Portland’s real estate market is booming!
May 2nd, 2017 
admin 
Portland Metro Area market data
April 20th, 2016 admin 
What’s the Market in Portland like right now you ask?
April 22nd, 2014 admin The latest market report from March 2014 shows real estate activity continued to see upward momentum this last month in the Portland metro area! There were 3,090 new listings, a 31.3% increase over the 2,354 new listings posted in February. This was also a 2.9% increase from the 3,002 new listings posted last March. Pending sales, at 2,534, bested February’s 1,848 by 37.1% but were a 3.6% decrease from last March’s 2,628 pendings. Similarly, the 1,857 closings were a 26.6% increase from February’s 1,467 but fell 4.0% compared to the 1,935 closings recorded in March 2013. There are currently 5,811 active residential listings in the Portland metro area. Total market time in the region fell to 85 days in March, and inventory decreased to 3.1 months. In short, it’s a seller’s market and prices are continuing to rise!
Average and Median Sales prices over the last 9 years
Fiscal Cliff Bill Addresses Key Housing/Real Estate Issues
January 5th, 2013 admin 
Fiscal Cliff bill addresses some key real estate related issues
The Senate bill that finally passed the House by a 259-167 vote extended a number of federal tax code provisions that are important to homebuyers, sellers, builders and real estate professionals.
For huge numbers of financially distressed owners of homes with underwater mortgages, this was the biggest issue in the entire fiscal cliff debate. The mortgage debt relief provisions in the tax code, first enacted in 2007, expired at midnight Dec. 31.
Had Congress not acted, the tax code would have reverted to its pre-2007 treatment of mortgage principal reductions or cancellations by lenders, whether through loan modifications, short sales, deeds-in-lieu or foreclosures: All principal balances written off would be treated as ordinary income to the homeowners who received them.
For illustration, if a lender wrote off $100,000 of debt to facilitate a short sale, the seller would be taxed on that $100,000 at regular marginal rates, just as if he or she had earned it as salary.
A return to taxation of principal reductions would have disrupted short sales — a growing segment of the home real estate market — in 2013, and almost certainly would have encouraged more distressed owners to opt for foreclosure and bankruptcy.
Deduction of mortgage insurance premiums
The bill retroactively extended this benefit to cover all of 2012, plus continues it through 2013. Qualified borrowers who pay private mortgage insurance premiums or guarantee fees on conventional, low down payment home loans, FHA, VA and Rural Housing mortgages will be able to write off those premiums along with their mortgage interest on federal tax returns. The retroactive feature is crucial because Congress had allowed this deduction to lapse at the end of 2011. There are limitations, however: The write-off is available only to borrowers who have an adjusted gross income below $110,000.
8 Tasks For Every Home Buyer or Seller Considering a Move in 2013
January 3rd, 2013 admin Thinking about buying or selling a home this year? Congrats! Below are seven tasks you can accomplish now that will help your chances of home buying or selling in 2013!
If you want to buy or sell a home in 2013 there are some things you need to get in order!
1. Handle your credit issues. Maybe you don’t have any credit issues or at least you think you don’t. So this is the time to start pulling your credit reports and doing a damage assessement and control campaign.
• Visit AnnualCreditReport.com (the only website through which you can access your government-mandated free reports) and order your own credit reports from all three reporting bureaus.
• Review them all, line-by-line, checking for errors and discrepancies. It is extremely common for paid-off accounts to still be reporting as delinquent, for foreclosed mortgages to still be listed as open and past-due and for bills that were settled in collection to be reported as behind. Follow the instructions to dispute any such errors you see.
• When you talk with your mortgage broker (see #4), go over the reports with them again, getting a read on precisely when your foreclosure, bankruptcy, delinquencies, gaps in employment or other credit woes will be sufficiently “seasoned” (i.e., long ago) to allow you to qualify for another loan, and get their advice on any action items, like paying a particular debt or set of credit cards down to $X amount will be important for you to complete before you try for a legitimate pre-approval in the near future.
