Lake Oswego luxury home in successful community - Village on the Lake

•Live, work, and entertain in a well designed, thoughtfully updated family home.
•Join an engaged, active, and well-organized community of successful neighbors.
•Enjoy the lake’s finest private marina, just a short walk away.
•Educate your children at some of the top-rated public schools in the area.

We had previously predicted that our market will retreat 20-25% from the peak on 2Q 2007.  By the end of January, the median price in our market is down 16%.  The leading indicators (total housing inventory, inventory of bank-owned and short sale properties, and vacant inventory) do not yet suggest we’re approaching the bottom in [...]

I pulled preliminary numbers for February real estate activity in Portland, and want to report the following highlights: Pending sales volume is up from January, despite the short month. After all the month-end sales get reported we could end up with a “nice” month. Preliminary numbers have us down to about 11 months of inventory.

Will there be a peak in this year’s seasonal Spring Selling season?  Last Spring, there was decidedly less of a seasonal lift when compared with the previous two years, especially when it came to the probability of selling your home.

Unlike Previous Springs where 1/4-1/2 of existing inventory sold, we never broke the 10% threshold in [...]

Part of our core service for home sellers is to provide a staging consult to make our clients’ homes more appealing to prospective buyers.    It’s artistic, but it’s science too.  Maybe more science.  Retailers know that good merchandising can dramatically increase sales.    It’s about presentation that appeals to the sub-conscious, and about nudging buyers to adopt [...]

When we meet with families that are looking to move to Portland, or even looking to move across town, school assignments are frequently the MOST important determinant of where our clients are choosing to live.  As many of you know, one of the priorities of the Gates Foundation is investing to improve education.  I was [...]

The median price for a Portland area home in December was $250,000, or 17% below the market peak which happened in July and August of 2007. The snowstorm that closed schools for a week and the typically slow holiday season resulted in the lowest volume month in over two years. Pending sales were approximately less than half the volume from December of 2006. The market seems to have driven many would-be sellers to the sidelines.

If you’re up for a little chuckle, check out this beer ad. The setting is a party where new homeowners are showing their new home to their friends. The wife can’t wait to show her friends the absolutely fabulous shoe closet …. cut to the husband showing his friends the equally unique [...]

Even though our trip to visit family for Christmas meant that we missed most of this year’s snowstorm, I heard a common story of neighbors connecting with neighbors to help each other get essentials and combat stir-craziness.
These stories have renewed our interest in helping neighbors be more neighborly by hosting or promoting web spaces that [...]

If you’re one of the fortunate Portland homeowners, and have a stable job and can qualify for today’s low interest rates, you might want to consider doing some green remodeling in 2009.  I ran across this great poster, rich with suggestions, at Sierra Club this month.

I have to admit that there weren’t any surprises.  The [...]