Best Client Ever....or Maybe the Worst

I’ve recently had a little refresher course that all realtors should have to take periodically.  Last month I sold an investment property that I owned. 

While I help clients buy and sell properties regularly, it’s a big change for the client to be myself.   It was an immediate plunge into all the emotions that my clients feel.   The property disclosures that all sellers must fill out seemed a little less clear and easy than they’ve seemed to me before.  To my surprise, I felt the same feelings every seller feels before putting their house on the market—does it look good enough?  Will people like it?  Is it going to sell?  My experienced Realtor brain knows the answers are yes, yes and yes, but I had  to make a concerted effort to remind myself of that. 

Our duplex sold quickly, and the sale was the result of some networking that I did around my office.  The market remains very positive for sellers right now, as inventory levels are very low.   Interest rates are still very good, so the incentive is there to act.   I had a buyer quickly and we closed in less than a month, super smooth and easy.

I'm going to continue being my own client, this time on the buy side, as I look for a replacement investment property.  As our son gets closer to college age, it's definitely in our minds to look for a smaller place that we might use as a rental now, and then eventually move into ourselves.  Turns out I'm amazingly picky about location and all the details!  Something close to Salt & Straw sounds pretty good.

Smarty Pants

My oh-so-thoughtful husband knew just what to get me for Mother's Day--a membership to Car2Go.  I have been wanting to drive a Smart car since I spotted them in Europe years ago.  While I have been driving my mid-size roomy SUV for several years as a vehicle suitable for driving clients around, in my heart like most middle aged ladies I yearn for a car that's well...cute and teeny.  There, I said it.

The Car2Go concept is pretty slick.  You pay an annual membership fee, and after that, you are charged by the minute for the time that you have the car checked out.  The check out is easy--you can look online to see what car is closest to you and not checked out, and either reserve it or just proceed there and swipe your membership card at the reader located in the front windshield.  The doors unlock, and you drive away.  Gas is covered by the company.  When you stop the car, you can tell it that you are merely making a stop, and don't want anyone else to take the car while you get out and do your errand, or you can tell the car you're all done and the car is available for others to take.  No special place to leave the car, just in an unrestricted parking area somewhere within the generous borders of the Car2Go service area.  Sweet!

So, driving the Smart car is sort of like driving a more comfortable Lawn Boy.  Kinda noisy and spartan, though there is air conditioning.  The transmission is either manual or automatic, and you can choose on the fly to either let it shift for you or do it yourself.  My teenage son and I put it through various tests, such as:  can the Smart car be parked facing in to the curb rather than parallel parked (answer--it sticks out further than our SUV did from the curb, so probably not), how does it do on an incredibly steep hill (answer--pretty darn well) and how many can you fit in a standard sized parking lot space (at least two!).  A totally fun afternoon.

I think the Car2Go concept really works for folks like us that could get away with 1 car most of the time.  The husband works from home and just occasionally needs a car.  I split time working from home or the office, so we can share trips.  Now that we're getting closer to having a teenage driver, however, we will most likely hang on to the 2nd car for a while longer.

You Can Go Home Again

We went back to our old stomping grounds in the Bay Area for spring break last week.  Hoping for sunshine, but settling for dry and partly cloudy, the weather was still better than March in Portland.  And frankly it's always good to break out of everyday life and be somewhere else.

It was the first time we'd taken the kid back there that he can remember.  We stayed in a great house in the Piedmont Avenue neighborhood of Oakland, complete with a backyard with two orange trees and a lemon tree.  The neighboring houses had birds of paradise blooming, and huge robust geraniums that don't die in the winter.  While riding bikes together in the sunshine, the kid said "Why did you ever move away from here?  It's so much better than Portland!"  And for a moment I thought, "yeah, why did we?  More sunshine, big city options available, oranges in my back yard--why did we move?"

By the end of the week I remembered.  As we drove back into Oregon and Portland I felt welcomed by the scenery, the stress-free driving, the friendly interactions with random people, just how easy, uncrowded, affordable (relative to CA) and pleasant it is to live here and walk around the great neighborhoods of Portland. I'd still choose this to be my hometown all over again.

Wham, Bam, Thank you Ma'am.

Well geez, I'd been thinking about writing a blog about the latest market statistics in Portland.  The local Realtor community has been encouraged by the improvements in the numbers of closed and pending sales, inventory is way down, and stories of houses getting snatched up quickly (sometimes with multiple offers!) are abounding.

But I'd been too busy to write that blog because I was putting this fabulous new listing on the market in Westmoreland last week.  The owners worked incredibly hard to get the place ready, and we hit the market on Thursday.  By Friday it'd been shown 10 times, and by Saturday we had a great offer on the house.  My clients' house has become a statistic in the blog I wanted to write.

This is great news for everybody, not just someone selling a house.  I've noticed since the market downturn how many jobs are related to the real estate economy, and not just Realtors and appraisers and home inspectors, but landscapers, contractors, escrow officers, photographers, sign services, printers, graphic designers....the list is long.   We all can use a little good news that another economic indicator seems to be heading in the right direction.

I've joined the CIA. Not really.

Like lots of other professionals, Realtors need to keep up with continuing education in order to keep our licenses current.  Recently I spent the best part of a week attending CIAS training with some colleagues.  Nope, nothing to do with CSI (I've never watched that show) or the CIA, CIAS is Certified Investor Agent Specialist.  A mouthful, but really the course had to do with polishing up my skills representing investor clients

Say the word investor, and an image springs to mind of some incredibly wealthy person that is wheeling and dealing, fixing and flipping, all at such a high level of real estate it doesn't even seem like something the average person could do.  I've represented many investor clients and in fact I'm an investor.  All of us have something in common:  we are pretty average folk, we generally buy the property and manage it successfully ourselves, and we hang onto it as a long term investment that will bring us cash flow over time.

Nonetheless, to a first time investor just getting set up it can be daunting.  The course provided lots of resources to assist an investor in determining what's a good investment, and then providing a little help getting set up to manage the investment.  Frankly, right now is as good a time as I've seen to start investing--interest rates low, prices reasonable, and rents are on a sharp rise.  In fact, one article I read put Portland in the top 10 markets for rental increases, great news if you're a landlord.

Some clients of mine recently bought another small apartment building to go with the one they purchased a few years back.  This is a retirement vehicle--by the time they're ready to retire the buildings will be generating an income stream that will be a nice source of revenue to add to their other investments such as 401Ks and IRAs.

If you're wondering about investing in real estate and how it all works, give me a call or shoot me an email.  I can give you the benefit of both my experience and all that fresh education!

Stumped in Stumptown--Distillery Row

Winter in Portland can be long and drippy, so I've resolved to look around for new ways to get out of my house.  On a recent Saturday afternoon we toured Distillery Row with friends.

Portland's inner Eastside is home to several craft distillers, and most are open on a Saturday afternoon for tastings.  Some even offer tours of the distillery.  If you've ever toured a winery, it's similar to that but on a much smaller scale.  No vines, fewer barrels, less high-falutin' talk about the product.  Just booze in varieties, and a surprising account of how simple it seems to make different kinds.  And then tastings in tiny cups.  I have to say that I was nervous about drinking straight spirits, but the tastings are small and it's fun to see how the flavor of the spirit stands out, unlike in a mixed drink.

So, yeah, I had to buy something.  House Spirits, home of delicious Aviation Gin and many other products, produced a quintessential Portland coffee liqueur made from Stumptown coffee.  Mmm, had to have it.  Now that I've got it I'm a little stumped (pardon the pun) as to what to do with it.  If anyone has a killer coffee cocktail recipe, pass it along.  Until then I'll be enjoying it over ice cream.

Solar, Even Cheaper

I recently attended a training session on solarizing homes, and went away more excited than I expected to be.  Over the last couple of years installing solar panels on your home has become more affordable thanks in part to amazing tax credits.  Now it is possibly......almost free?

The guys from Imagine Energy told us that the price of solar panels has dropped dramatically, due to factors including decreased demand in Germany and Japan as well as a glut of much less expensive panels from China flooding the marketplace and causing American and European manufacturers to get their prices low to remain competitive.  Here in the Portland area we have a manufacturer located in Hillsboro, so it's possible to buy locally even in the matter of solar panels.

Imagine Energy has partnered with a California company, SunRun, to provide a 20 year lease on solar panels installed on your home.  The price can vary a bit based on your particular situation, but is somewhere in the neighborhood of $6000, with the caveat that your home needs to have a certain amount of life left in the roof and your electrical system needs to meet some requirements.   You would get the Oregon Residential Tax Credit that is $6000, paid in $1500 increments over 4 years.

How does the lease thing work?  SunRun maintains your system over the life of the lease, and the lease is transferable if you sell your home.  At the end of 20 years, SunRun will either remove the panels or sell them to you, and obviously they'd prefer to sell them to you as they'd rather not have your used panels back.  Imagine Energy says they anticipate the buyout amount would be fairly nominal at the end of the 20 year period.

It's not known exactly how much longer the Oregon Residential Tax Credit for solar is going to last.  If you're interested in installing solar, let me know and I'll get you the contact information for Imagine Energy so you can investigate this amazing deal.