Portland Real Estate Podcast

Are We Hitting Another Real Estate Bubble?

info@westonepro.com (Nick Shivers) — Tue, 4 Aug 2015 07:56:00 -0700

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A lot of people have been asking if we are approaching another real estate bubble. In certain areas in Portland and Southwest Washington County, it seems that we are close to or above the bubble in 2006 or 2007.

So, are we in a bubble? My answer is no. Back in 2006 and 2007, 42% of investor purchases were new construction. Right now, less that 2% of investor purchases are new construction. In the previous bubble, investors were buying new construction and banking on appreciation. Today, investors are buying properties that need to be fixed up, so they are building equity instead of banking on appreciation.

Also, about 35% of the market was being purchased by investors in 2006 and 2007. Today, only 11% of the market is comprised of investor purchases.

The next thing I would like to point out is availability of credit. Our government went from one extreme to the other. Before, anyone could get a loan; even people who were deceased were approved for loans. Now, there is a lot more criteria that has to be met. While I'm not 100% sure I like how tough the criteria is, it is definitely keeping people who shouldn't be buying homes from buying them, therefore reducing the risk of default.

In addition, Portland and Southwest Washington is the number one relocation market in the country. Our population growth continues to get better. Why? Liveability. In Money magazine, Portland was listed as the number one business area for telecommuters. If people want to work from home, they move to Oregon.

Even with our growth, we are still the cheapest West Coast city to live in. With liveability, population growth, and affordability, we are not getting close to a bubble. Appreciation will slow down, and I predict we will be back in a normal 3%-4% growth rate for the next four years.

If you have any questions about today's topic, or about real estate in general, please give me a call or send me an email. I'd love to help you!

How Can You Take Advantage of Portland and SW Washington Real Estate?

info@westonepro.com (Nick Shivers) — Thu, 30 Jul 2015 12:48:00 -0700

Buying a home? Click here to perform full home search
Selling a home? Click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation
Call me at (503) 594-0805 for a FREE home buying or selling consultation

Today I'd like to provide you with a brief real estate market update for the Portland/SW Washington area. People are always asking me about the market, so hopefully this can sum up what's happening.

We're seeing a strong seller's market right now because inventory is extremely low. We only have 1.8 months of inventory right now. This is creating extreme demand and raising sale prices.

With this being said, we're also seeing a lot of appreciation in this market. Oregon and Washington are actually in the top 10 of home value appreciation in the nation. For example, the average sales price in Portland has increased by $15,000 since last year ($327K to $342K).

In southwestern Washington the average sale price increased by $22,000 ($261K to $283K).

Additionally, some of the hottest areas right now are Wilsonville and Fisher's Landing. If you have a home in this area or if you know someone that does, have them contact me if they would like to sell for a nice profit.

As always, please don't hesitate to contact me with any questions you may have about real estate in Portland.

Important News for Buyers and Sellers in Portland and SW Washington

info@westonepro.com (Nick Shivers) — Wed, 3 Jun 2015 13:23:00 -0700

Buying a home? Click here to perform full home search
Selling a home? Click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation
Call me at (503) 594-0805 for a FREE home buying or selling consultation

The Portland real estate market is moving very quickly, so I'm going to give you a brief market update today to help you make better decisions when you're buying or selling.

In Clark County and in the Portland metro area there is only 2 months of inventory available. This creates problems for buyers because there is a lot of competition around homes, and sellers can reap the benefits.

If you're a seller, you need to comb through those offers and decide which one will benefit you the most because the offer with the highest price is not always the best. Look at the terms, the financing, and the actual company that is financing the loan for the buyer. Make sure to check how quickly the buyer can close as well because time is always important.

As a buyer, you need to make sure the seller knows that you're qualified to purchase the home. You should write a personal letter to the seller that explains why you want the home and how you can afford it. It never hurts to have your lender contact the seller, too.

Communication is also important whether you're buying or selling. Your agent needs to speak with you and also the other parties that are involved. You need to find out what it takes to get a deal done, because in this market you need as much help as you can get when you're buying a home.

Thanks for tuning in again, I hope this information will be helpful to you in the future. If you have any questions about these things, don't hesitate to reach out to me.

What Makes Portland Better Than Other Big West Coast Cities?

info@westonepro.com (Nick Shivers) — Mon, 13 Apr 2015 14:03:00 -0700

Buying a home? Click here to perform full home search
Selling a home? Click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation
Call me at (503) 594-0805 for a FREE home buying or selling consultation

Portland real estate conditions are rather strange right now. Despite the fact that the market is on fire, there are still a lot of bargains to be found. Today, we address why this might be.

In Los Angeles, the average home sale price is $534,600; in San Diego, the average home sale price is $500,000; in San Francisco, the average price is $1 million; and in Seattle, the average is right around $478,000. In Portland, prices are much more affordable: the average home sale price is just below $300,000! If you're looking to live in a big city on the West Coast, Portland is still a bargain!

As you probably know, we were ranked the third weirdest city in America, behind Austin and New Orleans, and we're proud of it! We're also the #1 relocation and pedestrian-friendly market in the country! What we have here is pretty rare: a vibrant and desirable environment where it's relatively inexpensive to live!

If you plan on moving to the Portland area, however, there are some things you need to be aware of. For one, we only have 1.9 months of inventory; closer to the city center, we have only 1 month of inventory. In other words, we have an incredibly competitive market.

If you're looking to sell, now would be a great time to get top dollar for your home, as we have a ton of demand and almost no available homes! If you are a buyer, you need to get creative: you or your agent should be knocking on doors! There are so few sellers out there you really have to hit the streets to find a desirable place to live!

If you have any questions about our market, or if you need real estate assistance of any kind, don't hesitate to give us a call or shoot us an email. We would love to hear from you!

What a Hot Portland Market Means for You

info@westonepro.com (Nick Shivers) — Mon, 23 Mar 2015 10:28:00 -0700

Buying a home? Click here to perform full home search
Selling a home? Click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation
Call me at (503) 594-0805 for a FREE home buying or selling consultation
The hot spring market is just around the corner, so there's no better time to talk about the inventory of available homes!

In Clark County there are 3.4 months of inventory, which is 2 months fewer than this time last year! This means we have more buyers than we do sellers, and the market is favorable for homeowners looking to get top dollar for their homes!

April, May, and June are the absolute best times to list, so if you plan on selling in the near future, you need to start doing everything you can to get your home ready for the market!

In the Portland Metro area, we are under 3 months of inventory! Some areas are as low as 1.2 months of inventory, which is about as low as it gets. With interest rates as low as they are, we're not expecting demand to diminish any time soon. That's why now is the IDEAL time to list your home!

Make sure your landscaping looks good, declutter the house, and fix all major issues if you want to get the best possible price for your home. Since you have no competition, if your home is in great condition, you can basically set your price!

If you're looking to buy, you must have your financing ready, make sure your offers are clean and tight, and ensure the home inspection period is short and sweet. Working with someone like myself who has a wealth of expertise will go a long way toward making the best of what the current market has to offer.

If you have any questions, or would like real estate assistance of any kind, please give me a call or shoot me a quick email. I would love to help you in any way I can!

You Won't Get Top Dollar for Your Portland Home if You Don't Start Preparing NOW!

info@westonepro.com (Nick Shivers) — Wed, 18 Feb 2015 09:10:00 -0800

There are many great Portland area homes for sale. Click here to perform full home search, or if you're thinking of selling your home,click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation so you know what buyers will pay for your home in today's market. You may also call me at (503) 594-0805 for a FREE home buying or selling consultation to answer any of your real estate questions.
The spring real estate season will be here sooner than you know it - but is your home market-ready? Today, we share what you need to do in order to prepare for the biggest season of the year.

PLAN! Preparing your home for sale can be a bit overwhelming. If you know you're going to be selling, now is the time to start preparing. Statistically, more and more homes will be put on the market beginning in March. If you can plan ahead and beat the rush, you'll be at a great advantage in the marketplace.
Landscaping: Outdoor projects yield the biggest return on investment when it comes to repairs and renovations. The grass needs to be green, the yard clean, and the sidewalks and driveways cleared. You want to have a lot of color in the landscaping as well!
Declutter: Your taste and the taste of potential buyers are probably different. You want to keep it simple when selling, so clear the walls of personal items, and make sure all surfaces are free of knickknacks and reading materials. You want your home to feel as spacious as possible!
Simple touch ups: Fix dents in the walls, repaint areas that need it, and do other little things that will make your home look brand new. These fixes are usually cheap, but can make a huge difference.
Beat the market! With rates as low as they are, and a general lack of inventory, beating the competition to the marketplace could help you sell your home quicker and for more money!

We hope you found these tips helpful. If you have any questions about the process, or would like assistance with selling your home this spring, don't hesitate to give us a call or shoot us an email. We would love to hear from you!

What Makes Oregon Such a Popular Destination for Movers?

info@westonepro.com (Nick Shivers) — Tue, 10 Feb 2015 14:49:00 -0800

There are many great Portland area homes for sale. Click here to perform full home search, or if you're thinking of selling your home,click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation so you know what buyers will pay for your home in today's market. You may also call me at (503) 594-0805 for a FREE home buying or selling consultation to answer any of your real estate questions.
We have some exciting news for you today! For the second year in a row, Oregon was the second most moved-to state in 2014, which is great news for our real estate market.

Why are so many people moving to our great state? Well, the study found that Oregon ranks highly in both livability and affordability. As far as livability is concerned, we have great coffee shops, wine, restaurants, art, and entertainment. When thinking about affordability, it's hard to match the value of our homes. In the San Francisco metro area, the average price point is $700,000+, while Seattle's is a much better $364,000. However, the Portland metro area beats them all, as our average price point is only $287,000!

What does all of this mean for sellers?

For one, demand is high! We still have a strong demand for properties in our area. When comparing Portland properties to the rest of the West Coast, of all the big cities, ours is the cheapest place to live! Additionally, our lack of inventory is driving prices in a positive direction for sellers; roughly 90% of the homes we're currently listing are receiving multiple offers right now. It's clearly a great time to be a seller in our area!

As far as the future is concerned, we're not expecting to see any deflation any time soon. Experts predict the Portland area will experience appreciation rates between 3% and 5% until 2018. The Oregon market is back to normal, and has finally stabilized after the rapid growth we saw in 2013. Other than the lack of inventory, we are seeing very solid conditions here in Portland!

If you have an interest in taking advantage of these great selling conditions, or would like real estate assistance of any kind, don't hesitate to reach out to us. We would love to help you in anyway possible!

Happy Holidays from Our Team!

info@westonepro.com (Nick Shivers) — Tue, 23 Dec 2014 16:20:00 -0800

Hello, and welcome to our very last blog of the year!

We want to wish you a very Merry Christmas! We hope you're enjoying this wonderful time with your loved ones. We know we are!

We also want to say Happy New Year! We hope you have a safe and happy New Year celebration!

Lastly, THANKS for letting us serve you in 2014! We're looking forward to another fantastic year!

We'll see you in 2015!

Should You Be Selling Now?

info@westonepro.com (Nick Shivers) — Mon, 8 Dec 2014 12:38:00 -0800

Should You Be Selling Now?

Why does it make sense to list your home during the holidays? We hope to explain the reasons why today, in our latest blog post. First, let's get some facts out of the way about this market:

There are fewer sellers
There are fewer buyers
Inventory is below 3 months

In the Portland metro, we are still below 3 months of inventory and have a low supply with an increasingly high demand.

Buyers during the holiday season are traditionally buyers that need to purchase before the end of the year. Either they are relocating due to work, or have to buy before the end of the fiscal year for tax purposes. These buyers are looking for good, quality homes and yours could be the one they pick.

We wouldn't advise anyone to take their home off the market if it is already there. We are still below 3 months of inventory and we still have a high demand for homes, with much less competition.

If you have any questions, feel free to give us a call or send us an email. We look forward to serving you!

How Being Hesitant Will Hurt You

info@westonepro.com (Nick Shivers) — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 09:18:00 -0800

How Being Hesitant Will Hurt You

Thanks for checking in with us today. We are excited to be talking today about the pre-holiday real estate market. This market sometimes gets a bad reputation for being slow and stagnant, but if you take a look at some of the statistics we have compiled, you will see that is not the case. Here are some of them:

The number of people out looking for homes at this time of year has increased by 58% from last year
We are seeing home appreciation rise across the board, specifically in the urban market, where we are seeing multiple offers and appreciation rates in the high single digits.
We have about 3 months of inventory, putting us in a seller's market.
We have seen about a 22 day increase in time on the market.

Right now we are seeing a perfect storm for sellers. When you don't have a lot of supply on the market, but still have the demand that we do right now, this will allow home prices to go up and your time on the market to decrease.

If you have any questions about the Portland real estate market, be sure to reach out to us. We would love to answer your questions.

Selling Your Home: Fact vs. Fiction

info@westonepro.com (Nick Shivers) — Fri, 10 Oct 2014 11:29:00 -0700

Selling Your Home: Fact vs. Fiction

We recently got a call from a client in September who told us that an agent had advised them to take their home off of the market until January. They wanted a second opinion in the matter. We told them to absolutely not take it off the market and once we got ahold of the listing in September, we had it sold by early October. The point of this blog today is to separate the facts of real estate from the fiction.

Facts

Right now we have a tremendous amount of low inventory
A traditional balanced market has around 6 months of inventory, we currently have 2.6 in the Portland metro and SW Washington.
Traditionally, we have fewer homes on the market in the Fall months
Market activity in October and November are the 4th and 6th highest of the year, respectively
Interest rates remain phenomenal, right around 4%

These are all true facts. The fall is a great time to sell, especially in our market. Our 2.6 months of inventory has buyers out there chomping at the bit to get your home.

Fiction

Properties don't sell in the fall or the winter
The fall and winter are buyer's markets

As you can see from the above statistics, these assumptions simply aren't true. The fall selling season is underrated and with conditions the way they are, our market is set up ideally for sellers.

If you have any questions about selling in our market, or about real estate in general, give us a call. We'd be glad to help you out!

The Hidden Secrets of Zillow

info@westonepro.com (Nick Shivers) — Sat, 6 Sep 2014 09:22:00 -0700

There are many great Portland area homes for sale. Click here to perform full home search, or if you're thinking of selling your home,click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation so you know what buyers will pay for your home in today's market. You may also call me at (503) 594-0805 for a FREE home buying or selling consultation to answer any of your real estate questions.

The Hidden Secrets of Zillow

Zillow says your home is worth what?? Zillow, the most popular online home search website out there, uses data and analytics to determine the value of your home. They do a great job at giving you a broad picture of what your home is worth and are useful tools to use to see what's going on in the market.

However, these sites do have some downfalls. They really do not take into account many variables that greatly affect your home's value. They don't account for supply and demand, nor do they factor in home renovations or location of the home.

We're not saying to ignore Zillow's estimates, but take them with a grain of salt, and talk to a real estate professional to help you analyze that data so you can best price your property. This strategy will net you a lot more money in the long term.

If you have any questions about the data you're seeing on Zillow or any other questions, let us know. Give us a quick email or phone call, we'd be glad to help you out!

What You Should Know Before Building Your Home

info@westonepro.com (Nick Shivers) — Wed, 23 Jul 2014 11:28:00 -0700

There are many great Portland area homes for sale. Click here to perform full home search, or if you're thinking of selling your home, click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation so you know what buyers will pay for your home in today's market. You may also call me at (503) 594-0805 for a FREE home buying or selling consultation to answer any of your real estate questions.

What You Should Know Before Building Your Home

As you know, there is a great deal of new construction in the Portland and southwest Washington area. In fact, there is so much that keeping up with demand is difficult.

With construction up 50% from last year, there are a few things we think you should know before starting a new custom built home.

The first and most important thing is planning your budget. This will allow you to decide what part of your custom home is most important to you, whether it be faucets and outlets or cabinets and woodwork.

The next step is deciding whether or not you want to hire an agent.

If you do it yourself, you have to pick your lot, architect, and builder. You should be sure to get numbers from each, make sure that they have experience so you can feel confident going forward.

If you want help, make sure you hire an agent that has experience and a working team.

We would love to help you make you real estate decisions! If you have any questions about the Portland and southwest Washington market, call us at (503) 594-0805 email us at info@westonepro.com

Low Inventory Will Result in High Profits

info@westonepro.com (Nick Shivers) — Thu, 19 Jun 2014 14:17:00 -0700

Low Inventory Will Result in High Profits

It's an exciting time in the Portland real estate market. If you were thinking about buying a new home or selling your old one, now is the perfect time to get into the market. Let me tell you why.

We are currently in a low-supply inventory crisis. This is not a bad thing, as the word crisis would normally imply. This has turned the summer season into a hot sellers market. In some areas of Portland, we only have 1-2 months of inventory and homes are selling extremely fast.

The hottest areas in Portland right now are Close-in and Urban. A lot of time when we sell properties in these area, we will have multiple offers before the property is even listed.

If you were even entertaining the notion of selling, now is the perfect time. With low inventory, there is little to no competition for your home. I have been advising all my clients not to wait for perfection, because right now, you will get multiple offers. That will drive up the price, getting you more money for your home in a short period of time.

One of the things driving the market is interest rates. Borrowing money is very cheap right now, as the rates are extremely low. With the combination of interest rates and low inventory, now is a perfect time to buy or sell. If you have any questions, please give us a call or e-mail and we would be happy to help you.