Monday, April 22, 2024
Isn’t every day Earth Day? We think so! The great thing about a day to celebrate the planet is that it gives us time and focus to decide how we can do better and perhaps either work on a project or make lasting changes. Here is a list of events around the Portland area to get out and participate in Earth Day activities and here are some great ideas for making your life more earth-friendly!
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Aryne, our lead Buyer’s Agent loves getting into challenging yoga poses, enjoying sports with her family, and hiking both in nature and around the city!
Dulcinea, our lead Seller’s Agent loves entertaining, traveling the world, art and design, and spending time with her family + pets!
Jen Barefield, our Operations Manager loves to throw pots on the wheel, spend time with her dogs and family, and loves to dig in the dirt in her amazing garden.
Isabelle Richard, our Team Assistant… SPECIAL SHOUTOUT to Isabelle who has been working with us since July 2021. Isabelle is an avid cook and loves to go for long city walks. We couldn’t have found a better team assistant. She is about to say good-bye to us and move into a new field as an assistant apparel buyer.
We will miss her dearly and are so happy for her and her new adventure! Go, Isabelle!
1000 Friends of Oregon breaks down how bill SB1537 can better support equitable housing policy. See more HERE.
Sellers want to know! Folks are coming out of the woodwork to call us and ask…”When should I list my home this year?” You might be wondering, why is this year different? Drum roll please… it’s a presidential election year. Some experts predict that the spring and summer will be great times to list, while the fall will be quieter than usual… Hmmm… less competition for sellers or a listing that sits? Reach out to us today to discuss this more! We are here to help.
You may have no thoughts on selling your home anytime soon, but knowing the current value of your home is critical in being able to make those spontaneous decisions. Whether you want to go live abroad, have been thinking that it might be cool to move to another neighborhood, town, or state, or are looking in the future to care for a loved one, knowing your home’s current value allows you to make on-the-fly decisions. We tell our clients all the time, “plan ahead to be spontaneous”! Book an appointment with us today to find out your property’s value.
See great stories, listings, events, astrology, recipes, and more!
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250 square feet or smaller does not require a permit for building a structure. Want to build a workspace, meditation studio, art space, or guest room? If you keep it small, you do not need a permit.
Here is another fresh idea to call in the fall vibes! Style your fireplace! Whether you paint it, tile it, wallpaper around it, or build spaces near it, bringing your fireplace to life is a great way to celebrate the seasons to come! Click through the images to find out more!
Activity in the Portland real estate market slumped in the first quarter of 2023, with new listings, pending sales, and closed sales all falling compared with the year-ago period, according to the latest report from the Regional Multiple Listing Service, a firm that tracks sales in the Northwest.
RMLS doesn’t give reasons for market changes, providing just data, but higher interest rates have been weighing on the market for months, and they appeared to suppress activity again in the first quarter. New listings fell 25% to 6,389, pending sales dropped 30% to 5,358, and closed sales tumbled 34% to 4,340, RMLS said.
Prices, meantime, held firmer, with the median sale price falling just 2.8% to $514,900. Inventory in March 2023 rose just 0.9% from March 2022, RMLS said.
Aryne Blumklotz, a broker at Living Room Realty, says the market is in flux because the outlook for interest rates is so murky. Rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages have gyrated between 4.72% and 7.08% during the past 12 months, according to Freddie Mac. They stood at 6.28% on April 6.
“There is no rhyme or reason to this market,” Blumklotz says. “If interest rates would just hold, we could all get our heads around it. The changes make people anxious about buying and selling.”
Some houses are sitting on the market, Blumklotz says, while bidders fight over others. A property in a posh eastside neighborhood got four offers, all of them over $1 million, and all in cash, she says.
“We were as aggressive as we could be,” Blumklotz said of her bidder.
Buyers are still coming to Portland from out of state, Blumklotz says. She has represented several from California, one of whom closed this week and another coming later this month.
Those sales are good news for sellers amid the shrinking population in Multnomah County. The county’s population stood at 795,083 on July 1, 2022, down 1.3% from 805,593 a year earlier, the U.S. Census Bureau said on March 30. Multnomah’s population fell by about the same amount in 2021.
Read the full article by Anthony Effinger in the Willamette Week HERE.
A Pioneering, Climate-Friendly Home in Cully
Sometime in the late aughts, a pocket of the Cully neighborhood in Northeast Portland became the grounds for a mini, hyperlocal eco-renaissance, led by a group of like-minded neighbors. “We often call it an accidental intentional community,” said one resident. Dubbing themselves the Ainsworth Collective, and spread over the blocks near the intersection of NE Ainsworth and 45th Avenue, this unofficial group would meet monthly in support of living more mindfully with the environment. As such, several members bought land and built pioneering eco-homes that pushed the green technology of the day, seven of which were profiled by us in 2009.
One of those houses, designed by DeBar Architecture and built by W. A. Hughes Construction in 2008, is LEED-Certified Platinum and now for sale. It might draw on the past for its traditional gabled form, but everything else about it, from the rooftop solar panels, to the earthen floor in the living room, are forward-thinking, and aimed at reducing environmental impact.
Listing Fast Facts
Address: 6022 NE 45th Ave, Portland, OR 97218
Size: 3,216 square feet/3 bedroom/3.5 bath
List Date: 10/28/2022
List Price: $874,000
Listing Agent: Aryne Blumklotz and Dulcinea Myers-Newcomb, Living Room Realty
Read the full article and get more amazing details on this home in the article by Melissa Dalton for Portland Monthly.
Original details mix with some charming changes in this classic Portland Craftsman in the Sabin neighborhood.
As far as Portland neighborhoods go, Sabin is a hidden-in-plain-sight gem. It’s not very big, yet there are two commercial corridors, NE Prescott cutting through its north section and NE Fremont along the south edge, which bookend the residential core. That core is filled to the brim with some classic, early-20th-century Portland homes. Not the ones built for the rich and fancy—these are for everybody else
This particular listing on Northeast 18th Avenue is charming from the start: the front porch spans the entire front and begs an afternoon sit chatting with the neighbors. It has a very symmetrical façade, with the wooden and glass front door centered on the front steps, and flanked on either side by an identical set of four windows.
Built in 1909, the home still has original details, like those aforementioned windows and interior woodwork, as well as some unexpected, and totally delightful, updates. Case in point: in the living room, there’s a skosh of painted trim (purple!) alongside the original stained wood. There’s also a skylight, one of six throughout the home, which must have been added at a later date to bring in lots of natural light everywhere, as Craftsmans, depending on their orientation and window layout, have been called dark in comparison to their modern counterparts.
The highly desirable Alberta Arts District is only one block away, giving this location a Walkscore of 93, and a plethora of restaurants, bars, and coffee shops to try nearby. Also close? The Sabin HydroPark, where the grounds beneath two water treatment towers were reinvented into a petite park, with a community garden, play structure for kids, and an off-leash area for pups. Just another way, aside from its modest housing stock, that this neighborhood proves how small can actually be quite mighty.
Listing Fast Facts:
Address: 4715 NE 18th Ave, Portland, OR 97211
Size: 2,576 square feet/3 bedroom/2 bath
List Date: 9/15/2022
List Price: $699,900
Listing Agent: Dulcinea Myers-Newcomb and Aryne Blumklotz, Living Room Realty
