Agent Profile
I am a top ranked agent serving the Portland area for over 20 years specializing in residential real estate sales and investments. I created this site as a real estate resource for buyers and sellers who want to be well informed about current inventory and pricing. If you are interested in actively tracking the market, please sign up to receive my daily listing email. We map every new listing each day then update the neighborhood maps. The map is emailed to you...simply click a neighborhood to see the listed properties for sale, complete with pictures, price and address. Agency Info
RE/MAX Equity Group
4800 Meadows Road, Suite 100
Lake Oswego, OR 97035
The Offers Are Coming In………
Before we could even get the car unpacked from Grandma’s house, I checked my voice mail and there was a message: “I have written an offer on your house”. I was so excited – I immediately called the agent back and told her she could come right over. She was in the driveway within minutes and while Kent unpacked the car, we closed ourselves into the office to discuss the deal. After listening to the agent tell me about her lovely clients and how financially qualified they are and that she is a doctor, he is an engineer and how much they love my home but guess what? She presented me with the “LOW BALL”.
After 3 days on the market, she wrote an offer for $80k less than my asking price. If I wasn’t a practicing realtor, I would have been offended, but this is the market that we are dealing with and I have seen deals that start this low actually work. If I was a buyer in the market, I would certainly give it a try. I was still crushed as I had already sold the house in my mind and relaxed about the idea of staying up late to unpack from our weekend. As I showed her the front door, I held hope that we might be able to pull something together. I still hadn’t put a sign in the yard or told my neighbors, however, they soon found out after all of the agents showing the house over the weekend started asking questions about the neighborhood/neighbors.
The next morning I woke up, made the beds and accepted delivery of 2 loads of mulch for the yard. By the end of the day, the mulch was spread and the contractors had been through and we had 2 more offers. So now I have three people that love the house, are financially qualified and are all lovely people as well as three agents trying to convince me to sell the house to their clients. As exciting as this sounds, it is a challenging position to be in. How do you decide who gets the house? Knowing that there were other offers in play, the low ball couple raised their offer by $70k and the other two deals were remarkably similar.
I decided to take my agent hat off and make emotional decision. After receiving a heartfelt email from one of the families, I decided to sell her my house. It wasn’t the best offer, but they had a special needs adult child that would use private lower level living space. How could I say no? Our house is now sale pending.
To View our listing visit: http://www.Obeo.com/537401.
I HATE EMPTY FLYER BOXES……………
One of the biggest complaints I get from clients that are looking for a house is empty flyer boxes. How many times have you been driving by a house in your hood and the box is already empty. Well, problem solved.
I now have the ability to set up your cell phone so that if you see a sign in the yard of a house, you can dial a phone number and get all of the vital statistics, including price. You can listen to a recorded message or have the information sent by text to your phone. You just type in the address of the property. Email me with your cell phone number and I will set it up for you. It is that simple.
Keep Up With Those Little Home Improvements!
Check out this article from REALTOR Magazine- http://www.realtor.org/rmohome_and_design/articles/2008/0812_costvsvalue_2008
It is nice to know that even in a rough economy, those little extra updates and remodels really do pay off in the resale of your home!
Two Days Later…
I am physically and emotionally exhausted. After expending all of my energy committing to the money pit and getting the house on the market, we get to sit and wait. I am obsessively watching the lock box access at my house wondering how I am going to keep the house in model home condition when we are living in it. Frightening.
We don’t even know if we are going to be buying the money pit. The seller has signed the deal but we have offered them ½ of what they owe on the house. So, some asset manager in the Midwest has a file on his desk and my future in his hands. They have delayed the foreclosure for one month while they gather information to make a decision. This is a classic short sale. If the moon, sun and stars align, they we agree to allow the sale to go through. If not, the foreclosure continues and the bank will own the house. We will have to wait.
And wait….and wait and wait.
Foreclosures At An Historic High
Just what you want to hear: Foreclosure rates have reached an historically high number. It’s depressing. The one bright side to this dismal fact is that if you are a buyer, there is no time like the present to find your dream home! Or, in my case, your dream money pit.
This article in USA Today lays down the facts and statistics of where we are in the housing market roller coaster. http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/housing/2009-06-10-may-home-foreclosures_N.htm
To see what is going on within your own neighborhood, check out this link – it narrows down foreclosures by county: http://chronicle.augusta.com/stressmap.
We Are Moving……….AGAIN!
The thought of getting the house ready to go and put on the market overwhelms me. As a realtor, you would think it would be it would be simple since I routinely go into the homes of others and tell them what to do, hand out the check list and bring in the stager to complete the job. By the time I come back in a week the house is decluttered, the yard is spruced up and the interior is photo ready. I have had the courage to tell clients to clean the closets, pack up the collections, hire contractors and basically put their jobs and their life on hold for a week while they focus on this most important task.
My list was long, but the phone numbers were all in my blackberry so the plan was to get the house on the market by the end of the week. Unfortunately, the contractor wasn’t available until the next week and the house keeper comes on the alternate Friday. Damm……I will just do it myself.
Just when I think I have 80% of the list completed, my dear friend, “The Uber Stager” comes in for 2 hours and creates another day of work for me. We manage to fill up the third bay of the garage with all of the stuff she doesn’t like. This uncovers areas that haven’t been dusted since we moved in over 2 years ago.
Despite the half finished list, the house is going on the market today. The photographer does his thing, the data is entered into the MLS and the information is released into cyberspace. We pack up the kids and the dog and head to Grandma’s house to decompress and get out of the house. I hope someone comes to take a look.
Check out the virtual tour: http://www.Obeo.com/537401
