Why Is Anyone In This Picture Smiling?

I don’t think it’s an appropriate pose. Period.

Hat tip: Tom Royce @ The Real Estate Bloggers.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

8 comments October 3rd, 2008

Another High Profile Portland Condo Stalls on the Launch Pad

Another 354 apartment units will enter the downtown Portland market next summer, testing the area’s ability to absorb unprecedented numbers of high-end apartments.

The Oregonian and the Portland Business Journal report that the CYAN/PDX will lease its smallish, energy-friendly units instead of selling them in a stagnant condo market.

The CYAN/PDX condo/apartment switch is the sixth project to do so in recent times. The others included the last tower in the downtown Harrison project, Ladd Tower in the Cultural District, SE Portland’s 2121 Belmont, the Pearl’s Wyatt, and the South Waterfront’s 3720.

They join a couple other South Waterfront projects originally designed as apartments, making for a crowded field of new rental living spaces. The Portland Business Journal estimates that 2,500 high-end units will compete for tenants as these projects complete.

Existing high-end renters should feel some security that their leases aren’t going up anytime soon.

Leasing information for CYAN/PDX.

4 comments October 2nd, 2008

Some Good and Bad in Portland’s Housing News

In the midst of bailouts, presidential debates, bank takeovers, and other fear-inducing events, the Portland housing market continues to evolve. A few news items and notes:

September market activity may surprise some
Year-to-date across the Portland metro area, home sales have been running at about 65% of 2007 levels, month in and month out. September 2008, though, is on pace to come in over 80% percent of September 2007’s total.

Now, before someone starts calling August ‘the bottom’, the 1,600+ homes sold in September are more like January and February averages, and haven’t made much of a dent in the 17,000 active listing inventory still left for sale. Unless we see a significant number of expirations and canceled listings, many home sellers are in for a long winter. I will run preliminary numbers next week when most sales will be logged in RMLS.

A local news crew caught me yesterday for some comments about the local housing market given all the turbulence in the past few days. The summary is pretty thin and some of the advice and conclusions made me wince, but how much in-depth analysis can you squeeze into a 1:45 segment?

(The report is after the brief ad)

Link to KPTV News video.

I don’t think they used my best quotes or deepest analysis, but I will stand by the contention that people view Portland as an attractive location to live.

Case-Shiller shows declines of 6.6% in Portland
Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller index for July came out on Tuesday, showing Portland’s prices in a 6.6% decline from the same period in 2007. As markets like Boston, Denver, and Minneapolis show signs of recovery, Portland and Seattle are showing some acceleration in the opposite direction, although they still rank as 5th and 8th respectively in the 20-city index. According to RMLS statistics, August median home prices were down 7.3% from the previous year, so expect Case-Shiller to continue to downgrade Portland.

Mortgage insurer finds Portland’s price decline risk to be ‘minimal’
PMI Group, a private mortgage insurer reports that the risk of significant Portland metro price declines is viewed to be among the nation’s lowest. They may be wrong, but for now, it should keep mortgage insurance rates low for buyers with less than 20% equity.

50,000 Subprime and Alt-A ARMs to reset
On Tom Cusack’s Oregon Housing Blog, he estimates up that 50,000 subprime and Alt-A loans will reset in the next 12 months on owner-occupied homes in Oregon and Washington. You’d think borrowers would have re-fied by now. Maybe they can’t.

4 comments October 1st, 2008

My WordCamp Weekend

Bear with me as I diverge from real estate commentary, but I got to embrace my inner nerd this weekend.

Saturday, I had the privilege of attending one of the many creative and technical events that Portland is becoming famous for holding — this being WordCamp Portland conference, celebrating the Wordpress publishing system.

So, what’s a REEL-TOR doing at a quintessentially Portland chic geek event?

Well, rePDX and many blogs and websites are run using this open-source software system. Without getting into technical details, sites like this would be difficult to manage, update, and host — particularly for non-designer or developer types. I went to get better grasp of what Wordpress could do to extend some of the ideas I have, and how I could do what I do here, better.

About 150 bloggers, software designers and web developers, spent the day listening to speakers, getting Wordpress 2.7 previews, and networking. A couple other real estate brokers attended, Mike Rohrig and Dale Chumbley, so as a percentage of attendees, the real estate industry was well represented. Early in the day, we stopped for a group photo:

Then, after flashing ‘W’ symbols with our fingers (for Wordpress) for the camera, someone had the brilliant idea to walk us into the middle of Grand Avenue for another photo op. I feared the police were about to descend and shower us with rubber bullets and tear gas, mistaking us for Bush protestors.

The Portland tech and creative crowd is vibrant, diverse, accessible, and super-smart. For many hours, the Wordcamp PDX topic was the highest trending topic on the Twitter social network (follow me at rares_pdx). I hope this fervor translates into viable future business ventures and rewards these talented folks for their ground-breaking efforts.

My thanks to organizers, speakers, sponsors, and the local Wordpress community for a great event and really helpful ideas.

Ok, enough nerd-talk for today. Back to our regularly scheduled programming…

3 comments September 29th, 2008

Flexible Lending Rules . . . Yeah, That’s the Ticket!

An old Washington Mutual commercial. I’m sure it was funny in 2005…but I bet WaMu shareholders aren’t laughing today.

Link to WaMu Mortgage Commercial

Hat tip: Mike Mueller

1 comment September 26th, 2008

Portland Real Estate Market Results - August 2008 Final

So, how long, really, does it take to sell a house in the Portland area? The answer: 121 days, according to the new Total Market Time measure* released this month.

Long market times and high inventories are impacting sale prices, now in greater measure as the seasonal market winds down.

Final results for August 2008 reveal an acceleration of dipping prices, both average and median. Compared to last month, prices are down 2.7% and 2.8%, but when measuring against 12 months ago (the peak of the market), prices are off 6.7% (average) and 7.3% (median). The median price has now reset to levels found back in February 2007.

Here’s how Portland’s various market areas break down, year-to-date:

Source: RMLS, September 2008.

* Total Market Time - the number of days from when a property is listed to when an offer is accepted on that same property. If a property is re-listed within 31 days, Total Market Time continues to accrue; however, it does not include the time it was off the market. The old Average Market Time measured the days a listing number was active–not taking into account re-listings.

18 comments September 15th, 2008

Portland’s Market Time Stats to Increase — Dramatically

When the RMLS Market Action arrives next week, more-than-casual market observers may raise an eyebrow at the ‘average market time’ statistic for Portland-area real estate, ‘cuz it’s gonna be higher than usual.

If you recall, in July the average time to sell a home in the Portland metro was reported to be 72 days — a little over 2 3 months. This statistic was derived by counting the total days from the listing date to the date when an offer was accepted (the pending date). Sounds simple, right?

Well, the reality is that properties can be listed, then relisted by the same agent, then expire, then get listed with a new agent, and repeat this process multiple times. Therefore, a property originally intended for sale in January 2007 may not sell until July 2008, with multiple new listing times….and a market time of 37 days, according to the old measure.

Frankly, it’s been a misleading statistic. (So much so, that I had planned on not reporting it at re:PDX anymore.)

Our MLS has long had a Cumulative Days on Market (CDOM) measure, which accounted for relistings and changes of brokers, etc., but for some reason did not become the standard measure for the real time on market. On my other micro real estate blogs, PropertyBlotter and move2westlinn, my co-authors and I began publishing the CDOM stats for all properties sold each week. Very eye-opening stuff.

So, for the August 2008 results, the RMLS board has decided to adopt a ‘Total Market Time’ metric and provide a more accurate picture to consumers. Here’s how it’s measured:

Total Market Time is an average of the cumulative number of days from when a property is listed to when an offer is accepted. If a property is taken off-market and re-listed within 31 days, Total Market Time continues to accrue; however, it does not include the time that it was off the market.

So, expect the Market Time numbers to jump upon publication of the next report around the 15th. I haven’t determined what measures other MLS boards use to determine market time and whether or not it will change how Portland is viewed vs. other national markets. (Perhaps some out-of-state brokers will comment?)

Any guesses as to what the Total Market Time numbers will be? Leave a comment.

4 comments September 11th, 2008

Short-Term Bounce Effect of Fannie-Freddie Takeover

Investors are feeling bullish today as the market rallies in AM after news of the FNMA/FDMC takeover.

Could be a good day to lock rates.

Graph courtesy of Zillow Mortgage Market.

2 comments September 8th, 2008

Portland Early Results - August 2008

We at the 12-month anniversary of the official peak of Portland’s housing price boom. In August 2007, homes sold for an average of $366,900 and the middlemost sale price (median) hit the $300,000 mark.

One year later, the results are very different. For August 2008, the median price is down 7% from last year’s peak, and the average is off 10%. Closed sales for the month are 32% below that of August 2007, continuing the year-long pattern.

Early Numbers for August 2008 vs. last month and 12 months ago:

IF there are hopeful signs for home sellers, it’s that the pace of new listings is down by a third from last year. Between that and a higher number of expired listings, inventory should shrink going into the fall.

On an unrelated note, Forbes thinks Portland is the 4th most likely city to see home price increases over the long-term, behind Albuquerque, Charlotte, and San Antonio. Full story here.

Please note these are ‘unofficial’ results and things can shift a little either way — the RMLS report should be out by September 15.

5 comments September 8th, 2008

ORBlogs.com Shuts Down

Off the real estate topic today, but if you’re a viewer or contributor to the ORBlogs.com blog repository, today’s news is a bummer.

Paul Bausch, founder of ORBlogs in 2003, leaves a heartfelt farewell message that the directory has grown beyond the bounds of a hobby, and that blogging has become, surprise, an increasingly commercial (I’m guilty as charged) enterprise.

I want to personally thank Paul for his cat-herding efforts in coordinating the typically independent Oregon collection of 1,672 diverse blogs over the past 5+ years. Much of the traffic to repdx.com, propertyblotter.com, and move2westlinn.com is due to his efforts.

So, you have until the end of the month (maybe a few more days) to parse the directory of Oregon based blogs and bookmark your favorites or subscribe to them in RSS feeds.

Unless, of course, someone else picks up the baton.

Anyone? Anyone?

1 comment September 4th, 2008