Real Estate Market

Its been 6 years now since I have posted the chart below every month in my newsletter, and its fascinating to track the changes during that period.  The update for end of year 2011 is the average sales price for the Portland Metro area in December 2011 fell 6.2% when compared to December 2010.  The median sale price also was down by 5.8%. Prices increased a smidge though when comparing December 2011 to the previous month of November 2011. Average sale price went up from $260,800 to $259,400 (0.5%), while median sale price actually fell by 3.7% from $225,000 to $216,600.  Information courtesy RMLS.  As you can also see the inventory has also fallen of late, so there is some pent up demand for quality listings that are priced well.  Remember in pricing that you are competing with short sales and bank owned homes (REOs) that are usually priced lower and represent up to 40% of our market.

Our featured home of the month is a BANK OWNED duplex in Tualatin for only $159,900. What a fantastic rental property!!. I am repeating again the "renter hell" article in the Willamette Week because I dont think in all my 24+ years selling real estate in Portland that I have seen a better time to buy a rental property. 

As I mentioned last month, ffter 23 years with Stan Wiley / Prudential NW Properties we have decided to move the Rob Levy Team to Atlantic & Pacific Real Estate here in Portland.

The move has gone very smoothly and our buyers are excited about the unprecedented access we have to bank owned listings, more importantly many months before they come on the market.  The good news for our buyers and sellers is the same high quality service is continuing, and I am still supervising the team as I always have.  Its an exciting and positive move for my team and I as well as our buyers and sellers.

We are still in a temporary location near Washington Square, but very close to signing a lease for a great office location in the Johns Landing area which we hope to move into in March.  We look forward to continuing the same high quality attentive service in helping out buyers and selllers buy and sell homes, but with the new twist of having access to inventory we never had before.

Many of you know I have been driving around in my 2012 Chevy Volt since mid October.  Its been a blast.  At 4,000 miles I am now at about $80 in gas bills (vs about $1,200 for the old car in the same time). To be fair, the cost to charge the batteries is about 70 cents per day so we need to add that in.   The car compared to my Mercedes so favorably that I sold it last week!  The Volt is a blast to drive and is luxurious with leather seats, a nav system etc, and I am getting about 37 gasoline free miles per day on battery alone!  In fact recently Beverly and I drove from our house to the Astoria Country club area, about 90 miles and used a total of 1.16 gallons of gas.

As a Realtor this is the ideal car as we never know where we are driving any particular day. I had considered the "all electric" Nissan Leaf, but the issue there is its only good for about 70 miles.  The Volt is a true "extended range" electric vehicle in that when the batter runs out, the gas engine charges it up to cover about another 250 miles or until you plug it in next.  I stongly reccomend this car!