It was just meant to be!
If you know me, you know that I love helping people make a move. I love my peeps and I’m super committed to getting my clients into the home of their dreams. I will negotiate until my face turns blue and call every contractor in town to get information for my clients. I am committed to making this a great experience but unfortunately, you can’t always control how things go? For instance, I can’t make a seller accept an offer. I just can’t.
So here’s the short version of one of my all-time favorite stories 🙂
Leonard and Dovina really wanted to live in Newberg to be close to their daughter and grandchildren. Last spring and summer, we looked at just about everything that Newberg had to offer. It’s not unusual for the search to take a little longer when you’re looking in a small and popular town, like Newberg. After months of looking, they found a gem, a darling house that is close to downtown with a cute yard and great character! It quickly became competitive and we pulled out all of the stops. Long story short, Len & Dovina’s offer was the highest with exceptional terms, but in the end still beat out by a lower cash offer because they totally waived the inspection period. I just can’t ever recommend that a buyer waive all inspections.
It just wasn’t meant to be is what we told ourselves. That’s what we have to say sometimes to make sense of things when it doesn’t go the direction we would like. But this one kept nagging at us! We continued to look in Newberg for another year and kept comparing every house to the ‘one that got away’. …And then it came back! Almost exactly a year later it popped back up and wouldn’t you know it, we put it in an offer and got it this time!
Cheers to my lovely friends, Leonard and Dovina! I wish them all the best in their home that was definitely meant to be!
Congratulations to my clients Rachael and Zak who just closed on closed on this blue mod skinny in Portsmouth! From the outside it appears to have a similar interior layout as the other 1,000 skinnies, but what sets this one apart is the nearly 20 foot tall ceilings in the living room. The design on this house has the 3 bedrooms upstairs, but the living room is opened up so that the upstairs hallway overlooks the living room. Because of this design, the light in this house is incredible. Rachael and Zak knew they wanted a house that didn’t need any work and had at least a small private yard, and this house is all that and more.
My buyer Clayton was referred to me by some of my favorite past clients ever, so I knew he was going to be great to work with. His ideal home would be in North Portland where he has lived for a long time as a renter, and would have the space and bedroom count to be able to comfortably rent out a room or two to roommates. He lost out on 2 houses, but they were not the best houses for him anyway. And when a great 4 bedroom house (2 beds on the main floor and 2 beds upstairs) came on the market he went to the open house and met the listing agent who was super impressed by how kind Clayton is and how through of a job he did looking at the house (he even went into the crawl space!). He loved the house and we wrote up an offer, and thanks to his letter and the listing agent explaining to her seller how awesome Clayton is, the seller wanted to sell to Clayton, but with another offer on the table that was over $100,000 over list price, the seller went with the crazy high offer.
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I have the best neighbors ever in Ladd’s Addition. We moved into our home 17 years ago, and had our first kid 11 years ago. Within 5 years of us moving in, most of our block turned over from old and aging folks to younger families with small kids. At one point, there were seven families with kids all within a five year range from youngest to oldest on our block. Our kids have grown up together, played together, laughed together, had block parties together, cried together and all the in-betweens. When they were younger, in the ages 4-8ish range, they would spend summer days moving back and forth between houses as a roving gang. Us parents never worried because we knew the kids were at someone’s house on the block. Only 2 families have moved over the last 10 years, and one didn’t move far. Throughout this whole time, the adults on our block have spent countless hours over the years doing impromptu happy hours, block parties and backyard hang outs.
I couldn’t be more excited for my very dear longtime clients Emily and Ben. They outgrew their vintage cream puff bungalow in Foster Powell that I helped them purchase 7 years ago, and despite the horrors of the current market, they were able to sell their very much loved home and get under contract and close on an even better and bigger house that hit nearly every single one of their check-list items before they have to be out of their bungalow.
One of my favorite parts of my job is helping families come together to live in the same town. About 7 years ago I helped one of my very favorite clients R & P buy their home in the Woodstock neighborhood. Then last summer R’s sister and brother-in-law moved to Portland from the Bay Area and I helped R’s sister D and her husband G buy their first Portland home in Irvington. The plan all along is for the whole family to live in Portland, so a couple of months ago R and D’s parents sold their long-time home in Ohio to join their daughters here in Portland, and I was lucky enough to get to work with them and help them buy a home in Bethany. Now the whole family is here!
Congratulations to my buyer Brooke on beating out 10 other offers to snag this perfect home in the Richmond neighborhood. Brooke found me because her sister’s kids attend the same school as my kids in SE Portland, and they were looking for an agent familiar with the area. Brooke is from Seattle and recently went through a divorce and sold her longtime home in Seattle with the intention of moving to Portland to be closer to her sister. Brooke has a daughter that has some disabilities and is mobility challenged, so the home she knew she wanted to purchase would ideally be near her sister, and have the right set-up for her daughter to be able to get around on the ground floor, and have a flat backyard. We spent a good 2+ months on the hunt, which meant nearly every weekend for 2 months Brooke drove down to Portland from Seattle to check out houses. She wrote offers on 3 homes and while it was brutal to go through rejection after rejection, in the end it was all good because like most buyers, the best house was the last house we saw and she wrote on.
Congratulations to my sellers on scoring a great buyer for their swoon-worthy vintage bungalow in Foster Powell!
My clients Jake and Greg purchased a blah mid-century rancher in St. Johns in 2017. Over the last four years they worked tirelessly to turn the bland into beautiful. While they loved their home, they really wanted a larger mid-century with a basement and in their dream world, they would be able to move in inner-SE Portland. The first time I visited their St. Johns home I was totally wowed by their home and what they had done to it. Like a lot of would be sellers who want to buy a move-up home in Portland, their biggest obstacle was the uncertainty that goes along with putting a house on the market without knowing where you are going to move. They ran all the numbers with their lender, and to get the kind of house they wanted, they realized that they would have to sell their home first before they could buy. In years past, this would have been the type of situation where getting a contingent offer accepted would have been the path. But it’s 2021 and contingent offers are just not a thing with the incredible demand. We looked at a couple of houses that came on the market, but those homes were receiving multiple offers and with the need to write a continent offer, they knew they had no chance.
(maybe less than excited about that but they’re still cute), and HOLY JEEZ POSSUMS Y’ALL. I’ve got the possum sweats y’all. I’m ready to be their queen in my castle AND CREATE A KINGDOM. Bring it.”
