
The cost versus value of remodeling is one of the major real estate questions that homeowners face. I wrote this post about the National Association of Realtors 2008 Cost Versus Value Report a couple of months ago. Hanley Wood has a much more regional tool for the cost versus value of projects...

Death, taxes and Case Shiller on the last Tuesday of the month. Pretty much like clockwork but the Case Shiller Index for Portland, and other markets, hasn’t been quite as painful as the first two in recent months. The Portland real estate market remains flat, posting a .1% loss from September. ...

Home Owner Association (HOA) dues are a function of most condominium complexes. For this search in RMLS, I ran condos sold in the last 12 months between 950 and 1050 SQFT in the Pearl District’s 97209 zip code. ...

RMLS reports on the lockbox activity on a bi-weekly basis. Although real estate takes place 24/7/365, most took a break on Thanksgiving. Showings have dropped the last three non-holiday weeks reported...

RMLS Market Action was released yesterday. The last page of the Portland Metro report focuses on condos. The median sales price is down considerably but has seen an uptick the last couple of months...

RMLS of Portland just released their Portland real estate market data for November 2009. Inventory ticked up a little from October’s 6.5 months. The 9% increase is less than the month on month increase in 2008 but in 2007 the inventory level remained almost static for the same period. Must run. ...

I had an appointment this morning at a listing just after Market Action was published so only covered inventory in this morning’s post. Pending sales are up over 2008 but closed sales are down. That says that more transactions are failing in escrow. ...

Target sells this CO2 detector $25.95 Portland’s “Arctic Blast” claimed one life yesterday and left a woman in the hospital reports KGW. The cause: carbon monoxide from a natural gas heater that wasn’t vented properly. I wrot...

I woke up this morning thinking it was colder than normal in our bedroom even though the thermostat is set to run on a program...

A couple of weeks ago I took a look at whether RMLS Market Action could help us predict what the trailing Case Shiller report might look like? The answer was no, at least not as reported. It was pointed out that the methodologies are different. RMLS Market Action does not include Clark County...

The recently released National Association of Realtor’s “Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers” reveals that the median age of a buyer is 39 (30 for first time buyers and 48 for repeat buyers). The median age of a seller is 48. The ...

We often hear of the “Shadow Market” of homes that are not in the Portland real estate market statistics reported; there is a large inventory of home out there waiting to be listed. O...

It’s been four years since the roofers caused a fire at our house on Thanksgiving. Thankfully the house was still in the remodeling stage, we weren’t living there and nobody was hurt. The sounds of the fire department cutting into the roof is still a vivid memory. Th...















