Portland Metro Area Mortgage Rates Projected to Rise Sooner Rather than Later

imagesNow that we are deep into July, with summer in full swing, there might be vague thoughts running through your mind about some potential real estate moves—but certainly not until the fall. Right now all most of us are thinking about is whether another chilled glass of summer-something-or-other is in order. Mortgage rates and what the folks in Washington might be doing to affect them are not exactly top of mind on an idyllic July afternoon.

However, if you’ve been paying attention to any newscasts long enough to reach the economic stories they throw in toward the end of the broadcasts, you may have an inkling that conditions are about to change. And the evidence does suggest that mortgage rates in Portland and surrounding areas face a likely increase come fall. If you’re among those considering buying or selling a home in Portland this year, now should be the time to stop “thinking”and start “doing”.

Exhibit A for that proposition comes from one Michael C. Fratantoni, who happens to be the Chief Economist of […]

2015-07-20T19:14:02+00:00

Low Credit Score? Still Buy Your First Portland Home!

They really ought to teach this stuff in school: real-life, day-to-day economics. Portland youngsters out on their own for the first time are usually left to trial and error when it comes to mastering things like how to lay out a personal budget or use credit advantageously. Or even how to go about selecting a bank, or opening a checking account…

So when it comes to buying their first Portland home, it’s very common for newcomers to put off confronting the whole daunting issue. When you’re still new to your career, tackling a purchase involving years’ worth of income channeled through a maze of unfamiliar procedures is easy to put off. But when the delay stretches well past the point in their financial lives when it would be clearly advantageous to own rather than to continue renting, it’s the same thing as throwing hard-earned cash overboard.

They really ought to teach this stuff in school! That having been said, here is a broad-brush, very basic rundown of the lay of the land aimed at first time Portland […]

2015-05-12T13:42:34+00:00

Portland Empty-Nesters—Sizeable Group of Prospective Buyers

One strategy for selling your Portland home is to recognize the segment of the general public most likely to appreciate its inherent features, then be sure your sales approach will appeal to them. That doesn’t mean you will turn your back on all the other groups of buyers, of course—but it does mean you will make a deliberate effort to be especially sensitive to that group’s preferences, and highlight the features that are most likely to top their wish lists.

When the Target Audience is Empty-Nesters…

The majority of current Portland empty-nesters belong to the baby boomer generation. They are somewhere between 50 and 68 years of age, and there are about 75 million of them in the U.S.—nearly a quarter of the population. Empty-nesters are parents who currently don’t have any of their kids living with at home. Most empty-nest buyers are looking for a permanent address to settle down in as they hit their later years. The question is, what features make a home most desirable to empty nesters?

Moderate Space

What can be slightly tricky […]

2015-05-08T16:33:30+00:00

Portland Green Homes Demonstrate Altruism and Practicality

Whether we see it as evidence of the advance of a wider green homes movement or simply of rising environmental consciousness, Portland green homes are becoming properties with a distinct marketable sales advantage. What were once viewed as altruistic gestures practiced by only the most dedicated preservationists are going mainstream—and at a rapid clip. The National Association of Realtors® recently found that 70% of those surveyed believe eco-friendly features add value to a home. In other words, the practical advantages of ‘going green’ are becoming more and more evident to prospective buyers.

For sure, one reason for the increasing popularity of green homes in Portland is a growing and sincere concern about sustainability.

But there’s also another reason: a growing and equally sincere desire to save cash!

There are in fact a number of practical reasons why green homes save their owners money—

  • Tankless water heaters are one example of a technology that’s been around for a while, but which is now gathering popularity. The engineering is based on the fact that constantly storing and re-heating of a volume […]
2015-04-30T15:28:32+00:00

Seeking Out the Best Realtor in Portland is Worth the Effort

When you Google “seeking the best professional,” in about a half a second you are presented with 403 million candidates (not to play favorites, SearchEngineWise, when you ask Bing the same thing, it gives you a mere 62.6 million…which might actually prove more useful, since it would only take you a little more than a year to scan each for 2 seconds).

Narrowing the quest, when you Google “seeking the best Realtor®,” it gives you just a few less than 2,000,000 likely results. Since anyone seeking the best real estate professional to buy or sell their home isn’t after one eight states away, almost everyone quickly narrows the search to ‘best Realtor in Portland.’ That number varies from time to time, but almost always more than 500,000 show up (the ones at the top are paid ads).

This isn’t actually as whimsical a quest as such results suggest: it’s a quite serious undertaking. Even if you are a veteran homeowner—someone who has bought and sold homes multiple times in the past—today’s market is so vastly different from […]

2015-04-27T17:18:12+00:00

Portland Spring Real Estate Selling Season: it’s Sprung!

When the first spring day comes along (as opposed to the first day of spring), a goodly proportion of Portland’s residents feel the annual pull toward the garden store aisles. Even those who’ve stoutly resisted ordering seeds, gardening tools, or any of the other back yard paraphernalia the catalogs kept hawking all winter can succumb to this particular Call of Nature.

Burpee, Scotts and Miracle-Gro shareholders can relax: spring has sprung.

The Portland spring real estate selling season starts stirring, too, pretty much in lockstep with the appearance of the tulips. Whether or not the tulips have succeeded in poking up out of the ground, it’s a cinch that by this time they will have made colorful appearances on store shelves everywhere, just like the Peeps and chocolate bunnies. Unlike the rest of the early spring’s trappings, though, the spring real estate phenomenon doesn’t disappear from sight once Easter Sunday is a memory. In fact, it picks up steam.

There are any number of explanations why spring real estate in Portland is always expected to ramp up. Part […]

2015-04-22T17:08:43+00:00

3 Good Reasons to Avoid Portland Homes for Sale by Owner

Let’s start out by agreeing that a “For Sale by Owner” sign on a Portland fence does have a certain appeal. It summons up mental images of a simple, direct relationship: no middle men, just straight talk and fair dealing with the One in Charge! And in fact, in many walks of life, dealing directly with the owner can be a plus. When you’re recommending a retail outlet to friends, telling them that you know the owner strengthens your endorsement.

So when you cruise by a sign announcing a local For Sale by Owner property—a “FSBO”—you wouldn’t be alone if you were tempted to walk up and knock on the door. Buying a home directly from its owner should be a way to purchase a house at the lowest possible price, what with no real estate professionals getting involved!

That’s the fantasy, and although those assumptions are theoretically possible, in reality, homes being put up for sale by their owners represent a temptation that many experienced home buyers avoid. They have more than one reason.

1. Owners […]

2015-04-20T13:16:34+00:00

Portland Real Estate Could Echo News of Rise in Home Sales

Portland real estate trends don’t always trace patterns that are precisely identical to those in the rest of the state or nation, but sooner or later the local market almost always responds similarly. That’s because there is a certain amount of momentum—positive or negative—that is automatically spawned by the good or bad real estate market news reported in the mass media.

So when last week’s Commerce Department report on new residential home sales was released, Portland real estate watchers had reason to smile. Delightedly.

It wasn’t just that the bottom line number for February’s new home sales was substantial (estimated at 539,000, seasonally adjusted annual rate); it was how all the other stats supported them. Forbes headlined that February’s numbers hit a 7-year high. The financial web site Calculated Risk observed that although the report contained only two months’ worth of this year’s data, “Sales in 2015 are off to a solid start.”

In fact, just about all the accompanying details were heartening. The monthly new home sales are always revised several times as final real estate figures become available, and this time ‘round, […]

2015-03-30T16:49:42+00:00

News Flash! Men, Women House Hunters Differ!

Last week, The Wall Street Journal made it official: they had a slow news day. It was February 11th when they ran the feature story, “A Gender Gap in Real Estate.”

This was something Portland house hunters (not to mention those hoping to attract their attention) could certainly appreciate: an article about what men and women consider “very important” when it comes to features in homes. Author Adam Bonislawski based his story on National Association of Realtors® survey information; the results pointed to some dissimilarities between what women and men look for.

Now, we’ve had a good deal of experience helping both men and women house hunters in town, so it didn’t come as a complete surprise that their priorities differ. For instance, we were not at all surprised about the contrasting emphases the two put on the importance of having a walk-in closet in the master bedroom. The only surprise was that it was the men who found it much more important (38%-29%)!

What about house hunters’ feelings about the importance of kitchen appliances being new? Same phenomenon: men 38%, women 29% (possibly because appliances […]

2015-02-18T15:33:53+00:00

Changed Portland Foreclosure Picture Still Presents Opportunities

The Portland foreclosure situation is a good deal different from what we were discussing a few years ago when the tidal wave of 7.3 million foreclosures and short sales swept the nation. When The New York Times “Dealbook” recently pronounced that the supply of cheap foreclosed homes in America is dwindling, it came as news to…well, no one.

Let’s face it: Portland Metro Area investors wouldn’t need to look up the latest statistics to guess that number of offerings would be down. The continuing rebound in home values, slow but steady improvement in the overall economic picture, and even just the passage of time has to mean that the glut of subprime-crisis-era foreclosures would have worked their way through the system.

But there are always new foreclosures, and for anyone hoping to make a bargain buy in today’s Portland foreclosure market, the same qualities that brought post-crisis success still apply today:

  • Knowledge of (or willingness to research) comparable neighborhood values
  • Realistic appreciation of rehabilitation costs
  • Decisiveness (willingness to act swiftly)
  • Ready access to investment capital

The principal difference in today’s Portland foreclosure milieu is that far fewer are available, and the difference […]

2015-02-16T18:38:45+00:00