Renaissance Homes property, you’ll find one of the 60+ mpg Mercedes-marketed Smart autos parked in your garage at closing.
Perhaps due to the slowdown in new construction sales, local Portland home-builder Renaissance is offering these Earth-friendly, stubby microcars as an incentive to purchase one of their idle, move-in-ready homes in a handful of their developments. (Last year, I commented on the two-bicycle incentive Renaissance provided in their Wilsonville development in an effort to cut down on vehicular traffic.)
With Renaissance’s rightfully earned reputation for environmentally-conscious construction, the eco-friendly Smart car incentive is a fun marketing angle. The Smart cars are a collaboration between Swatch and Mercedes Benz and have only recently become available in Oregon.
The incentive is valued at $26,000. The cars are offered with purchase of select, move-in-ready home scattered among their Sherwood, Wilsonville, Happy Valley, Vancouver, Beaverton, Camas, Canby, and Woodburn developments.
NOTE:This is the first in a series (hopefully) of community profiles I’ll be writing to give readers a taste of some local Portland-area neighborhoods.
If you’ve ever driven south along Interstate 205 past the 10th Street exit (between Oregon City and the Interstate 5 junction in Tualatin), and wondered about that little sliver of land between the highway and the Willamette River, you’ve just whipped past Willamette.
Hemmed in by the Willamette River to the south and bordered to the north by I-205 and west by the Tualatin River (map), the small neighborhood was originally called “Robins Nest” and was formed to house workers employed in the mills along the roaring Willamette Falls. The village merged with the city of West Linn in 1916.
Willamette is also the confluence point for the lazy Tualatin River and the Willamette River, providing the gateway to Pete’s Mountain and the Stafford hamlet. And, despite its proximity to the Interstate and to the cities of West Linn and Oregon City, Willamette retains its small-town feel.
Homes
Active home listings in Willamette (of February 7, 2007’s 26 listings) range from $229,000 for a 2-bed, 1-bath home up to $675,000 for 4-bed, 2-1/2 bath riverfront property. A few new townhomes are available in the $290,000 range.
Willamette’s popular historic district on the south side of Willamette Falls Drive (the main thoroughfare in town) is a showplace of Queen Anne Victorian homes built around the turn of the century.
North of Willamette Falls Drive, you’ll encounter a wide variety of home eras and styles, including some newer, high-end homes. The west end of town is gearing up for new development, with a manufactured-home park soon closing, and a woodsy lot along Dollar St. staked out for surveying.
Commerce
Willamette’s small but healthy commercial district runs along Willamette Falls Drive for about six blocks, featuring charming turn-of-the-century storefronts. Businesses include several restaurants, lawyers, a pet adoption clinic, team sports apparel, an eco-friendly clothing retailer, a couple gas stations–even a ubiquitous McMenamins pub (not to mention my favorite real estate agency ) Looking for an early morning buzz? Visit with the effervescent proprietors of the Willamette Coffee House for highly caffeinated chatter and drinks.
Parks and attractions
The district features 3 parks, all with river frontage. First, there’s the boat ramp and multi-purpose Willamette Park at the mouth of the Tualatin River on 12th Street, plus the hard-to-find Swiftshore Park on the Tualatin, and finally the new Field Bridge park, complete with basketball court, walking trail, play structure, and two ballfields.
Activities
Summer finds the streets teeming with ski- and wakeboard boats heading to the popular river landing at Willamette Park. And the Farmer’s Market (May through September) on Willamette Falls Dr. has been a popular event over the past two years. Willamette’s Old-Time Fair and parade also takes place in July, featuring home-spun ‘floats’ and lots of candy tossed to onlookers.
UPDATE (2/28/2007): Including the 2000 Bloggers script with photos in the post below became a serious performance drag on the re:PDX site, so I’ve removed it. If you are so inclined to visit the project, go here. Thanks!
Earlier in the year, I added re:PDX to a list of other blogs posted by Tino Buntic as a web traffic generation project. His idea was to create a subset of 2,000 bloggers (out of 55 million) and post a picture and link to their blogs.Since the inclusion in the list has generated so many inbound links for re:PDX, it’s time to return some link love.
So, here it is–a veritable smorgasbord of blogs, A-list, C-list and everything in between. See if you can find my mug below (hint image at right). You’ll also find The Donald and Rosie, side-by-side in blog harmony.
Be careful–you’ll likely blow an afternoon or more if you poke around the sampler.
On the fortnight of Valentine’s Day, Portland’s real estate market gets a little love from the national press.
In America’s best and worst housing markets, Forbes and MSNBC report on Portland’s 12.3% increase in home price appreciation for the 3rd quarter, lauding it as one of the country’s hot real estate markets–along with Seattle, WA and El Paso, TX.
I reported that the average sale price was up over 14% when comparing December 2006 to December 2005. The Associated Press also highlighted Portland’s optimistic real estate future recently.
If real estate press clippings, recent market activity, and the overall buzz of home searches and phone calls are any indication, the spring is shaping up to be a lively market. Are you ready?
BMX semfinals in Beijing delayed - I had no idea that BMX was an Olympic sport. So, how long before freestyle Hacky Sack makes it in? 15 hrs ago
@mattlanning - Micro$oft just launched the Photosynth platform a few minutes ago - tried to browse in OSX Firefox, got the MS fail notice 15 hrs ago
No Mac support for MS Photosynth ... even Mossberg fails to mention it. And you can't even run it in Windows in Parallels ... only Bootcamp. 15 hrs ago
The pace of sales continues to drag in the Portland metro area, according to January 2007 results from RMLS, the local multiple listing service.
It used to be that you’d only find people using ticket scalpers to score Blazer seats when MJ and Scottie came to town. Now, you’re more likely to find Portlanders jonesing for Rummers and other modern home architectures to be cruising the black market for highly coveted tix to Portland’s only modern home tour this year.
Normally, I wouldn’t jump up and down about being NUMBER 60!
Remember the minute, sub-sub-compact car Steve Martin drove in the 
Willamette’s popular historic district on the south side of Willamette Falls Drive (the main thoroughfare in town) is a showplace of Queen Anne Victorian homes built around the turn of the century.
Commerce
) Looking for an early morning buzz? Visit with the effervescent proprietors of the 
Parks and attractions
Earlier in the year, I added 
On the fortnight of Valentine’s Day, Portland’s real estate market gets a little love from the national press.
