What happened this month in real estate? Let’s take a look…Interest rates jumped the highest they have in 3 years to 4.5-5%, which could bring this housing market frenzy to a close. This was the largest jump within a week in over a decade!One year ago today, interest rates were at 2.65% and now they’re at around 4.8%, that’s double from a year ago.…

Your March market update on inflation, jobs, real estate, and more.In today’s housing market update, let’s talk about jobs, inflation, the stock market, and, of course, real estate in general.First, we need to address The Great Resignation. People everywhere are leaving their jobs. Surprisingly, we added 467,000 jobs in January. The good news is th…

I run down seven reasons why you should stage your home before you sell. Should you stage your home? Every real estate agent will tell you yes, but they might not tell you why. Today I want to run through seven benefits of staging your home:1. Functional obsolescence. This is a fancy real estate term, but it just means that you can show how flaws i…

Here’s how our Portland real estate market is positioned as we begin 2022.2021 was a unique time for real estate in the U.S., and our Portland Metro market was no different. Today I’m sharing some stats that show where our market is positioned as 2022 begins. In December, we hit a new record low for inventory at 0.6 months’ worth (our absorption ra…

From our team to your family, we want to wish you a happy holiday season.Happy holidays to you!The holiday season has officially arrived. We hope you enjoy this wonderful time of year and make some fantastic memories.We wanted to take a moment to thank you for your continued support. We love helping people make their real estate dreams come true, s…

Here are the five things to consider when hiring a listing agent.I’ve been selling real estate for more than 20 years, so I know what I’m doing. Today I’m sharing five things you need to consider when hiring a listing agent:1. Get an agent with a digital marketing strategy. Many people are under the impression that the current market is just taking…

Here’s how hauntings and negative stigmas affect home values. As we head deeper into October, I thought it would be fitting to discuss a spooky real estate topic: Does a haunted reputation affect a home’s value?The short answer is absolutely! Think about it, would you want to live in a house you know someone was murdered in? Unnatural passings crea…

Here’s how our Portland market is doing amid the new wave of COVID-19.Today I’m sharing our Portland real estate market update for September 2021. We are back in the throes of the coronavirus, so how does that affect the market? I’ve been listening to and reading up on many relevant economic topics because the delta variant is throwing everything f…

Homebot is the latest and greatest tool for today’s homeowners.I’m excited to share a free resource that’s going to help you track the value of your home, the homes around you, and much more. It’s called Homebot, and I’ve tested it myself quite a bit. It won’t replace the instincts of a local broker with boots on the ground, but it is a fantastic t…

Here’s why buyers are purchasing resale over new construction.Today’s homebuyer is choosing resale homes over new construction. That was not the case in 2020 when 60% of buyers wanted to buy new construction. What happened in the last year that turned the tide? In 2020, a lot of people ran to buy new construction because they were afraid of buying …

Here are my top three reasons why the market might be slowing down. In today’s hot market, there seems to be one question on everyone’s mind: When will home prices drop? Right now, one of the biggest search questions on Google is, “When is the housing market going to crash?” While we probably aren’t heading for a crash, I think a lot of people can …

Here are the four states people move to the most when leaving Portland.Today’s blog is part two in my two-part series about people moving to and from Portland and Oregon. Let’s begin by talking about the four feeder states, as we call them. These are the most common states people are moving to when they leave Oregon: 1. Arizona. The largest migrati…

Why so many people are moving out of Portland. We’ve had quite a year! The events that occurred over the last twelve months have led to what we’re calling a “mass migration,” and not just from Portland—many areas are experiencing exoduses and influxes. California and New York in particular are dealing with people leaving en masse.I combed through t…

Here are our team’s top six strategies to maximize your ROI when selling. How can we maximize your home’s value in an already hot real estate market? Today I’m sharing the tips we discuss with our clients to help them get the highest possible ROI. Homes are currently selling quickly, but is selling the quickest the most effective thing to do? If yo…

Here are the realities of selling then buying in today’s red-hot market. Many folks are asking themselves, “How can I sell my current house and purchase my next one in this crazy real estate market of ours?” These days, we can no longer write contingent offers. About a year ago, the market was still loose enough that we could get away with submitti…

Here’s a look at our competitive home-buying market and how to win in 2021. Today I have some really important information to share with all the homebuyers out there in the market this year. As you may know, houses are coming on the market and leaving it just as fast. There just aren’t a lot of houses for sale, and I’ve never seen a market quite li…

Here are the top five most popular home features among 2020 buyers. The unique challenges of 2020 transformed home-buying trends, and space became king. However, simply saying that buyers sought out larger homes doesn’t quite capture the core of this shift. For the first time in a very long time, people began pushing themselves to find creative and…

Here’s what to know about the past and future of our market. What happened in our Portland area real estate market in 2020? What have we seen so far in 2021?I don’t have a crystal ball and I certainly couldn’t have predicted everything that happened last year. When COVID hit back in March, we thought the sky was falling. There were a record number …

Happy holidays to you!The holiday season has officially arrived. We hope you enjoy this wonderful time of year and make some fantastic memories.We wanted to take a moment to thank you for your continued support. We love helping people make their real estate dreams come true, so thank you for working with us and supporting our business.This may be a…

Here’s some important info to close the door on recent foreclosure fears.As you may have heard, some people are predicting that the fall and winter will bear a glut of foreclosures across the country. It’s obviously been a really rough year for many Americans; people have taken severe financial hits and lost their jobs. However, there are two reaso…

Summer is the new spring when it comes to real estate this year. The spring market this year was delayed compared to previous years, and when it hit, it was very different from what we’d seen before. Now we’re in June, and people have finally started getting comfortable with the idea of carrying out real estate transactions as states have made effo…

Is COVID-19 impacting our real estate market? Find out here. I hope you’ve all managed to stay safe and sound! I know these are trying times for a lot of people, given what we’re experiencing with the stay-at-home orders. Many of you have reached out to me to ask about what’s going on in the world of real estate. Has the pandemic affected our marke…

How can you save money while also making your home more energy-efficient? Many people don’t realize they’re likely wasting hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars over the years by not assessing their home for a small list of things. In Multnomah County, they passed a policy that states when you list a house for sale, you now have to show the energy…

A lot of you have been asking about what’s going on lately with that bit of stagnation in the market, so I wanted to address those questions today.Real estate during the winter isn’t always the same from year to year. Sometimes our market is quite busy, while other times we see it soften during these colder months. To better assess where we stand a…

With about 10,000 baby boomers retiring every single day across the United States, it’s no wonder why this demographic constitutes such a large portion of buyers and sellers in our national real estate market. If you, yourself, are among this massive group of buyers and sellers, then it’s time to connect with a Realtor. You’ll need a strong profess…

We haven’t seen interest rates this low in a while, so I wanted to take a few minutes today to explain to why they’re so important. We’re back to historic low interest rates and that means cheap money for buyers.For buyers out there who’ve been considering a move, your buying power just went up substantially.And for all the sellers out there, know …

As we pass the halfway point of 2019 and take stock of our Portland market, there are three developments that buyers and sellers need to be aware of. First, appreciation rates have normalized, which is great news. I like the pace of appreciation as it stands. There’s not a mad dash from sellers to draft their price upward and attract multiple offer…

Investing in residential real estate is a topic I’m very passionate about. I’ve recently been conducting market studies for past clients who I’ve helped purchase a property and who are now looking to sell that same property. The most exciting part is getting to share the news that they’re in an equity position to sell their home. That’s just one of…

Many people are concerned that it’s no longer affordable to buy a home, but this is not at all the case. Prices have leveled out and interest rates are still low. In fact, to put current rates into perspective, the average interest rate when I entered real estate 18 years ago was 9%. And people thought that was low. So, if you’ve been concerned abo…

I was reading an article recently that was talking about the three groups of people who sell their houses and why they sell. As I kept reading, I thought that they did a great job of grouping most home sellers into these three archetypes. As it turns out, certain age categories tend to sell for similar reasons. For home sellers in the age range of …

No one assumes their home will fail to sell when they list it on the market, but, unfortunately, this is sometimes the case. The topic of failed listings certainly isn’t fun to think about, but it’s important to understand the reasons this happens so that you can avoid the worst during your own selling experience. The first and most common reason a…

If you want to make the most money out of your home sale, there are a few things you need to think about.I recently heard someone new to the industry talk about how there’s no need to prepare a home, but it’s simply not true. Getting your home ready for sale is the best way to put more in your pocket. However, because every home is unique, I couldn…

Oftentimes, our clients are living in their homes while they’re trying to sell them, so my tips for you today will help you add value to your home while still allowing you to live there during the process.1. Declutter. Get rid of everything you don’t need. I often tell my clients to either sell it, donate it, or chuck it—whatever it takes to minimi…

If you’re looking to come to the Portland area and buy a home, there are some things that you need to be aware of. This is why today I want to tell you all about Portland and what the process of relocating here looks like.The first thing to know is that Portland is a big, small city. Compared to other metropolitan areas, Portland is actually pretty…

A lot of people out there think you need to put exactly 20% down to buy a home because back in the good old days, you had to. Back then, there weren’t a lot of loan programs available, so our parents and our grandparents ended up telling us that we had to save for a 20% down payment.In reality, most of us can’t save fast enough to be able to put do…

In the past, I’ve always presented rent-to-own scenarios as being disreputable. However, there is now one instance in which this kind of arrangement is actually viable.A company here in the Portland metro area has totally flipped the script on rent-to-own arrangements. Their success has put millions of dollars into our local market recently, and so…

In today’s real estate market, buyers must realize that cash is king. Cash is king as far as homebuyers are concerned. Submitting a cash offer for the full list price means buyers don’t need to worry about receiving financing, going through the appraisal process, or being underwritten. A lot of sellers love this assuredness and it makes you a very …

We are halfway through the year, so it’s time for an update on our June 2018 Portland real estate market. This is an important time of year where we typically see things start to change.This year is no different. In fact, we are seeing a pretty significant change happen right now. While our market continued its surge of activity during the first tw…

Welcome to part two of my discussion about omitted property taxes.Since my first video about this topic, I’ve gotten a lot of feedback about it and I’ve been able to gather more useful information for you. I even had a specialist who fights property taxes for a living come into my office to conduct a seminar about it.If you didn’t watch my last vid…

If you have private mortgage insurance on your monthly payments, you’re going to want to hear what I’ve got to share today.First of all, what is private mortgage insurance? Private mortgage insurance, or PMI, is an insurance policy that protects your lender whenever a person puts less than 20% down on a home purchase.On average, PMI costs between $…

In real estate, we are seeing generational living become a huge thing. We recently held an open house for a 5-bedroom home with well over 4,500 square feet and we were shocked at the number of buyers who came in looking for a setup where they can have mom, dad, their kids, or both living in the same household. This trend seems to increase in popula…

Omitted property taxes are what we are going to talk about today. They’re really important to pay attention to because they could mean that your property taxes have increased or even doubled.I hadn’t heard of omitted property taxes until the last few weeks, to be honest. I discovered something that has absolutely blown my mind regarding property ta…

Today I’m going to give you the full rundown of what happens before, during, and after a home inspection. The home inspection is probably one of the biggest things that happens in a real estate transaction, and it’s one of the biggest contingencies a buyer has when doing their due diligence.The home inspection gives the buyer an opportunity to find…

If you’re thinking of selling your home anytime in the near future, there are many ways you can increase its value before the time comes. Here’s a list of seven improvements that typically cost under $10,000 but can add tremendous value to your home when you sell:1. Curb appeal. What do people see right when they pull up to your home? If you have f…

Today’s topic will be the very compelling reasons why you should consider investing in real estate now.Before I get into those reasons, I want to stress why it is I think this is important. I come from a family of real estate inventors, and the one thing we all have in common is that we want to retire. Most us know that, as an average American, we …

How do you sell a home with a perhaps haunted past?Let’s say you’ve got a property with a stigmatized past. The kind of home I’m referring to is one wherein an event such as murder or suicide took place.I’ve actually got a personal story to share with you on this subject. But first, I’d like to cover some general information about stigmatized homes…

There are a few main buyer demographics to look at in today’s market. When we look at buyer profiles, what we’re really examining is which groups are buying property right now.If you’re selling your home, knowing your buyer demographic can be extremely helpful in marketing your property.So, what are the most common buyer profiles driving the market…