A big Happy New Year to readers of re:PDX and a special, heartfelt thank you from me and my family to those of you now living in (or having sold) one the homes shown below, as well as those listing with me currently. Your trust is greatly appreciated.
Technorati Tags: Portland, Oregon, real estate, sold, customers, homes, houses
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Add comment December 31st, 2007
Quick post today…the U.S. Census says Oregon’s population grew 1.6 percent between July 2006 and July 2007–the 11th highest growth rate in the U.S. during that time period.
Positive net in-migration certainly aids the housing market…better than the outflow experienced in Michigan.
From the Portland Business Journal:
The state’s population rose 56,371 to 3,7457,455, the government said in its annual population estimate. Oregon ranks No. 27 in population.
The Census Bureau also projected the Jan. 1, 2008, (national) population will be 303,146,284 — up 2,842,103 or 0.9 percent from New Year’s Day 2007.
In January, the United States is expected to register one birth every eight seconds and one death every 11 seconds.
Nevada is now the fastest growing state by percentage, taking over for Arizona. Texas added a half-million new residents, but California remains the most populous state with about 37 million people.
Technorati Tags: Oregon, population, ingress, migration, Census, housing, homes
Add comment December 27th, 2007
Caution: Santa doesn’t take kindly to contemporary architectural style. Bad news for many kids living in such homes in places like West Linn, Lake Oswego, Tualatin, etc.
Have a great Christmas everyone. We’ll be back after the holiday to tackle 2008.
Technorati Tags: humor, Christmas, Santa, card, contemporary, modern, architecture, reindeer, roof
1 comment December 21st, 2007
The Portland-area real estate market appears to be holding its own, as November 2007 results reveal.
A slower sales pace than 2006 mean longer marketing times for home sellers. Homes sold in November averaged 67 days on the market. Between October and November, the housing inventory stayed flat at 8.3 months.
Nevertheless, prices continue to rise in most market areas, ever so slightly. On the whole, the 12-month average sale price appreciated 6.5% to $340,900, while the median rose 7.0% to $288,900 when compared to the 12-month period ending November 2006.
Below are year-to-date average and median sale prices, 12-month appreciation, and days on market*, sorted by market area:
| Area | YTD Avg. Sale Price | YTD Median Sale Price | 12-Mo. Appreciation | DOM |
| Lake Oswego / West Linn | $562,200 | $465,000 | 5.1% | 80 |
| West Portland | $464,000 | $379,700 | 3.4% | 60 |
| NW Washington County | $418,700 | $385,000 | 3.5% | 58 |
| Tigard / Tualatin / Sherwood / Wilsonville | $375,100 | $339,900 | 5.1% | 70 |
| Milwaukie / Clackamas | $336,500 | $300,000 | -3.6% | 77 |
| Oregon City / Canby | $331,300 | $303,000 | 3.6% | 78 |
| Northeast Portland | $321,800 | $283,000 | 6.5% | 52 |
| Hillsboro / Forest Grove | $298,700 | $270,000 | 7.5% | 63 |
| Beaverton / Aloha | $288,600 | $260,000 | 3.4% | 66 |
| Southeast Portland | $286,100 | $250,000 | 8.3% | 53 |
| Yamhill County | $281,600 | $247,500 | 7.4% | 101 |
| Gresham / Troutdale | $281,200 | $259,900 | 7.7% | 90 |
| North Portland | $266,800 | $253,500 | 9.0% | 60 |
| Columbia County | $255,400 | $240,000 | 12.5% | 87 |
Additional observations:
Year to date, the total number of home sales is down just 12% over the same period in 2006. The oversupply in Happy Valley continues to drag down the Milwaukie/Clackamas appreciation numbers. Yamhill County passes Southeast Portland in average sale price year to date.
*Days on market (DOM) or average market time may exhibit reporting inconsistencies and should be used to analyze trends only. Source: RMLS, December 2007.
Technorati Tags: Portland, Oregon, homes, houses, sales, average, median, appreciation, days on market, real estate
4 comments December 18th, 2007
on Portland’s largest public real estate auction in recent history.
Buena Vista Homes apparently found 141 buyers for their speculatively built home inventory–for a total haul of $65 million. It left about 100 homes untouched, including all 29 homes in Bend. Nearly 2,000 attendees poked their head in at some point at the Convention Center.
Homes in Hillsboro and Beaverton apparently sold well (that’s where the jobs are…). Broker Michelle Berry estimated that Buena Vista took in $900,000 in non-refundable earnest money.
Ryan Frank of the Oregonian provided the most comprehensive coverage
141 homes sell for a total of $65 million at real estate auction | Saturday Coverage | Front Porch Coverage
Additional commentary at Portland Housing Blog and Adam Lake’s Deeper blog.
What now for the unsold inventory? My guess, Buena Vista’s sales staff starts cold-calling all the non-winning bidders and registered attendees. Bidder beware! 
Technorati Tags: Portland, Oregon, real estate, auction, Buena Vista, homes, houses
Photo by Joe Gratz, used under Creative Commons license.
1 comment December 17th, 2007
Drew Meyers, Zillow’s Community Relations Specialist over at Geek Estate Blog, a blog devoted to real estate technology, stumbles upon a humorous, visual index of Geeks.
Scott Johnson has compiled his “56 Geeks” poster at flickr.com, (which, by the way, is where I host my ‘virtual tours’):
As Drew asks, “What kind of geek are you?”
My additions to Scott’s poster would be indie band Geek, Blog Geek (obviously), DIY Geek, and Housing Bubble Geek
If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to charge my Mac laptop and Palm smartphone batteries for my son’s all-day Lego Robotics tournament tomorrow at Intel.
More about 56 Geeks here.
1 comment December 15th, 2007
A recent Scarborough Research report puts Portland as the second-most bloggiest city, just behind Austin TX and just ahead of San Francisco and Seattle.
The survey estimates that one out of seven Portland-area residents has either read or contributed to web logs in the past 30 days. A quick visit to the definitive Oregon blog index,www.orblogs.com, shows over 1,400 registered blogs, with nearly 370 in Portland. All sorts of interests–foodies, political ‘analysts’, neighborhood gossips, and much more can be found–many laced with that fiercely independent Oregon ‘tude.
And not all blogs are written by hobbyists and navel-gazers. When re:PDX was launched in November 2005, only three other real estate-related blogs were active, and frankly, the Portland area severely lagged behind Seattle, San Francisco, Phoenix and other ‘wired’ towns in this content area.
Well, they’ve definitely bloomed this year. Here is a reasonably definitive list (as least for the Portland area), in no particular order:
Happy reading, real estate junkies. If I missed one (or many), please leave them in the comments field.
UPDATE: from reader comments, a few more Oregon real estate blogs:
Technorati Tags: Portland, Oregon, real estate, blog
8 comments December 13th, 2007
Million-ton media gorilla Comcast has rolled out an interactive real estate shopping channel on its On-Demand network in Portland (one of only a handful of markets nationwide), where you can plop down in your Barcalounger to channel surf up to 3,000 property listings each week.
If you have Comcast On-Demand service, check out channel 888, and look for the Real Estate section. Homes for sale in the Portland metro area are sorted by area and price range. Make a selection and sit back while a 15-second spot for each listing appears. Every listing gets 3 digital photos treated with the Ken Burns effect, plus a text-to-speech narration of the agent’s comments to complete the video advertisement. Each segment lasts 7 minutes for a total of 20 - 28 listings per segment.
A local company, HouseInDemand.com is the exclusive Portland-area agent for selling these ads. I daresay they are going to be raking it in as agents look for new cost-effective, digital means to market their listings. I haven’t used it yet but HouseInDemand’s listing templates has made the process verrrry easy from what I can tell, so even technophobe agents should be able to create their ads effectively.
HouseInDemand claims over 25,000 viewers during just its second week of operation. (The On-Demand client base in the Portland area is approximately 400,000 viewers.) I suspect some of this traffic is due to the ‘looky-lou’ factor and their advertising blitz. For the next week, I would expect to see a fair bit of the Buena Vista inventory getting some pre-auction promotion.
For agents, it’s a relatively affordable advertising outlet—just $115 per week for ‘TV advertising’, arguably a better deal than pouring well over $100 into a one-shot, 4-line Open House ad in the Sunday Oregonian. But it won’t reach non-cable broadcast viewers, alternate cable provider or Dish/Direct subscribers.
So, I’m a DISH subscriber and haven’t used the Comcast On-Demand service. Has anyone out there seen Channel 888, and do you think homebuyers will use it to shop for a new house?
Is it Comcastic or merely bombastic?
Technorati Tags: Portland, Oregon, homes, houses, marketing, advertising, Comcast, cable, on demand, real estate
5 comments December 10th, 2007
Ok, so it’s a little wet in Portland today. But some would exaggerate…
Occasionally, we get a shower or two that cause some traffic issues. It’s not apocalyptic or anything.
And I think the rainbow sheen provides a lovely counter-point to the brown effluent.
The upholstery is cloth, which will recover nicely, right? And the floating Sierra Mist is chilled, too. Umm!
Images taken of Fanno Creek off Bonita Rd. in Tigard, Oregon.
Technorati Tags: Portland, Oregon, rain, flood, wind, storm
Add comment December 3rd, 2007
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