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re:PDX is presented by Claire Widmark, broker affiliated with M Realty LLC in Portland, Oregon.
Phone: 971-275-3691
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The Gray Lady Continues Her Love Affair with Portland
Here’s yet another travel article about Portland from the New York Times by Matt Gross, the Frugal Traveler–this time heralding Portland’s cheap(er) eats, sights, travel, and lodging.
Here’s the article and a corresponding slideshow.
Photo credit: Leah Nash for The New York Times
2009 Portland Monthly Real Estate Issue Arrives
Portland Monthly magazine’s annual real estate issue is out, offering tips on buying, renting, selling, remodeling, refinancing — in short, a treatise on how to adapt to a fundamentally volatile housing market.
I’ve highlighted this issue each year on re:PDX, and it continues to generate interest long after the magazine is off the newsstand, particularly with those interested in moving to the state.
Portland Monthly‘s coverage also includes Neighborhoods by the Numbers, a breakdown of 95 urban neighborhoods and 25 suburban areas. You’ll find stats on real estate market dynamics, crime, schools, population, and other demographics.
On a personal note, the real estate market data this year was provided by the agency I’m affiliated with, MRealty.
Feature Article: Buy, Sell Rent, Keep?
Comparison Article: Neighborhoods by the Numbers
Get your copy today at local newsstands, or visit online. If you are interested in past issues, I have them on-hand. Just drop me a note.
Tour of Remodeled Homes This Weekend
The year has started with a very slow pace of home sales, meaning more than ever, people are staying put — both by choice and by necessity.
Perhaps the remodeling industry will see some benefit during the housing downturn.
This weekend, the Home Builder’s Association of Metropolitan Portland sponsors the Tour of Remodeled Homes –a collection of projects 18 scattered across the metro area. Tickets for the event run $17.50 and can be used both Saturday and Sunday, March 14-15, 2009.
More information at the Tour of Remodeled Homes. Please come back and comment at re:PDX about the tour if you venture out. Thanks!
Misery Loves Company in PDX
Break out the Prozac, PDXers.
Recent articles and awards by the NYTimes, greenability authorities, and travel mags gush glowingly about the city. But if you want to see Portland show up on all those great Top 10 lists, you’ve got to take the bad with the good.
Of the top 50 metro areas, Business Week proclaims Portland to be the Most Miserable City in the U.S. Why? Here is their rationale:
- Depression rank: 1
- Suicide rank: 12
- Crime (property and violent) rank: 24
- Divorce rate rank: 4
- Cloudy days: 222
- Unemployment rate (December 2008): 7.8% (now closer to 10%)
(I would add Greg Oden’s knee injuries to the list.)
Kari Chisolm over at BlueOregon has the best retort so far. What say you?
Photo courtesy of Meredith Farmer, used under Creative Commons license.
Where the Deer and the Antelope Play
…and the Indian casinos, loggers, and soldiers, too.
Not particularly relevant to Portland real estate, but I found it interesting, nonetheless. This map details the percentage of state territory owned by the federal government in the U.S. Oregon ranks #4 overall, with 53.1% owned by the Feds.
Map courtesy of David Kennedy, from the fascinating article in Stanford Alumni magazine.
From Strange Maps:
The United States government has direct ownership of almost 650 million acres of land (2.63 million square kilometers) – nearly 30% of its total territory. These federal lands are used as military bases or testing grounds, nature parks and reserves and indian reservations, or are leased to the private sector for commercial exploitation (e.g. forestry, mining, agriculture). They are managed by different administrations, such as the Bureau of Land Management, the US Forest Service, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the US Department of Defense, the US Army Corps of Engineers, the US Bureau of Reclamation or the Tennessee Valley Authority.
The top 10 list of states with the highest percentage of federally owned land:
| Rank | State | Percentage |
| 1. | Nevada | 84.5% |
| 2. | Alaska | 69.1% |
| 3. | Utah | 57.4% |
| 4. | Oregon | 53.1% |
| 5. | Idaho | 50.2% |
| 6. | Arizona | 48.1% |
| 7. | California | 45.3% |
| 8. | Wyoming | 42.3% |
| 9. | New Mexico | 41.8% |
| 10. | Colorado | 36.6% |
Connecticut and Rhode Island have the least amount of federally-owned land at 0.4%.
Early Tickets Available For Street of Eames
If you act quickly, you may be able to secure advance tickets now to Portland’s only annual tour of mid-century and modern contemporary homes.
The Street of Eames tour is scheduled for Saturday, April 18, 2009, and if previous years are any indication, you may want to avoid the crush of online ticket seekers when the general admission tickets go on sale in mid-February.
The first three SoE shows were instant sell-outs.
Reflecting the demand, ticket prices are up some this year. General admission tickets are $50 and student tickets will run $40, but for a limited time, you can secure advance tickets with an additional $150 tax-deductible donation to the tour’s Project Return/Chapman Foundation, which provide after-school programs for homeless students attending Chapman and Beach elementary schools. The all volunteer-run home tour effort has raised $283,000 toward these programs in the first three years.
Modern design and architecture enthusiasts can find additional information or purchase advance tickets at http://www.streetofeames.org.
The board also announced an additional event:
Street of Eames fundraiser Nov. 12
Rejuvenation, a sponsor of the 2009 tour, is offering a lecture called “Inside the Atomic Ranch: Great Interiors” from 6:30 to 9 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 12, at Rejuvenation’s showroom at 1100 S.E. Grand Ave. Suggested admission: $10.Join Jim Brown of Atomic Ranch Magazine and Erin Marshall of Kismet Design for an evening of ranch-flavored show and tell. On the menu: 1940s – 60s mid-century modern interiors. Raffle tickets will be available for prizes, including 2009 tour tickets. Snacks provided by Devil’s Food Catering, and libations courtesy of Pour Wine Bar & Bistro. Please RSVP by Friday, Nov. 7, by contacting Nicole Curcio at Rejuvenation, 503-230-2644 or by email.
I Think I Just Threw Up in My Mouth
Normally on Fridays, I like to look for little diversions to post here on re:PDX. And I certainly found one today, but it was a nausea-inducer for me. Welcome to the second season of Bravo TV’s Million Dollar Listing.
“You’ve got to make enemies to make money.” Yeah, that’s my new catch phrase.
From the New York Times:
Season 2 revolves instead around three agents: Chad Rogers, Josh Flagg and the lone holdover from Season 1, Madison Hildebrand. None of them are over 30, and all are as focused on landing the next deal as they are with themselves. Mr. Rogers spends an inordinate amount of time on his hair and is given to making statements like, “I have a gorgeous girlfriend because image is everything in real estate.”
Apparently, one of the ‘stars’ is under suspicion of thieving expensive artwork from one of his listings. I hate it when that happens.
I haven’t seen an episode myself, but I know that this show will be viewed as a ‘guilty pleasure’ for some. Like watching Springer or COPS. I wonder how this plays with NAR‘s goal of raising popularity ratings of REALTORS to levels above used car salesmen and telemarketers.
Anyway, if you’ll excuse me, apparently I need to go work on my hair.
(Hat tip to Trevor Smith @ Blue Collar Agents)
Timeshares in the Pearl?
Buried in the Oregonian today is news that a Pearl District hotel project may likely be marketed as a timeshare — perhaps the city’s first.
Opus Northwest is hoping to complete the project, located at NW 14 & Irving, in two years. From the city’s Design Commission docket for August 7, 2008:
The building is U-shaped, pulling back on its south façade to form a private ground floor courtyard distinguished from the Irving St walkway by a fence and landscaped planter. Active ground floor uses form the NW 14th Ave frontage, with a hotel lobby, hotel services and a sales room facing the street. The ground floor of the NW 15th Ave façade is characterized by vehicular uses, with a structured loading bay, and the entrance to two floors of below-grade parking incorporating 109 parking stalls. Three hotel units form the ground-floor of the southwestern corner of the building with outdoor patio spaces facing the Irving St walkway. The upper floors include of a total of 114 hotel units of varying sizes.
The building design is by SERA Architects. The Oregonian reports the client is Wyndham Worldwide, a timeshare operator.
In a soft condo market, I think the idea could have some momentum — serving the occasional to frequent Portland visitor. It would provide an alternative to the pied-a-terre model of a small, temporary-stay second home. Often, the burden of homeowner association fees and insurance make pied-a-terres overly expensive for the less-than-frequent visitor. Fractional ownership usually offers clients some flexibility to travel to other resort locations, too.
The Portland Design Commission is holding a public hearing on Opus Northwest’s (the developer) design advice request at 1:30 p.m., Aug. 7, in Room 2500A at 1900 S.W. Fourth Ave.
No word yet on how excruciating the sales presentations will be 
Sorry to crush your Eames dreams
but all 1,000 tickets for the 2008 Street of Eames modern home tour are already gone. Immediate absorption of all tickets has become an annual event.
Update: Organizers tell me that tickets sold out in 1 hour. And, please don’t yell at the volunteer staff. Only so many modern architecture fanatics can traverse the gracious hosts’ homes in one day!
The Street of Eames home tour is a phenomenally successful fund-raising event for the after-school programs for low-income and homeless children attending Portland’s Chapman and Beach Elementary schools.
If you didn’t get tickets, you can view a handful of pictures of the homes you won’t get to see on tour at http://www.streetofeames.org.
Get on their 2009 list now….
[tags] Portland, Oregon, Eames, tour, homes, modern, house, design [/tags]
Build It Green, Portland-Style
As one of the nation’s leading cities in conservation, Portland is also at the forefront of sustainable building practices, products and technologies. To accentuate that point, this Saturday, September 15, the city sponsors the sixth annual Build It Green! Tour of Homes and Information Fair.
From the Build It Green! site:
Now in its sixth year, the 2007 Build It Green! Tour of Homes features eighteen remodels and new homes, two high-rise residential condominiums and one cohousing development, showcasing a variety of ways homeowners are conserving energy and other natural resources while creating beautiful, unique and healthy homes.
An accompanying Information Fair, hosted by Environmental Building Supplies, is free and open to the public 4:30 – 7 p.m.
Homes of all kinds can be found on the tour: high-rise condos, period remodels, multi-family homes, eco-architecture (cob, straw, clay), ultra-modern rowhouses, infill projects and co-housing.
Details can be found at the city’s PortlandOnline.com website.
[tags] Portland, Oregon, homes, construction, development, conservation, green, building, sustainability, tour [/tags]
