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Access To Credit Drying Up In Central Oregon
2008-03-26 19:41:00
From the Bend Bulletin:With 2008 housing prices in Bend wavering ? down from a year ago, but rising from January to February ? and lending standards tightening, there?s both good news and bad news for prospective homebuyers in Bend, according to local real estate and mortgage professionals.Tom Greene, the president of the Central Oregon Association of Realtors, said pending sales for the month of March are up significantly, driven by low interest rates, lots of inventory and a realization that the current buyer?s market won?t last forever.?Buyers are jumping off the fence,? Greene said.At Capstone Mortgage Loans, with offices in Bend and Prineville, co-owner Jill Bemis said her company continues to take calls from interested borrowers, but more are walking away due to more stringent borrowing guidelines. Bemis said that lenders are also changing their guidelines day to day, making it difficult for buyers to lock down loan terms.?I think, like everybody, it?s been harder to get loans...
More About: Credit , Access , Central Oregon

Home Appreciation: 'Now, Of Course, That's Over'
2008-03-26 16:03:00
From the Oregonian:The Portland area, once a star performer in an otherwise gloomy U.S. housing market, crossed into the same dismal territory in January when home values dropped for the first time since record-keeping began in 1987, according to a report released Tuesday.The Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller report comes amid warnings from a respected economic consulting firm that home values could fall as much as 15 percent in Portland, Salem and Eugene and up to 25 percent in resort or retirement communities on the coast and in Bend, Hood River and southern Oregon.Mark McMullen, an Oregon-based senior economist for Moody's Economy.com, says he expects the state will suffer through a short housing-sparked recession this summer. Oregon, he said, will need five years to reach the boom-time peaks.Nationwide, McMullen expects home vales to fall 20 percent from their peak, a drop four times worse than during either the 1980s or 1990s recessions. Despite the troubles, Portland joined...
More About: Home , Appreciation

January 2008 S&P Case-Shiller Index
2008-03-26 02:02:00
The S&P Case -Shiller Index is based on observed changes in home prices. It is designed to measure the increases or decreases in the market value of residential real estate.For each home sale transaction, a search is conducted to find information regarding any previous sale for the same house. If an earlier transaction is found, the two transactions are paired and are considered a ?repeat sale.? Sales pairs are designed to yield the price change for the same house, while holding the quality and size of each house constant.Sales pairs from the following counties are included in the Portland index: Clackamas, Columbia, Multnomah, Washington, Yamhill, Clark (WA), and Skamania (WA).The first graph shows the year over year changes for the month of January 2008 . The index consists of 20 cities and Charlotte is the only city showing price appreciations. Click on any of the graphs for a better image. The second graph shows the one month change for each of the 20 cities. All cities showed...
More About: January 2008

Eugene Home Prices Down 10% And The RG Is Honest About It
2008-03-25 20:45:00
The Register Guard has been notorious for posting Realtor fluff in the past.My jaw dropped when I read this months summary of the February RMLS.The signs were even clearer in February that the Lane County real estate market is tipping toward the down side.The median price for a Lane County home fell 6 percent, compared to a year ago, to $220,000, according to the Regional Multiple Listing Service.The number of pending sales fell or were flat in every neighborhood across Eugene and Springfield, compared to a year ago, except for the Thurston area where sales at a Hayden Home s development likely preserved this single bright spot.With a surplus inventory ? it would take nine months to sell the 1,925 homes on the market now ? even some of the most optimistic real estate professionals don?t expect the prices now being fetched by existing homes to hold forever.A lot has changed since June 2007 when Lane County witnessed its pinnacle median price of $243,300 ? or 10 percent more than today...
More About: Honest , Prices

January Case-Shiller Preview
2008-03-25 18:19:00
The January Case -Shiller Index was released today and Portland's Index was down 0.5% year over year and down 4% from the peak in July.I'll post the graphs tonight.
More About: Preview

"It's Like The Stock Market; That's Basically What Happened here
2008-03-24 21:20:00
More details about the Bend real estate market:About Randy Sebastian and Renaissance HomesSebastian, the owner of Renaissance Homes, said he is committed to the development located off of Brookswood Boulevard and plans to refinance it with a local lender within 60 days. The Portland resident, who was in Bend on Wednesday for the opening of his company's design center at 55 N.W. Wall St., said he is not walking way from the development; rather, KeyBank is getting out of the housing market. "It's not a Bend issue, not a Renaissance Homes issue; it's a lender that wants out of the builder/developer market, and they don't want to extend their loans," said Sebastian. "I've got my life savings out there." In a statement sent to The Bulletin by KeyBank and attributed to Roberta Fuhr, a senior vice president and manager of the Homebuilder Group, the bank confirmed it has initiated foreclosure proceedings on Renaissance Ridge in accordance with Oregon law, adding: "This is an unfortunat...
More About: Stock Market , Market , Stock

Inside the Mind of a Realtor
2008-03-23 22:17:00
Tony Marnella (Realtor ) would like to share a few thoughts about the current Portland real estate market...In the 20+ years I?ve been in the real estate industry, I?ve seen and experienced firsthand the various peaks and valleys of the real estate market. One of my biggest frustrations right now is the amount of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) being generated by the media about the state of the current real estate market and the local economy. In my opinion, there is a lot of misinformation and a failure to acknowledge the positives about our local real estate market. Our economy is in fact doing quite well and our real estate market is solid. Only the ?perception? ofthe market is bad. Our local market is not going to be affected by the sub-prime market like the rest of the country because the Northwest?s allocation of those bad loans is about half of the national average. I?d like to share some interesting facts and FUD that I?ve come across recently:FUD: We hear how real ...
More About: Realtors , Mind , Inside , The Mind

Welcome To The Portland Housing Blog!
2008-03-10 07:59:00
Here is your Open Thread.Don't forget to bookmark the site.
More About: Blog , Housing , Portland

University of Oregon Economic Index
2008-03-10 01:44:00
Professor Duy and the University of Oregon released the Index of Economic Indicators on Friday.The University of Oregon Index of Economic Indicators fell a sharp .09 percent in January, to 101.8. The six-month annualized decline of 3.7 percent exceeded the largest decline experienced during the 2001 recession.Click on any graph for a sharper image.As a general rule of thumb, a decline of 3.5 percent over six months, coupled with a decline in more than half of its components, signals that a recession is likely imminent.On the job market:The data reveals continued softening in the Oregon labor market, similar to thedeterioration evident in the national trends. Nonfarm payrolls gained a scant 500 jobs during January, declining from a 1,300 job gain the previous month. The drop in housing activity has precipitated a significant decline in construction jobs, down 7,300 since the July 2007 peak. A further rise in initial unemployment claims, coupled with another sharp decline in Oregon he...

Liquidation Sale...Until They're Gone!
2008-03-09 06:41:00
Total Liquidation Sale In Lake Oswego2 DAYS ONLY!!!Previously listed at $478,850.Minimum bids starting at $289,850.I toured this Lake Oswego condo conversion just as they started selling and I can tell you the units weren?t that impressive. They painted the brick fireplaces white and the hallways squeaked when you walked. Maybe the Outrageous Audio guy can start doing commercials for failed flips.
More About: Auction

I Owe...I Owe...It's Off To Work I Go
2008-03-07 16:45:00
From the Oregonian:Nervous homeowners and economic analysts have been wondering how much worse the housing market could get. On Thursday they got an answer: Plenty.Foreclosures are at a record high. Home equity is at a record low. The housing market is spiraling down with no end in sight -- and taking people's sense of economic security with it.For the first time since the Federal Reserve started tracking the data in 1945, the amount of debt tied up in U.S. homes now exceeds the equity homeowners have built.The Fed reported Thursday that homeowner equity actually slipped below 50 percent in the second quarter of last year, and fell to just below 48 percent in the fourth quarter.And that was just one example in a day of dismal housing reports.The Mortgage Bankers Association said foreclosures hit an all-time high in the final quarter of last year. And pending U.S. home sales -- those in the gap between when a buyer signs a contract and when the deal closes -- came in below analyst e...
More About: Work

Demand - It Ain't What It Use To Be
2008-03-07 04:33:00
As we wait to see what the month of February holds for the Portland housing market I thought I would take a look at the January pending sales for all RMLS data.January 2008 reported 1,671 pending sales, this is a 34% drop from the prior year and pending sales haven?t been this low since 1995.Realtors have been touting the month over month gain from December to January but this comparison offers a more accurate look at the state of the housing market.
More About: Demand

First Time Home Buyer Seminar!!!
2008-03-05 23:17:00
Some of you renters out there might be interested in discovering your true potential.
More About: Time , Home , Buyer , Seminar , First Time

Publicity Rendered Condo Development Worthless
2008-03-05 20:03:00
From the Oregonian:The owner of a new condo and office complex northeast of the Sellwood Bridge is suing Multnomah County and the city of Portland, claiming that it hasn't been able to sell a single unit because of publicity about moving the bridge.In a lawsuit filed in Multnomah County Circuit Court, Wasson Properties claims that because the county and the city have talked about possible plans to build a new bridge just north of the current bridge, potential buyers are afraid that might mean the new condo-commercial complex will be demolished."The uncertainty of what's going to happen makes this building very unattractive," said Jim Marvin, the attorney who filed the suit Monday. "Who wants to buy a condo that's going to be ripped down?"According to the suit, Wasson Properties talked to the city over two years about the development of the building and was never told during the permitting process "that the property may be subject to immediate tear down or removal."The publicity h...
More About: Development , Publicity , Condo

Southern Oregon Unemployment At Recession Levels
2008-03-04 23:53:00
From the Mail Tribune:Job losses in retail, construction, manufacturing and tourism shot Jackson County's unemployment rate to 7.6 percent in January, the highest in three years.Employment Department figures showed payroll employment declined by 4,080 jobs in January, with about three-quarters of them lost because of seasonal cutbacks in the retail trade sector. Over the year, payroll employment rose by 1,160 jobs, but that wasn't enough to counter losses in the other sectors.An estimated 7,845 people are idled out of a work force of 102,837. The county's unemployment rate is worse than the national rate, which is 4.9 percent, and the state rate, which is 5.5 percent.But it's better than other Southern Oregon counties: Josephine posted 9.5 percent unemployment in January, Douglas 9.9 percent and Klamath 10 percent.January saw a reduction of 200 construction jobs, leaving a loss of 160 positions over the past 12 months. Tauer noted job counts are now beginning to fall, following ...
More About: Jobs , Unemployment , Recession

It's All About Inventory
2008-03-04 00:44:00
From the Bend Bulletin:Central Oregon homes sales are coming off of one of their worst winters in a decade, and the tenor of the industry?s sales incentives is changing.Gone are the offers of free cars and Pottery Barn gift certificates.In their place: cold, hard cash.At Renaissance Homes, President Randy Sebastian is offering $12,000 to $14,000 to buy down the interest rates on homebuyers? loans in his Bend subdivisions. At last week?s level, that amounted to an offer of 4.65 percent interest for the first 10 years ? almost three-quarters of a percent below similar loans in the open market.It?s all about inventory reduction and, so far, price cuts have not done the trick, Sebastian said.Renaissance has shaved anywhere from 11 percent to 20 percent off the list prices of its unsold homes, cutting anywhere from $50,000 to $150,000 per home in south Bend?s Renaissance Ridge and west Bend?s Shevlin Park, Sebastian said.That helped to shrink the Lake Oswego-based builder?s local invento...
More About: Inventory

4th Quarter HPI From The OFHEO
2008-03-03 20:32:00
The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) recently released their fourth quarter Housing Price Index (HPI). The index uses the same pairing method as the Case-Shiller index.The HPI is a weighted, repeat-sales index, meaning that it measures average price changes in repeat sales or refinancings on the same properties. This information is obtained by reviewing repeat mortgage transactions on single-family properties whose mortgages have been purchased or securitized by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac since January 1975.The House Price Index is based on transactions involving conforming, conventional mortgages purchased or securitized by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Only mortgage transactions on single-family properties are included. Conforming refers to a mortgage that both meets the underwriting guidelines of Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac and that does not exceed the conforming loan limit, a figure linked to an index published by the Federal Housing Finance Board. The conforming...
More About: Quarter

Welcome to the Portland Housing Blog!
2008-03-03 07:40:00
Here is your Open Thread.Don't forget to bookmark the site.
More About: Blog , Housing , Portland

How bad was January?
2008-03-03 05:22:00
I pulled all the January closed sales numbers I have available and found something really interesting. The worst year is in red.January 2008 reported a 32% year over year drop and a 41% drop from January 2005 levels.UPDATE: Pending sales are also down 34% from last January.
More About: Portland

Warning! You Will Lose Your Home...
2008-03-02 17:35:00
From the Oregonian:When a foreclosure starts, so do the sales pitches.They come with a knock at the front door, a letter in the mailbox or a bright sign on the telephone pole."You'll lose your home if you don't call now!" "Sign here and we'll save your home!""Stop foreclosure!"But watch out for this last-ditch offer: A rescue from foreclosure.Some foreclosure rescue operations may be legit and their tactics may, in some cases, be legal. But consumer advocates say they haven't found any that they'd endorse."Every single one I've seen is bogus," said Richard Hagar, a Seattle-area real estate appraiser who trains police in how to spot scams.At their core, most foreclosure rescue schemes offer a false promise to save someone's home from foreclosure.The schemes come in two basic flavors: a consultant who takes a fee, roughly $1,000, to negotiate with the lender, but does nothing; and a person who persuades an unsuspecting homeowner to sign over the title to his property. In Oregon...
More About: Home , Foreclosure , Warning

Subcontractors File Lien On NW Condos
2008-03-01 21:16:00
From The Oregonian:Two subcontractors filed liens against Marty Kehoe's Cambridge condo project in Northwest Portland in the last month.Liens can signal a developer is in a financial pinch and stringing out his contractors. Or, they can come amid a dispute between contractors and the developer.Kehoe says this is the latter.Pioneer Sheet Metal filed a $67,800 lien on Jan. 31. The Cronin Co., a Portland tile and flooring company, put a $27,300 lien on Feb. 7.Kehoe says the bills were a minor dispute -- not related to late payments -- on a $50 million condo project and have been resolved."It's a nonissue," he said.Kehoe said the Cambridge actually had surprisingly few liens for a project of its size. "That's the thing that's the story here," he said.Construction is about done, and Kehoe says he's sold about 45 of the 60 condos."Hey, can we get a little credit for being 80 percent sold out without all our buyers jumping ship like they are on most of the other projects in town?" he ...
More About: File

Auto Layoffs in Oregon
2008-02-29 05:35:00
237 people have been laid-off from a Eugene call center.Semperian is a subsidiary of GMAC, the financing arm of auto maker General Motors. They announced the layoffs today.Layoffs were a direct result of fewer people buying cars in the U.S.
More About: Jobs , Auto , Oregon

De-spon-dent
2008-02-29 01:52:00
Despairing, Desperate, Hopeless. Having lost all or nearly all hope. Implies a deep dejection arising from a conviction of the uselessness of further effort.Used in a sentence: Portland Realtors are starting to feel despondent.Portland Realtors/bloggers are having a meetup?AND I WAS INVITED!!! Possibly the result of a mass mailing gone wrong. If you want to attend click here.

You'd Have To Be In A Cave Somewhere Not To Realize That The Economy Is Slo
2008-02-28 16:44:00
From the Oregonian:A housing and retail development meant to revitalize a once-seedy stretch of East Burnside Street seems to have stalled, the latest victim of a downturn in the construction market and broader economy.On Wednesday, the Portland Development Commission voted not to renew a memorandum of understanding with Opus Northwest, picked in 2005 to develop the Burnside Bridgehead project.Instead, PDC staff will spend the next 30 to 60 days trying to figure out how to salvage a project that has taken years of work and piles of money but attracted little interest from possible tenants."You'd have to be in a cave somewhere not to realize that the economy is slowing down," said John Bartell, Opus Northwest vice president. "Everybody that we've talked to is just sitting and waiting."The commission will probably move ahead with plans to spend millions of dollars demolishing buildings on the four-acre site this summer and to improve nearby transportation, including turning Burnside...
More About: Economy , Cave

More Bend Layoffs Could Occur
2008-02-27 20:41:00
From the Bend Bulletin:The top official at Central Oregon?s division of Knife River Corp. said Tuesday that the excavation company has laid off 15 percent of its work force since November and that more staff cuts could occur.The layoffs, which amount to 70 to 75 of Knife River?s 465 jobs, are all due to market conditions, primarily a slowdown in housing construction, said Hap Taylor, the president of Knife River, which is a subsidiary of Bismarck, N.D.-based MDU Resources Group Inc.The company sent a letter to its employees last week saying more cuts were possible.?There might be further layoffs,? Taylor said. ?It?s all economy-related and has been happening pretty much everywhere we have a business. Every company is going through the same problems.?Taylor is the former owner of Hap Taylor & Sons Inc., which was bought by Knife River in 1998.Knife River?s projects have included work on two massive residential subdivisions ? IronHorse in Prineville and Yarrow in Madras ? and seve...

December S&P Case-Shiller Index
2008-02-27 16:06:00
The S&P Case -Shiller Index is based on observed changes in home prices. It is designed to measure the increases or decreases in the market value of residential real estate.For each home sale transaction, a search is conducted to find information regarding any previous sale for the same house. If an earlier transaction is found, the two transactions are paired and are considered a ?repeat sale.? Sales pairs are designed to yield the price change for the same house, while holding the quality and size of each house constant.Sales pairs from the following counties are included in the Portland index: Clackamas, Columbia, Multnomah, Washington, Yamhill, Clark (WA), and Skamania (WA).The first graph shows the year over year changes for the month of December 2007. The index consists of 20 cities and Portland is one of three currently showing price appreciations. Click on any of the graphs for a better image. The second graph shows the one month change for each of the 20 cities. All citi...

Good Luck With This One.
2008-02-27 03:08:00
From the Columbian:An east Vancouver residential complex is being converted from apartments to condominiums, according to its owner, Portland-based Ironwood Partners LLC.The two- and three-bedroom condos in the 60-unit complex will sell for $148,000 to $165,900.The Evergeen East condos are on the west side of Northeast 157th Avenue, about one block north of Mill Plain Boulevard and near the Columbia Tech Center business park.They must have found a niche that the 17 months of inventory were ignoring.
More About: Good , Luck , Good Luck

Reality Still Hasn't Hit Bend Builders
2008-02-27 00:34:00
From the Bend Bulletin:Central Oregon?s real estate market has cooled, but it won?t likely reach the depths of 1986, according to one longtime builder who says a diverse approach will steer his company through the slowdown.That?s when the city of Redmond issued only a handful of commercial and residential building permits throughout the entire year, according to the city?s building department.?It was dead, very dead,? said Steve Buettner, president of SunWest Builders Development LLC.This could be the year that some of the region?s smaller subcontractors ? who can?t find enough business ? go out of business, he said.?Some dropoff is OK,? he said. ?In the boom times, everyone jumps into it, including some of those who shouldn?t. Those (lower-quality builders) will be the first ones to go.?SunWest?s largest residential projects are in Prineville and Madras, where sales have not met expectations, Buettner said.At IronHorse, a 2,900-home development in Prineville that will take 15 to 20...
More About: Reality

Oregon Economy Sheds Construction Jobs
2008-02-26 22:54:00
From the Oregon ian:Monthly state figures released Monday showed Oregon lost 5,900 construction jobs last month when a winter drop of 3,700 would have been normal. Seasonally adjusted construction employment stood at 98,500 jobs in January -- the first month below 100,000 since March 2006.The national housing crisis appears to have caught up with Oregon, hitting construction workers especially hard. "The economy's slowing," said Dae Baek, deputy state economist, "so despite better affordability of houses, the potential buyers are dwindling."Building permits, which provide a view into the near future, have plunged. Permits for privately owned housing units halved from December 2005 to December 2007,dropping from 2,181 to 1,093, said economist Timothy Duy, University of Oregonadjunct assistant professor.But although the state and nation watch for recession, which some U.S. economists believe has already arrived, the jobs data showed Oregon was still squeaking by in January.The state'...
More About: Economy , Jobs , Construction

December Case-Shiller Numbers
2008-02-26 16:59:00
According to the Case -Shiller Index Portland home prices were up 1.2% in December 2007 when compared to December 2006 home prices.I'll update my graphs for you tonight...
More About: Numbers