Portland Blog: TWIP June 13-20

It is officially summer next Sunday, June 21. Every summer, I feel this renewed desire to live life more purposefully and as fully as I can. The startling beauty of Portland in the summer is nearly always the impetus of these thoughts: 'Get up earlier, experience more sunsets, each on the deck more '-- do all of this with your special someone and count the minutes like they are precious cuz well, they are. Anyway, I created a list of things I want to do more of this year and thought I would share:

I will grow more veggies than I did last year. There is nothing quite so good as a bunch of butter lettuce or fresh herbs from your own backyard. Rosemary, thyme, lavender, mint, coriander...more, more, more! Oh, and a million tomatoes!

I will support our outdoor buddies more. So, the birds got some new birdhouses and feeders and as the squirrels became jealous and then OCD-style-bird-food-thieves, I realized I left them out and have a new squirrel feeder which has done the trick. And last but not least, the new garden installed last summer is finally maturing and with that, bringing in the hummingbirds. I could not be more thankful - they are so incredible to me.

I will grow a TON of hops and I will brew beer this fall for the first time. I am so excited! Beer…(many of you might remember that I did harvest hops last year but may not know that I gave them to a brewer friend as opposed to making my own). Not this year!

Ride my bike, ride my bike, ride my bike. Yeah!

Walk more. New Seasons and Fred Meyer are both less than 10 blocks away. So are my favorite coffee shop/s.

Take the dogs out on more walks. 10 and 12 year old Basset Hounds walk realllll slow which can be a tad annoying but I have to give them "their time". Plus, a 4 block walk is a marathon to them these days. ;-) I think I can handle it...

And last but not least, host more BBQs so I can spend more time enjoying my garden and home with my friends and loved ones.

Last week I shared a view of my garden, did you miss it?

Featured Portland Events

Touching the Earth: 6th Annual Buddhist Festival in the Park ~Community Art Project Using Recycled Objects ~Contemporary Buddhist Songs for Children and Adults~Dharma Talk and Panel Discussion on the Theme of Touching the Earth~Food and Buddhist items for sale~Activities for Children~Tabling by Buddhist Communities~Meditation and Practice Workshops

The green movement and Buddhist teachings go very well together. With the theme of Touching the Earth, Portland’s 6th Annual Buddhist Festival in the Park focuses on that rich mix. It is said when Shakyamuni sat under the Bodhi Tree, and Mara, the great distracter, questioned his right to be there and to find enlightenment, that Shakyamuni touched the earth, and the earth was his witness. For centuries, Buddhist monastics have vowed to live simply on what is given them. Buddhism teaches that we are all connected, and as interconnected beings we wish to take good care of our connection with the earth, water, and sky. Today!

Visit this Portland Event

Hip Happening Craft Show Forget the mall and the big box stores. Come see fantastic unique artisans selling their wares and take home a one-of-a-kind treasure! Buy local and handmade! Today!

Visit this Portland Event

Come buy lunch or dinner from HOTLIPS Pizza on June 21 and save the planet. 100% of the money you spend goes directly towards making HOTLIPS more energy efficient! There will be musicians to entertain you all day, as well as booths with more information about helping the environment. There will be plenty of pizza ready for purchase and discounted cases of HOTLIPS's real fruit soda.

Carrotmob is holding a "reverse boycott" of HOTLIPS. Instead of avoiding a business with bad practices, Carrotmob will attract customers to a company with good ones. We want to buy everything we can so we can save the environment! Carrotmob has already been successful in several cities around the country, from San Francisco to New York to London to Helsinki, Finland. Portland, with its reputation of environmental awareness, is prepared to blow all these other cities out of the water. Carrotmob is challenging Portland to prove that they are on the cutting edge of environmental activism.

Buy pizza, save the planet! Sunday June 21

Visit this Portland Event

Depave in N. Portland! Come join Depave for the first summer depaving event at Mosi Architecture in N Portland! We will be busting up some concrete and removing a parking lot to transform it into a garden! All you need to bring is yourself and friends!

Visit this Portland Event

There are many more great Portland events this week, just visit the Portland Events calendar!

Portland Photo of the Week

The featured photo of the week is Rose Garden by Fasai. If this picture does not represent All Things Portland in the Summer, well, nothing does. ;-) Great shot, Fasai!

Don't forget to throw your hat in the ring for our June photo contest. Past winners have received gift certs to McMenamins, Powells Books, Saraveza, Toro Bravo and more. The theme for the June Portland photo contest is Summer. Show us in images what embodies the Portland summer to you! To enter, simply load your photo on the Photos page. Winners are announced via this weekly blog- so check back!

Blog, Forum, and Other Chatter

Moving to Portland in August
Dragon boats rain and pain
Rents in Alberta?
Sunday Parkways needs volunteers

Hollywood Neighborhood Report by Ross Seligman

Hollywood is a perfect NE confluence of beautiful residential homes, a bustling commercial center, and easy access to highways for an easy commute. The Hollywood neighborhood is bordered by the Sullivan's Gulch, Irvington, Alameda, Beaumont-Wilshire, and Rose City Park neighborhoods. For more about Hollywood, including photos, view the Hollywood neighborhood profile or the Hollywood neighborhood map.

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 Hollywood 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 Hollywood, 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 Hollywood neighborhood from 2/08 to 4/09:

Like most of Portland, the last couple of months have shown an increase in both sold and pending sales, together with steady or decreasing inventory. This is good news for Portland that the market is improving. This is due to a few factors including the $8000 tax credit for first time homebuyers, record low interest rates, prices that have just about hit bottom if not already, and a psychological shift from doom and gloom to positivity about the housing market in this city. It doesn't hurt that Hollywood is an incredible Portland location that, relatively, can still be very affordable.

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

One year change from April 2008 to April 2009:

Inventory (how many homes on the market for sale): Down 10.9%
Homes sold: Up 9.8%
Homes pending sale: Down 14.3%

(Compare to 15 months at the beginning of this chart and sales are up 21.6%, pending sales are up 28%)

Chart for average price per square footage:

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

6 Months No Mortgage Payments! by Wade Willis

Two of the strongest indicators of a healthy economy are consumer spending and the housing industry. When consumers are confident that their money is going to continue to flow in a positive direction they spend money. When consumers trust that the housing market is a good investment, houses are purchased or refinanced and the housing market is strong.

In an effort to stimulate the economy, many lenders, with the help of the government, are creating new loan programs to encourage qualified borrowers to purchase a home or refinance an existing home. The $8,000 tax credit article I wrote several weeks ago is an great example of one such program.

This week I would like to talk about a very creative program that allows a purchaser the option of living in their new home for the first 6 months without a payment.

Many financial experts agree that at any given point, homeowners should have three to six months worth of mortgage payments in a savings account in case something happens. This is very difficult to do if one is buying a home, especially for first-time homebuyers. Most of the time you are scraping the bottom of the barrel to come up with enough for the down-payment and closing costs much less enough to put away three to six months of mortgage payments.

This program potentially allows a homebuyer the opportunity to make their mortgage payment directly into a savings account for the first six months that they own the home rather than the lender. At the end of that six months, the purchaser would have six months of mortgage payments before they had even made one payment.

Another thing that many new homeowners want to do when they first move in, I certainly can attest to this, is paint the walls and buy new furniture that actually complement the new rooms. This can add up. Believe you me. When we moved to the Hawthorne area, we nearly went broke trying the myriad of restaurants in walking distance from our front door. There are many expenses that new homeowners don’t necessary anticipate. Now, while I would recommend putting money away in a savings account to build-up that emergency three-to-six months of mortgage payments first, this second need for money, is another place one could use the six months worth of mortgage payments.

Here’s how it works

This particular loan product allows the first six months of interest payments to be prepaid by the seller or homebuilder at closing. The principal doesn’t decrease during that six month period of time, but the interest has already been taken care of when the new owner gets the keys.

Here is where I am going to step back and talk about seller contributions. In a buyers market, which we are most certainly in, sellers are motivated to sell their property, mainly because there is more homes on the market than there are potential buyers. Because of this, your realtor may be able to negotiate the structure of the purchase in such a way that the seller will be willing to contribute money to the transaction. One way of doing this is to lower the purchase price for you. Another way, is for the seller to contribute money directly to aspects of the closing transaction.

Of the three main lending programs, VA Loans, FHA Loans and Conventional Loans, there are different guidelines as to the maximum amount a seller can contribute.

Conventional 95% Loan-to-Value 3%
VA 4%
FHA 6%
Conventional 90% Loan-to-Value 6%

Let’s see what this means in real numbers. If we take the average purchasing price of a home in Multnomah County for the last few months – about $250,000, that means that in the scenarios above:

3% = $7,500
4% = $10,000
6% = $15,000

Yes, you are reading that right. Sellers can contribute between $7,500 and $15,000 on the sale of a $250,000 home. There are limitation on what the seller can contribute to. Without getting too much into it, they can contribute to closing costs, prepaid loan expenses, and in this program, six months of prepaid interest.

Will they? That depends on many factors, one of which is how your Realtor and the seller’s Realtor negotiate the transaction. For example, a seller may have their home listed at $250,000 but may be willing to sell it $235,000. In this case your Realtor would let you know that you may want to offer the full asking price but in the purchase agreement negotiate that the seller contributes $15,000 toward closing cost.

What are the downsides of this program?

You are not paying any principal on the loan for the first six months and, therefore, have not gained any financial ground in the equity of the home.

The other downside is that the interest rate is typically a .25 point to .375 point more than many of the other loan programs. In deciding which loan program to go with, your mortgage professional would help you weigh the pro’s and con’s of each. And believe me, most of them have tradeoffs.

It is, however, another option that has been made available to homebuyers and to consider when thinking about how to structure the financing for your new home.

View the original article prepared by Wade Willis Portland's Sound ...

Best Real Estate Deals in Portland

A pick of Ross Seligman's best deals in PDX this week

New PortlandNeighborhood Members

A hearty welcome to the newest members of this wonderful Portland blog! If you love this site as much as we do, please invite your friends!

Portland Businesses - Want to Be Featured in our Blog?

Over 75,000 people a month read this Portland blog! There is no better way to put a local spotlight on your independent Portland business! Contact us for details!