The spring housing market likely hit its final peak in May as buyer traffic grew and inventory remained low. June will likely be a slightly slower month than May as inventory starts to climb. So far this year is staying within normal season cycles where the spring is the best time to sell and the fall is the best time to buy. June will still be a good month to sell, just not as strong for sellers as May. Housing Inventory is Low while Buyer Traffic is High Traffic from our last report was hovering in the 19,000 a week […]

The Portland real estate market has been buzzing with activity in the spring of 2023. While we saw home sales slide quite a bit from May of 2022 to the end of 2022, we are experiencing a strong rebound in the spring of 2023 (though we expect it to slow down again in the summer and more so in the fall and winter). With the current real estate market conditions, sellers who price their homes at or below market value often find themselves receiving multiple offers. Understanding how to handle the multiple-offer scenario is important if you’re in this situation. […]

Licensed since 2003, one of the trends I’ve noticed is that bigger homes are not as desirable as they were twenty years ago. Large homes still have a market, don’t get me wrong, but household size is down overall. The average household had 3.68 people in the home in 1940. In 2010 that number was 2.58. Then came the rise of multi-generational living and grown-up kids still living in their parent’s home. This caused a slight increase from 2.58 to 2.65 in 2017. According to an NBC news report had slightly higher numbers, the average household size still came down […]

These days, anyone interested in selling or buying a home is familiar with the home search engine Zillow and the proprietary Zestimate® formula it uses to place an estimated value on a property. Many times people will be motivated to make decisions about selling their home based on the Zestimate® they discover online. Or buyers may feel like they must offer a certain price based on a number generated by Zillow. But unfortunately, this price estimate can be misleading and has a wide margin of error according to Realtors, other sites, and even Zillow. This might cause you to wonder […]

If your home is in need of a fresh coat of paint or you are considering painting your exterior to enhance its curb appeal for potential buyers, choosing the right color can feel like a weighty decision. It’s true that the most important photo for your home’s online listing is the first one, and that first impression is crucial for capturing a buyer’s attention. Learning about the types of colors that work well for your home’s design and in your neighborhood – as well as colors that are currently trending for home exteriors – can go a long way toward […]

Local Real Estate Market Research Licensed since 2003, I’ve had to handle a lot of my client’s questions along the way. My small team is approaching 3,000 local home sales. So you can multiply that number by say a dozen and get a rough idea of the number of questions coming my way. One of my favorite ways to answer starts with, “I wrote a greater Portland real estate market research report on that and the answer is _.” The Impact of Cash Offers Home buyers and home sellers want to know how much cash is getting thrown around in […]

There are a number of factors that cause homes to sell faster or slower and for more, or much less. Whether you’re picking the best time of the year to sell in (or the worst), whether you’re on the east or west side of Portland, whether your condo is downtown or elsewhere in the metro, whether your home is on septic or sewer, whether you have a swimming pool or not, whether your home is on a single level or multiple, there are many factors that drastically change how fast a home sells and for how much. Licensed since 2003, […]

My clients want to know, how many showings on average does it take to sell a home? So for a number of years now I’ve been writing a local research report on the topic. Thankfully, we do have access to the necessary data through RMLS. We get daily buyer traffic reports and inventory reports. The smart lockboxes we use locally record every home buyer showing. The MLS records when an offer is finally accepted and the homes goes into pending status. If you’re curious on the average number of days it takes to sell a home (annual reports), we have […]

If there’s something I’ve learned in my 20 years as a Portland Realtor, it’s that conditions are never perfect for buying a home, though there are certainly times that are more ideal, but the decision to invest in a home is one of the most worthwhile decisions you can make. Homeownership can enhance your life in many ways, and there are excellent reasons to choose a home in Portland, Oregon specifically. If you are unsure or considering taking the leap toward homeownership, here is a list of ten reasons why you can feel confident about buying a home in Portland […]

Swimming pools are a desirable feature in a hotel or resort, but for a owner-occupied home, it isn’t always preferred. There is no doubt that the addition of a swimming pool have a significant impact during the home’s experience on the real estate market. Swimming pools affect home values in different ways, depending on whether the property is expensive, such as luxury homes, or average priced for the area. We’re going to look at exactly how swimming pools are impacting homes on the market in Portland, Oregon in 2023. I’ve been selling homes in Portland, Oregon for 20 years now […]