Portland Blog: This Week in Portland January 30 - February 6 2010

Happy weekend to ya, Portland! The end of January is here and Valentines Day is creeping up on us...are you ready? We're pretty laid back as a city but let me tell you- restaurant reservations are scarce around the holidays, especially Valentines Day! In other words, if you want to go out, start booking now. To help, we have compiled a list of Portland Valentines Day packages, events, places to go and things to do. Considering Valentines Day is all about an expression of your love, its definitely more than "just dinner". So, we threw in some overnight ideas and some free or very inexpensive ideas on how to spend the day with your sweetie. Let us know what you think and where you end up!

Here's a fun video of Portland by bus (for the most part).




Hope you enjoy the rest of this Portland Blog. Have a wonderful weekend, Portland!

Heard on the Forum

Churches in Gresham/Portland area?
Which P-Town neighborhood is right for us?
Thinking about moving
Moving mid May
Dog friendly Portlanders in peril

Portland Photo of the Week

The Portland Photo of the Week is by Tom Stanley. I love the lines on this image of a building in the Portland Pearl District.

Tom wins a bag of freshly roasted coffee from Coava Roasters for sharing this great photo.

Our Portland Photo of the Week is currently sponsored by Coava Roasters and The Red E Cafe. A winner is announced with every This Week in Portland blog. Submit your photos to win!

Featured Portland Events

Portland Seafood and Wine Festival

This winter event held February 5 & 6, 2010 is a celebration of all things Oregon, but most specifically our wonderful Oregon seafood and wines.

Scheduled in the quiet of winter, and smack dab in the middle of the Dungeness Crab season, it promises to be a popular event in Portland, the gateway to the Oregon coast and the Oregon wine country. The event will be a very upscale yet festive event at the Oregon Convention Center, promising a climate-controlled facility with lots of on-site and surrounding parking. Over 98,000 square feet of exhibit space will allow for lots of room to wander the event while stopping to sit and enjoy the good food, drink and live music throughout the event.

Portland Chocolate Fest

Sample the latest culinary wonders from chocolate masters and artisan chocolatiers in the Chocolate Bazaar. Continue your tantalizing journey to the Chocolate Market as you learn the art of chocolate pairings with wine, sake, and beer.

Take Chocolate 101 and learn the basics or become a chocolate aficionado with presentations and demonstrations throughout the weekend.

The Discovery Museum will have chocolate samples for visitors, and showcase our upcoming exhibit, The Chocolate Story which explores the history of chocolate from its beginning as a potent and magical drink used by the Aztecs to its current worldwide popularity. Last day is Jan 31.



Portland Fertile Ground Festival

Fertile Ground 2010 is a 10-day arts festival that will be held January 22 through February 2 in Portland, Oregon. This city-wide festival is focused on new work in the Arts. It will feature up to 30 world premiere projects, staged readings and a myriad of other arts events from the Portland creative community. From fully staged world premieres in theatre, to ensemble and collaborative driven work, dance, comedy, visual art and film…this festival spans the spectrum of creative endeavor and seeds the next generation of creation through artist conversations, workshops, lunchtime readings and more.

Unlike a typical fringe festival, Fertile Ground features the finest new work of our LOCAL artists, performers and resident theater companies, ensuring that the artistic and financial benefits of the festival stay in Portland. Where other New Works Festivals are curated by one theater company and typically feature a string of staged readings, this festival is collaboratively shaped by variety of aesthetic voices. Fertile Ground features a full range of artistic experience, giving audiences a greater depth and breadth of work from which to choose in a concentrated time frame. From Portland’s oldest and largest producing institutions to its newest, smallest or self-produced companies, the Fertile Ground Festival offers the breadth of creation. For this reason we feel this festival is nationally unique, providing a new model for creating and sharing new work that will be of substantive value to the national theater and arts.

Japanese Garden: Art in the Garden Small Blessings in Bamboo and Stone

The Portland Japanese Garden is pleased to present Deloss Webber: Small Blessings in Bamboo and Stone as the first in its 2010 Art in the Garden exhibition series. On view February 6–21 in the Garden's Pavilion, this exhibition highlights the unique work of this extraordinary artist. Incorporating knotting techniques from traditional Japanese and Native American basketry, wicker furniture, loom weaving, fly-tying, and nautical knotting, Del selects and wraps each stone with a unique design made of various materials including bamboo, cane, rattan, and reed. No matter which medium Deloss Webber explores—he leads us to a greater appreciation of the natural world. Both his signature "Small Blessings" wrapped stones and his larger sculptural works meld organic with inorganic materials, creating new forms that bring together the natural beauty of stone with the masterful touch of traditional Japanese and contemporary basketry weaving techniques.

Del views his treatment of stone as an expression of reverence for nature. He takes into consideration the individual qualities of each stone, its contours, color, and size, and combines them with his own design of wrapped and woven fibers. Just as in a Japanese garden, a heightened awareness of the beauty of nature is brought to our attention through the eyes and hands of the artist.

Looking for other great things to do in Portland? We have some great ideas for you here!

Check out the rest of our Portland events here. Feel free to add your own, too!

Woodlawn Neighborhood Report

By Ross Seligman

Woodlawn is located in Northeast Portland. It is bordered by the Piedmont, Concordia, Vernon and King neighborhoods. To learn more, view the Woodlawn neighborhood profile.

In my monthly Portland real estate report, I always talk about how each individual neighborhood is a micro-market. If you are looking to buy or sell in a particular neighborhood, the most crucial information that you need to know is what is going on in that neighborhood. In this situation, the overall Portland market report is less important and the national real estate report is just about useless. This posting is a real estate report for the Woodlawn neighborhood of all homes in all price ranges. Feel free to request particular neighborhoods in which you are interested in buying or selling and I am be happy to do a report, just contact me on this forum or at: http://www.propertiesofportland.com.

If you are looking for homes in Woodlawn, visit this link where you can search for homes by particular neighborhood.

The first thing you will notice about individual neighborhoods as compared to the overall Portland reports are that the numbers can be wildly different month to month. Basically, the bigger the pool of data you are working with, the smoother the stats become. As we focus on smaller areas, many different things can happen month to month.

On to the report:

Here is the overall chart of inventory, sold, and pending for the Woodlawn neighborhood from 10/08 to 12/09:

The Woodlawn neighborhood had a very strong 2009. In December 2009, Woodlawn neighborhood had 22 closed sales, 24 Pending Sales, and 118 on the market.

More stats for you from your friendly neighborhood real estate statistics nerd:

One year change from December 2008 to December 2009:

Inventory (how many homes on the market for sale): Down 21.9%
Homes sold: Up 22.2%
Homes pending sale: Up 33.3%

Chart for average price per square footage:

In the past 15 months, the average price per square footage in the Woodlawn neighborhood has been between $129 and $172/sq. ft. In December 2009, the average price per square foot in the Woodlawn neighborhood was $156.

One year change from December 2008 to December 2009:

Change in Price Per Square Foot:
December 2008: 172
December 2009: 156
Percentage Change: Down 9.7%

Days on Market, Sold/List Price:

This chart is showing us two things. First, how many days on the market that a home is spending, on average, before being sold. In December 2009, the average time on market for a home in the Woodlawn neighborhood was 75 days.

The second thing that this chart is showing you is what percentage of the listing price the owners actually are getting when the house is sold. This is a great indication of the pressure on prices. In December 2009, sellers in Woodlawn received, on average, 96% of their asking price.

More stats for you:

Change from December 08 to December 09:

Time on Market: Increased 19%
Sold/List price % difference: Decreased 1%

Average price for sale vs. average price of sold:

Read the rest of this article by local Portland Realtor and Ecobroker, Ross Seligman.

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Best Real Estate Deals in Portland

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We conclude this blog with a stunning photo from Art Richards. This photo makes me yearn for spring and summer with a vengeance! Nice work, Art!

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