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Portland Rent-to-Own Solutions

The term “rent-to-own” sounds like a contradiction for good reason. It’s often called upon to reconcile a buyer-seller situation that does not fit a standard mold. A Portland rent-to-own agreement can allow potential buyers to move into a Portland metro area house before their finances are up to snuff (or at least that’s the call most lenders would make). It’s can be a useful contradiction for both parties, because the would-be buyer can get the immediate benefit of living in their choice of home knowing that some portion of the rent paid has the potential of building residential equity, while the seller will either eventually have successfully sold the property or have benefitted from some cash flow should the sale fail to materialize.

If this rent-to-own scenario sounds like a win-win, that’s because it is…that is, unless it isn’t. The reason that rent-to-own is not more popular with Portland area home buyers and sellers is because of some frequently encountered landmines—but a well thought-out arrangement can tackle most of the […]

2016-01-14T03:26:12+00:00
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Young Adults Might Reverse a Town Housing Trend

You don’t need real estate statistics or government bureau reports to sense that first-time home ownership rates have been in the dumps for a while. Portland housing figures have too few transactions month-by-month to draw many conclusions about sustained trends in home ownership here—yet it’s evident that for young adults everywhere, the glacial recovery in the economy combined with factors like student debt have made it particularly difficult for most of them to move from renting to owning a Portland area home.

 Despite the new year’s opening burst of worrisome economic headlines, nationally, when it comes to house ownership trends, there seem to be spots of good news. One with that focus came out of Fannie Mae at year’s end, courtesy of their Housing Insights publication. It wasn’t exactly a barn-burner. But for young adults who find their personal financial outlook is a square peg when it comes to the round hole of buying a first

2016-01-12T01:22:50+00:00
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New Year’s Frame of Mind

Along with all of last week’s New Year’s Day festivities came what you could call the New Year’s Frame of Mind: the familiar, this-time-of-year special consciousness of the passage of time. For most Portland area residents, all the other seasons come and go with everyone too busy tending to everyday affairs to pay much attention to the big picture: the progress (or lack of it) toward the major goals most everybody hopes to achieve.

It’s that New Year’s Frame of Mind that’s behind the impulse to make New Year’s resolutions. After all, there’s no such thing as ‘Fourth of July resolutions,’ or ‘Labor Day resolutions,’ even though a quick check of the calendar confirms they come once every year, too. Nope; it is the moment when the crystal globe slides down to the Times Square throng and old Father Time greets Baby 2016 that’s most likely to trigger thoughts of how preposterous it is that another whole year has gone […]

2016-01-08T00:04:28+00:00
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Rainy (or slushy) Day Home Décor Inspiration

Even if you don’t pride yourself on your artistic flair, you probably have developed fairly firm ideas about what makes some Portland metro area homes come across better than others. Without even consciously thinking about it, you know as soon as you walk through a front door whether that immediate impression is strongly positive, just so-so, or sub-so-so .

A Portland home’s agreeable first impression can usually be laid to a combination of pleasing architecture, diligent maintenance, and appealing décor. Not every home in Portland has all that going for it, but there can also be a saving note: sometimes the most important impression comes from just a few minor touches—clever accents that just seem perfect.

Now that we’re wading deeper into the months when the Portland area’s bad weather days are stacking up, (especially with the recent “blizzard”) we are more likely to find ourselves with some spare time—the commodity that was so hard to […]

2016-01-04T19:49:38+00:00
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Real Estate Listing Lingo

Anyone who creates listings can’t help but be drawn to critiques of real estate writing. There aren’t a whole lot of those to be drawn to, so when a respected national media titan like The Wall Street Journal comes up with an essay on real estate listing language, this is one Portland listing writer who considers it a must-read.  

The poetic analysis in question appeared just a couple weeks ago. From the outset, it presented itself as a less than flattering critique: “Real-Estate Pros Pen Purple Prose” was the headline—with an explanatory blurb to the effect that higher-priced real estate listing lingo tends to get a little bit flowery. Never mind that the Journal put a hyphen between ‘real’ and ‘estate’—this was clearly going to be an authoritative commentary!

Bottom line: astronomical listing prices get more poetic language. In some cases, extremely poetic:

“Majestically poised along the shimmering Gulf of Mexico” was […]

2015-12-30T17:10:38+00:00
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Holiday Season Magic

Last week, those of us who were out and about during the increasingly short daylight hours could take in what looked like the regular number of Portland homes decked out with the familiar holiday paraphernalia. When the weather cooperates, it can’t help but bring a smile to your face to spot the reindeer, Santas, menorahs, giant candles, elves—all the elements that help bring home the familiar feelings the season seldom fails to muster.

I bet it’s just that—the sheer familiarity—that explains a large part of why the words “Holiday Magic” are no exaggeration. Sooner or later we feel it. It grabs us. The holidays are back!

This usually starts (for me at least) with a valiant attempt to reject reality. Sometime between Hallowe’en and Thanksgiving, with the first department store ad or the first notes of a carol playing somewhere in the distance, we think “OH NO! – NOT ALREADY!!!” This is the part when the ‘magic’ part of the holidays is nowhere in prospect. […]

2015-12-21T21:21:43+00:00
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The Truest Portland Listings are Right Here

Have you ever wondered about the way Portland listings appear on your screen when you search for houses for sale through one of the search engines? If you have already found a local Realtor’s® website (like this one!), it’s easy to search the Portland’s (and all the surrounding towns’) listings right from that site without bothering further. You’ll come up with the most current accurate information because it represents direct updated information from Portland’s multiple listing service.

But whenever you go searching for Portland area listings through Google, Bing, or any of the other search engines (there are scads of them), you will see that what comes up will be quite different. You may find individual house listings, alternating with real estate agency home pages, mixed in with aggregators like Zillow and real estate magazine ads. Depending upon which search engine and the way you phrase your inquiry, you might actually come up with an interesting listing…or one […]

2015-12-17T02:37:48+00:00
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True Cost of ‘For Sale by Owner’ Signs

If you go down to any Portland hardware store, you’ll be able to find them. They are right there in the corner, somewhere on the rack that has all the ‘GARAGE SALE’ and ‘BEWARE OF DOG’ placards. They’re the ‘FOR SALE BY OWNER’ signs.

They cost about $8.99 ($17.98 for two). Or, it is also possible to buy a couple of “For Sale by Owner” signs online for about the same price (although getting them delivered to Portland might run extra).

No matter which way you would get hold of the signs, you should be alerted to some possible extra costs. I don’t mean ‘shipping and handling’ charges you sometimes find tacked onto other offers. These are extras that have cost other sign purchasers thousands of dollars.

Naturally, anyone who buys a ‘For Sale by Owner’ sign has decided to sell their house on their own rather than going with the crowd and listing through a Portland Realtor®

2015-12-10T23:39:37+00:00
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Food for Thought on Buying in Portland

 

Last week, Portland residents who keep their eyes on real estate trends got some fresh information about one factor that seeks to put numbers to the relative benefits of buying versus renting. When real estate values head south, buying may seem to be a particularly risky proposition…even though later it’s clear that the value proposition was actually improving. The trade-offs are hard to quantify. Even now, if Portland listings reflect prices on the rise, renters who failed to lasso the most extreme bargains may assume they’ve missed the boat.

Putting numbers to the problem is a complicated, pencil-snapping exercise. In addition to current dollars spent, it involves speculating on future market values. But Portland readers who checked into CoreLogic’s Insights blog found some new data toward the end of last week, presented in an interesting way. It arrived in an article that looked at one particular aspect of today’s national real estate landscape “seven years after the last […]

2015-12-05T03:44:17+00:00
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Changing Tastes in Luxury Homes

When it comes to selling Portland luxury homes, you really can’t pigeonhole who the ‘typical’ buyer is likely to be. The 9% of buyers that make up the pool of ‘affluent’ prospects are themselves pretty much profile-proof—and the dollar value that 9% represents fluctuates substantially from one end of the country to the other. On the other hand, it is possible to take advantage of features that are growing in popularity with today’s luxury home buyers.

Realtytimes researchers found that affluent buyers are increasingly attracted to features that belong in the smart-home technology category. Smart thermostats that owners control right from their smartphones, wireless homes security camera arrays, and fully tricked-out home theaters are draws. To qualify at the high end, an entertainment center really should be controlled by a single device. Let’s face it: no matter how fancy a home theater might be, if three or four remote controls are visible, they’re certain to draw scowls!

Kitchen tech—of the kind that marries function with fashion—continues to gain […]

2015-11-30T19:48:59+00:00
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