Portland Real Estate Blog

This is a top 100 real estate blog in the world according to Feedspot.com. In particular, this is a local real estate blog written by a top 1% real estate agent in the U.S., Stephen FitzMaurice, Realtor. Stephen regularly reports on the greater Portland metro area’s real estate market including annual housing forecasts and best time to sell or buy a home reports. He gives home selling and home buying professional advice. He also writes informative articles on Portland neighborhoods and suburbs as they relate to the real estate market. Finally, he writes to inform the general public about real estate agents, such as annual average real estate agent commission reports and more.

You can subscribe to this top 100 real estate blog via email or by RSS button below.

Real Estate Market News

Mailchimp - Blog
Subscribe to our reports by email above or RSS below.

average hoa fees and costs

Average HOA Fees in Portland 2021. Are your HOA fees too high?

June 28, 2021

Some HOA fees are too high due to past mismanagement There are some condo complexes in Portland right now that have higher monthly HOA fees than the cost of the monthly mortgage if you were to buy one of their condos for sale. This happens for two main reasons. First, sometimes HOA management collected too little in fees for too many years, giving themselves a financial break at the time by not saving up properly for future costs to cover whatever the HOA made itself responsible for. This is why it is crucial for a condo buyer to analyze the HOAs financials and reserve study before purchasing, to make sure the HOA won’t suddenly have a special assessment (huge hike...

Aerial top view with from flying drone over residential district development buildings transportation

The National Housing Shortage Continues: How Does Portland Shape Up?

June 25, 2021

We’ve been talking about it for months now. With demand for housing, particularly for single family homes, through the roof, Portland has been struggling on the supply side. And we aren’t alone. All year and across the country, real estate markets struggled with a lack of existing home sales, all while demand for more space remained unabated. The latest national numbers don’t show much change. This week, the National Association of Realtors released new information for May, and it shows the persistence of the current inventory problem. Existing home sales dropped 0.9% from April. It’s not a huge dip, but it does mark the fourth straight month existing home sales have dipped. That’s bad news for a market that desperately...

Roof repairs

Top 5 Preventative Roof Repairs: What to Look For

June 23, 2021

Roof problems: one of the greatest sources of anxiety for sellers and buyers alike. It should go without saying that the roof is integral to the structural integrity of the home. But perhaps because it’s such a big deal, the roof can feel easy to avoid keeping up with. For one thing, it’s not a part of the home you interact with on a day-to-day basis. For another, no one wants to find serious problems with such an important part of the home. But the adage “what you don’t know can’t hurt you” doesn’t apply in this case. Severely damaged roofs are dangerous, but even minor problems can still spell greater problems for the rest of the home. And problems...

gallery condominiums

Portland Condo Market: the Affordable Choice for 2021

June 21, 2021

If you’ve been looking for a new home and are on a budget, you might be laughing at our headline right now. Affordable? Does affordability even exist in Portland these days? Trust us, then, that not only do plenty of affordable homes exist in Portland but that many are condos. Stay with me. The word condo can conjure up images of high-end penthouses in glass-lined skyscrapers. But the truth is, Portland’s condo market is actually a haven for housing affordability. Right now the demand for single family homes keep holding at record highs. And that means more competition and higher prices. So with those prices still soaring, anyone budget-conscious should consider checking out Portland’s condo market. You might be surprised...

By Steve Morgan - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47051973

5 Things You Didn’t Know About Cedar Mill, Oregon

June 18, 2021

Ever checked out the lists of top Portland suburbs and felt like you didn’t quite understand the vibe them? That’s what we’re here for. We’ll not only give you an idea of a Portland suburb’s school system or job prospects. Beyond the numbers, we also like to inform folks about the details and quirks that make a community a community. The small things, you might say, aren’t always so small. If you check Niche.com right now, for example, you’ll find Cedar Mill listed as the #2 best suburb to live in Oregon. And it’s not hard to connect the dots as to why. For one, its schools manage to be some of the most highly rated in the area. For...

coming soon homes for sale

What is a Coming Soon Home in the Real Estate Market?

June 16, 2021

Coming Soon Homes are the New (but different) Pocket Listings Pocket listings are virtually extinct. The National Association of Realtors, NAR, has effectively banned the million-plus Realtors across the country from using the tactic. NAR instituted a new policy called the “MLS clear cooperation policy” which requires any Realtor to enter their “Pocket Listing” into the MLS within 1 business day of publicly advertising it (unless the seller signs a refusal of service). Entering a listing into the MLS means it is syndicated to all the other MLS members (mostly Realtors) and typically broadcast out to thousands of public websites like Zillow, Realtor.com, etc. Pocket listings used to be “secret or private listings” that a Realtor held onto and tried...

Iconic Portland sign with pink skyscraper rising next to it

10 New Oregon Homes and Places added to the National Historic Registry

June 14, 2021

For both the history and architecture buffs out there, the National Register of Historic Places constitutes a gold mine of fascinating stories and imagery. Begun in 1966, the Register seeks to preserve and memorialize significant buildings and places across the nation. If your mind goes straight to colonial settlements as you’re reading, you wouldn’t be totally wrong. But the Register includes much more than that. Yes, most sites must meet a minimum age requirement for consideration. But that requirement is only 50 years – meaning, as of right now the 1970’s have entered the building! Therefore, sites from a wide range of eras can attain “historic” status. And beyond age, context matters. The general guiding principle of the Register is...

Area of Portland (Oregon) on a map

Where in Portland are Home Prices Rising the Fastest?

June 11, 2021

Rising home prices: possibly the real estate story of the year across the U.S. Naturally, then, we’ve been covering Portland’s historically low inventory, which is driving home prices up, for months now. And it’s unlikely prices will fall anytime soon, if at all. But if you just watch the local news, what you’re likely to hear about is the most outrageous instances of bidding wars. Those sensational, mind-blowing stories certainly drum up interest. However, while they may be indicative of the low inventory problem, these instances aren’t necessarily typical. In order to update you most accurately on the state of the Portland real estate market, then, we wanted to dive as deeply as possible into the local numbers on housing...

zillow home description missing

What I Love About This Home – Zillow Section Removed

June 9, 2021

My real estate team in Oregon and Washington sells a lot of homes, a few hundred each year. We do everything we can to give our client’s homes an edge online. For us that means two things, first, we pay extra to top real estate portals (like Zillow, Realtor.com, Homes.com, etc.) for higher positioning. Second, we check all the boxes and do whatever is necessary to fill out the listing so it looks fantastic and carries with it all of the important home details. That’s why we were shocked when the Zillow editable description section, “What I Love About This Home,” suddenly disappeared on all our client’s listings. MLS descriptions are limited. Zillow’s “What I Love About This Home” was...

dairy factory

SW Portland Alpenrose Dairy could turn into 193 Home Subdivision

June 7, 2021

In what could be good news for Portland’s housing shortage, the former Alpenrose Dairy property in Southwest Portland might soon be the site of a new, 193 house subdivision. In August of 2019, Alpenrose sold to Smith Brothers Farms of Washington State. Since then, the fate of the 56 acre property on Shattuck Road has been uncertain. In late May, however, the Florida-based Lennar Corporation submitted documents to Portland’s Bureau of Development Services, proposing the new development. Both the 2019 sale and the prospect of new housing elicited a mixed reception from the community. Most notably, many feel saddened by the loss of this Southwest Portland fixture. While the future of this huge property lies in doubt still, its past...