Congratulations to my client on the sale of his sweet condo up in the SW Hills! We met last summer after I sold another unit in the complex, and given that there was a hefty special assessment in the works (which makes selling condos a little trickier than normal), he was impressed to see a successful sale go through. I could feel his trust from the get-go and the foundation for an excellent client-agent relationship was made.
We listed the condo in the summer but due to the slowing condo market, showings were sparse and eventually decided to pull it off the market and wait until the following Spring.
But in the meantime, Fall came around and with the shifting market, new energy for selling. We did a small price adjustment, updated the marketing and went back on the market just days before Thanksgiving. In just over two weeks my client’s condo was pending with three offers, all over asking! Just goes to show, really ANY time of year is a good time to sell — not just spring and summer. AND when the time is right, it’s RIGHT (even if it may not logically make sense.)
In that time just before Thanksgiving, I also found myself with a deep intuition to plan a long awaited trip (10 years in the making) to visit India for the first time in January 2020. I was very hesitant at first, as leaving the country with business in the works can be a little scary, but with the help of my fantastic colleague, Scott Shoji, I was able to turn over the transaction to him and prepare to leave knowing my client would be in great hands. While there was an exciting Christmas Eve “bump” in the road (Buyer #1 decided to back out with some first time homebuyer jitters), Buyer #2 was thrilled and we got the second round of transaction-action underway! On December 31st, as I began my journey towards India, I turned over my condo business to Scott and took a leap of faith knowing that everything was exactly as it should be — lots of trust that the path which had presented itself to me was the way I was meant to follow. While my logical brain was just a bit nervous, my heart knew everything was going to be just fine.
And in my absence, all was smooth sailing. No more bumps in the road, inpsections, appraisal and funding all came through with ease, and here we are, closing January 31st! Huge congrats to my seller on his new adventures taking him to home ownership in a new state. Thank you for your trust, optimism and excellent communication throughout the whole process ~ thank you to Scott for holding it down and being so easy and great to work with ~ and thank you to myself for listening and trusting the inner guidance that suggests seemingly crazy ideas, but are really part of the medicine and joy in this wild journey of LIFE!
My takeaway from it all:
#1-Don’t wait to do the things you have been dreaming of.
#2-Help is all around you, you just have to ask! (And asking can make #1 possible)
#3-LISTEN to what your heart is calling for, even if your brain can’t make sense of it.
#4-Most things really work out with ease and fall into place when you let the heart drive the ship.
and lastly ~
#5-you can work in real estate AND take a REAL vacation — totally possible, but you have to make the choice to do it!
With some buyers the journey towards home ownership takes a few more twists and turns then planned. My buyer Sydney had a few bumps in the road along the way, but through luck and good timing, reaped the reward of the perfect house for her.
I am thrilled to start out the new year by helping Tessa and Hayley purchase their first home. After wrapping up their doctorate work and related training they decided to make Portland their home. Tessa is a professor at PSU and I was honored when one of her colleagues, a past client of mine, referred them my way.
ed in real estate back in the wonder year of 2007 when I got a job at a non-profit home builder HOST Development. My background was in community development and affordable housing, and my new job at HOST was to do community outreach and sell homes built by the non-profit builder to first time buyers who made at or below the area’s median family income. When I started working at HOST, I was eased into my job by our most fabulous office/computer/everything wrangler Holly. Holly had purchased a HOST home herself, and liked the company so much she was hired as our office manager. Fast forward a couple of years and the Great Recession hit, and being the smart and savvy person she is, Holly jumped the HOST ship when the writing was on the wall, and found a job working for the State of Oregon. I rode that ship out until the last lifeboat left in 2009, and while it was sort of traumatic to lose a salaried job in the height of the recession, the biggest gift that job gave me was the realization of how much I love working one on one with buyers and sellers.
The businesses of 
Through the kitchen, you’ll find yourself in a spacious den with a big window and bookshelves. 
My buyers Daniel and Vinci contacted me after being exhorted (their words) by a mutual friend (and client) to contact me. They were living in my neighborhood, Hosford Abernethy, on a smallish house on a busy street and were thinking they were ready for a bigger house on a quieter street. The catch? They only wanted to live within a 15 square block area. They had been spending a large part of the summer visiting family in California, but a fixer located in their search area came on the market and they were intrigued. I had also just listed my neighbor’s house and it was getting a lot of action, so Daniel decided to fly up to Portland for an afternoon to look at these houses. In the meantime, there was another house in the neighborhood they had been keeping their eye on- a large brick house on a corner painted a bright and cheery green. This house had originally been listed nearly a year ago at a pretty far fetched price- nearly $200k more than it was currently listed at. Two weeks prior the house had a dramatic $75k price reduction putting it within reach for Daniel and Vinci. So on a sunny summer Monday three days after contacting me, Daniel flew up to Portland for a few hours. We took a grand tour of the 3 homes- all within a few blocks of each other, including the fixer, my listing and the big green big brick house. The fixer was too fixer-y, and my listing was a little too small, but the green brick house was a match.
Back in mid-March my buyer Valerie called me in somewhat of a panic because the new construction condo she had been in contract to purchase was a steaming pile of mess and the lender eventually pulled the plug on getting a loan for it. Turned out that the condo she had been in contract to purchase for months was part of a brand new complex and only 1 other condo out of twenty had sold since they officially went on the market 5 months prior. When there are that few sales on a new condo project, most lenders are going to deny a loan because the risk to the buyer of the whole stack of cards falling down is pretty real. If the rest of the complex winds up turning into rental apartments because the developer could not sell them as condos, it then it makes the units purchased by unfortunate buyers almost impossible to sell down the line- and that’s not a risk worth taking.
A rare find! Beautiful Old PDX style modern home, built both for efficiency and classic beauty. Perched up off the street this home offers light filled open spaces, gourmet kitchen, custom details and so much more.
Paloma and Mike are amazing clients and together we achieved something almost beyond belief!
Every now and then I get to work with incredibly easy clients and I have to pinch myself because they seem too good to be true. Hanne and Andrew fall into that category. They were referred to me by a long ago client, and when we met up to talk about working together, the process of buying a home and the kind of house they were looking for for their first home purchase, their needs were simple. They loved old houses, wanted at least a couple of bedrooms and wanted to be within easy biking distance (easy for them at least) from their jobs in inner East Portland and had a realistic budget. Shortly after we met and they got their pre-approval, I sent them all listings west of 82nd that were financeable and seemed to have some potential. I can’t remember how many listings I sent them- maybe 15-20, and by the next day they sent me back their comments and questions about all of them. One in particular looked intriguing to them- an old farmhouse in the Woodstock area. The house hit the market at the end of September, right when the market flat-lined for a few months. It was now mid-February and had been on the market for five months, seemed reasonably priced where it was at, and the photos made it seem like a cute house. Of course, the question arose of- what’s wrong with it?
