Movin' On Up – Real Estate News, Data-Infused

The Importance of Pricing Your Home Correctly

By eli.cotham September 13, 2024Real Estate

I'll lead with this: nothing is more of a bummer to sellers than to watch your house sit on the market, not getting any offers. It might be because the housing market is in a slow season. It might be because the interest rates spiked. It might be that buyers aren't seeing the house in the same condition that the owner imagines it to be. It might simply be because the house is overpriced. Pricing correctly, not too high and not…

The Oregon Buyer Representation Agreement, Explained

By eli.cotham August 27, 2024Real Estate

We've now reached the point where all home buyers who wish to employ a Realtor must sign a contract with them first, before they even see a house together. We've talked about this already, sort of. What was theory is now practice, and there will be plenty of getting used to it from buyers, sellers, and agents alike. If you're going to jump into the buyer pool any time soon, you'll be asked to sign what's called a Buyer Representation Agreement…

Big Changes Are Afoot

By eli.cotham July 22, 2024Real Estate

August 17 is going to be quite an interesting day for those involved in real estate. That's the day that the National Association of Realtors (NAR) has set as a deadline for its members (I'm one of them) to implement the practices they agreed to implement as part of this whole saga. There is a whole lot of information out there on What It All Means, and most of it has been wrong. I have my opinions on how things will…

Is Cash King?

By eli.cotham June 20, 2024Real Estate

In January of this year, according to the National Association of Realtors, 32% of all home purchases made in the country were done so by buyers who were not using any financing. That is the highest that percentage has been since 2014. Among many prospective home buyers, the all cash buyer is a bogeyman-- coming in and swooping up homes at lower prices, all because they can offer terms that a buyer using financing cannot offer. The truth presents a different…

The Case for Buying Now, Even With High Interest Rates

By eli.cotham May 10, 2024Real Estate

Let's get this out of the way-- assuming it isn't a global economic calamity that will cause this, of course we want interest rates to drop dramatically. The amount of money that goes poof every month being smaller is better for buyers, sellers, and just about everyone else. Even for lenders. Buyers paying lower interest rates means sellers have more buyers in the pool and therefore can get higher prices, all without raising the mortgage payment. Win/win. There's your perfect world…

By the Numbers: Our Real Estate Year So Far

By eli.cotham April 11, 2024Real Estate

We're a quarter of the way through 2024 (I know, right?) so let's pretend we're on Wall Street and take a quick look at our Q1 numbers: What you're looking at: on Portland's west side, 2,444 new listings came on market in the first three months of this year. This is a 7% increase over last year, which is a welcome development. Last year was pretty, pretty bad for new inventory, as the recency of the interest rate hikes was keeping…

WOW Does it Cost a Lot to Live in California

By eli.cotham March 14, 2024Real Estate

I saw an eye-popping stat the other day: the median single-family, resale home price in 2023 for the San Jose, CA metro area (so, Silicon Valley basically) was $1.765 million, based on preliminary estimates. This was the highest for any metro in the nation, and by a lot-- it beat the rest of the Bay Area by half a million bucks. I would surmise that if you asked the average California expat living in Portland (like myself) why they made the…

ChatGPT Did Not Write This Post

By eli.cotham February 15, 2024Real Estate

There is both art and science to selling a home. Mostly, this blog is concerned with the science but even to me that gets boring sometimes, so not to threaten you with too much of a good time but there won't be any charts and graphs in this post. This time around I wanted to talk more about the art, and the science that is interfering with it. The science in question: ChatGPT. I'll warn you now, there will be snark…

Portland Real Estate: 2023 in Review

By eli.cotham January 11, 2024Real Estate

In the interest of starting the new year on a high note, let's dispense with the misanthropy right away-- interest rates are too high, there aren't enough houses for sale, they're all too expensive, and we're sick of Agreeable Gray paint. Done! Moving on! The word to describe the 2023 housing market is blip, not correction. Yes, interest rates remained significantly higher than they were during the manic rush for government cheese we saw in 2020 and 2021. Yes, inventory was…

How Buyer Agents Get Paid

By eli.cotham December 12, 2023Real Estate

In the event that headline news isn't really your thing, I'll fill you in on the potentially seismic developments in the world of real estate commissions. Recently, jurors heard a class action case filed against the National Association of Realtors (the trade group to which anyone who calls themselves a capital-R Realtor belongs) and several large brokerages. They came to the conclusion, essentially, that the NAR practice of requiring sellers to offer compensation to buyer agents (those who bring a buyer…