Back after a bit of a rest!

Hello! First of all, apologies for the long silence. I have been dealing with a bit of breast cancer, (very small, caught very early) and although I am done with all the treatments it's taken considerably longer to recuperate than I had planned. So, that said here is my report on today's tour, and at the end I'll give a brief over-view of what's happening in the Portland market from my perspective.

I concentrated on NE Portland today, it's quick as I only got to four places - not because there weren't more to see, but because I ran out of time.

I started with a condo - as you can see it's a penthouse, with great unobstructed views to the south and east. It was customized by local designer Jeff Lamb and it's certainly unique. A large curved glass screen divides the dining area from the living; the kitchen is raised, giving nice visual delineation between the dark wood floor and the carrara tile of the kitchen. Upstairs there are two bedrooms - the master has an infinity bath and is set to give the best views, both in and out as there are NO BLINDS!!




Second up, 2225 NE 22nd Ave - right in the heart of Irvington. Within spitting distance of the Irvington Tennis Club. This lovely house was bright yellow when I lived around the corner 8 years ago! Now all the colors are a muted palate of taupe, cream and dark stained oak. The floorplan is open, circular (actually figure of 8) and very livable! Upstairs there are 3 bedrooms and 2 baths with a 4th bedroom in the attic. The master suite is nice but lacks a bit of closet space (especially if you're like me and have a bit of a shoe & matching handbag habit!). The basement is fully finished with a large family room and space to make another bedroom if needed. There is a single garage, but the driveway is shared and somewhat narrow......

Next, I went to a house up on the Alameda ridge - this house has great views, but boy the walk up took all the puff out of me! If you're looking for a home with English accents (and by that I mean 'American-English'!) that you want to update, upgrade and totally make your own, then this could be it. It's got good bones, but everything needs to be seen to. Given the market conditions I'd say this is overpriced and will sit for a while.





Last one for today is a Craftsman bungalow on NE 32nd Place. The public rooms in this home are lovely - nice, spacious, light rooms with a large kitchen at the back of the house. There is a master suite on the main floor...... and then everything screetched to a halt. Up a steep set of stairs leading off the kitchen are two kids bedrooms - one of which is teeny, and no bathroom. The second bathroom is in the basement and it is pretty basic. A bit disappointing.






Am I feeling a bit cranky today? Well, maybe.... so here's what I think is going on in the market right now. With the $8,000 tax credit to first time home buyers, the starter market is alive and well. Houses priced up to about $500,000 are moving pretty swiftly if they're properly priced AND show well. The movers into the second tier are having a harder time - these houses are owned by people that by and large, have to sell, and so often pride of ownership is absent. Obviously this is a harder market - buyers are pickier and want practically everything on their wish-list and sellers are not in the best position to get their houses into tip top shape. It's taking some time for this middle market to move because the lending landscape has changed too. Guidelines for appraisers get tougher by the minute and borrowers need a bigger percentage to put down (as well as a good credit score). If the middle market is sluggish at best, then the upper end is simply dead. There are very few homes over $1m selling - a quick check of the rmls shows that there are only 39 homes in the Portland area priced over $800,000 that are pending right now. This includes 20 condo's & townhouses, largely in the Pearl. If you want clarification or more detail, don't hesitate to ask me!!

Views, views or trees

First up this week was a jaunt over to Maplewood to this three bedroom ranch that boasted an artist studio. We have a client that is looking for just that so I wanted to take a peek. It sits on a third of an acre lot, with a lovely yard surrounded but not darkened by fir trees. Inside the house, the decor, fixtures and fittings probably haven't changed much from it's 1953 build and it's 1476 sqft layout can feel a little cramped at times. The third bedroom is currently an office and if there is no need for an additional sleeping area this would be a quiet space slightly removed from the main part of the house. The art studio is currently used as a garden shed, but it would be quite easy to use this garden shed as an art studio! It's a sweet, cozy house in a leafy neighborhood at a seemingly reasonable price of $339,900.


Back towards downtown on SW 48th Ave, in the hills, is a lovely contemporary built by commercial architect, Alan Hoogs set on nearly half an acre. It's a modest structure from the outside but quite beautiful once you enter. Walls of tongue-and-groove cedar, turned on rough and smooth edges, line much of the upstairs. It adds a warm ambiance that mirrors the wooded setting outside. Behind the living room are two bedrooms and a stunning Asian-inspired contemporary bathroom complete with a soaking tub. Downstairs you'll find a spacious third bedroom with a separate bathroom and another room, currently used as a shop, that could possibly be turned into another bedroom or perhaps more preferably a family room. With great schools, a private setting and minutes from downtown, can you pass this one by? Priced at $775,000.


Right behind Chapman Elementary sits this 1948 daylight ranch listed at $849,000. Blessed with stunning views and landscaping that beautifully frames it, and tucked away in the hill at the end of NW Pettygrove, it feels like an urban retreat. The interior houses a mixture of styles and you may feel the need to put your own stamp on it. There's one bedroom up and two down, and a full bathroom on each level. The really intriguing room in the house though is the 612 sqft family room on the lower level that opens through a single door to a lovely patio and the view. I picture this as the center of the house, a-comfort-zone-big-screen-TV-roaring-fire magnet in the winter and a pop-in-some-full-length-concertina-open-doors-and-have-a-party-on-the-patio lounge about in the summer. Very curious.


Lastly on SW Rutland Terrace, just above the Rose Garden in Washington Park this 1952 mid-century really delivers on the promised views. A truly stunning panorama of the city and there is a large deck above the carport from which you and about thirty friends can enjoy it from! The house sits on a private drive, shared by a mirror image house next door, but the house comes with parking for three cars. Inside needs a fair amount of updating but this is reflected in the pricing ($719,000) and to a large degree it's a good canvas from which to work from. There's a challenge in the making here with this house. Aided by a healthy dose of creativity, this has all the promise of a stunning rehabbed mid-century. But will the house find the right owner?


Pick of the Week: The house on SW 48th Ave. Beautiful lines, stunning woodwork, understated, yet exceptional.

Living in the trees

Sitting like a geode atop of SW Upper Cascade Drive, this house is not much to write home about from the outside but a real gem on the inside. This was purposeful, as the architect, Marvin Witt, felt the 'building shouldn't overpower the setting'. An understandable sentiment given the forest backdrop the house looks on to. Inside the house has been virtually untouched since it's build in 1977. More often than not this will put some potential buyers off when they'll feel a significant chunk of change will need to be sunk into the kitchen and bathrooms. Here though the architect has done such a fabulous design job you may well look past it. I certainly did. Floor-to-ceiling windows throughout the house, stunning vaulted ceilings and lodge-like stone fireplaces are just some of the highlights. Oh and a fabulous workshop under the garage that also gets to share in the wonderful forest scenery. This is a lovely house, so don't be put off by the outside. Priced at $749,000.




Back down to the Pearl to see this south-facing penthouse in the Elizabeth priced at $2,095,000. It's a spacious 2,355 sqft and all the rooms are well proportioned. The real attraction to this penthouse is the huge outdoor patio that runs the length of the unit. It's enough space to entertain a football team and I could imagine spending whole summers on this patio. Running the length of the unit as it does, means that it does run past the two guest bedrooms, and so this could be tough with kids, but for the adults, it's a balcony off each bedroom. The main living area is an appealing open-plan space with a gourmet kitchen on the easterly wall. I question though, with only the bedrooms as an escape, could this large penthouse suddenly start feeling a little small?




Lastly we hopped over to Laurelhurst to this house on the lovely SE Laddington Ct. It's a sizable 4,505 sqft with five bedrooms, three of which are upstairs. The master bedroom would benefit from it's own bathroom does however have a lovely big sun porch. The kitchen has been pleasantly remodeled and there is bench seating around two sides of the kitchen eating area. Downstairs, the basement has been half finished out and there is potential to make the family room into a more livable and comfortable space. It's a decent house, that needs to be given some extra love. Priced at $875,000.



Pick of the Week: Has to go to the house up SW Upper Cascade. It'll be very interesting to see what, if anything, a new owner will do to the house.

Green is the color

I was intrigued by this townhouse as I have a friend in the area that is thinking of selling hers in the coming months and I wanted to see how it compared. Too often these properties suffer from poorly thought out layouts, cheap bland materials and a vacuum of design sensibility, all in the name of saving a buck. However there's always the exceptions and this is one of them. This one on NE 11th in the Sabin neighborhood was built in 2004 by Terrafirma and has been updated by the current owners. It's a family house through and through and I love the upstairs corner bedrooms connected by the Jack 'n Jill bathroom, a really thoughtful use of space and allowing the rest of the floor to breathe a little easier. There's a deck on either end of the house and a cavernous family room. If townhouses are your thing, this three bedroom unit would be worth checking out. Priced at $459,000.

It had been a while since I have been down to the south waterfront and as there were a couple of units on tour this morning I thought it was time reacquaint myself with the Meriwether East tower. Up on the 19th floor, a large 2,541 sqft, two bedroom unit has just been listed. It's a lovely floor plan, somewhat open plan though subtle partitioning encourages separation should you want it. The bedrooms are tucked far away from the main entertaining areas, giving those that need some rest all the privacy they need from those enjoying the sweeping northwesterly views. Three parking spaces also means you and the family will never have to fight the OHSU students for street parking. Priced at $1,299,000.

Also in the East tower is this one bedroom unit that comes at a price of $469,000. Unlike its older brother upstairs, this unit suffers a little from a strange layout issue. Well let me backtrack. If you work from home or your home office needs to be sizable (think very generous cube space), and you don't mind it being one of the first things you see when you walk through the door then this could be the unit for you. But for me I would rather have squared that space out and added extra square feet to the kitchen/living room area. Perhaps many will look past it but I thought it was a little jarring. That said you only have to go and sit on the balcony and gaze at the river with a glass of Pinot in your hand, and any concerns of what might have been, will quickly wash away. Otherwise a lovely unit and what we have come to expect from both Meriwether Towers.

It's not often I find myself in a neighborhood I'm not familiar with but this Metzger (near Tigard) home that is pending a platinum LEED rehab cert was just too much to resist a visit. It was certainly worth it, it's a splendid home with every 'green' feature you could think of and, well, more. There's too many listed on this short blurb but one thing I found quite eyeopening was that it boasts that 99% of the waste generated during the remodel was either reused or recycled. That's an impressive feat. So what makes this different from other green rehabs? Well quality I suppose. These guys have spent as much time thinking about it's energy efficiency as the interior design and that counts for a lot in my book. Usually one or the other will get the most of the attention and here both have been thought through to the end. As usual some of the material choices aren't top of my list but that's personal and takes nothing away from the overall effect. The master bathroom, with its walk-in shower and Japanese soaking tub is a touch of luxury. I also love the huge backyard that has been landscaped, at least in my mind, in readiness for the new owner to plant a massive vegetable patch. Fantastic five bedroom house and well worth going to see. I'll eagerly wait and see if they'll get the $850,000 asking price though. Located on SW Elmwood St.

Pick of the Week: The green house. Well worth the drive and I look forward to the next project from these guys.

Never leave your bedroom!

Our first house on tour today interestingly is a house I sold to the current owners about 16 months ago. In the interim period they have been hard at work remodeling the kitchen (very nicely indeed) and guest bathrooms on the main floor. Throughout they have painted, replaced old carpet and generally made the whole house glow. Room proportions are generous everywhere, by any standard it's a very livable house. Currently it sits on 6 tax lots BUT this sale is subject to a lot-line-adjustment.... they're adjusting to 4 tax lots and selling off the surrounding yard and tennis court, to be developed in no short order. If one wanted to keep the house and land together the price is $1,950,000.



Over to Laurelhurst and an English style home on the corner of NE 37th & Hassalo. WELL! where to start?! In terms of what blew me away.... the master suite upstairs has more matched sheets of marble in the bathroom than I have seen anywhere, ever. The master bedroom is a couple of steps up and is lined with leather - we think green snakeskin? A heavy velvet curtain, lush carpet, flat screen tv.... you'd only ever leave to eat...... and then you'd be in the next best room in the house. Well appointed with cherry cabinets and large cooks island, this is all about entertaining. I could go on and on.... but well, you just gotta look for yourself! Priced at $950,000.




Over to the westside and to SW Newby to look at what had been billed as "Dynamic mid-Century". Outside it's a bit too pink and inside a bit too Ikea to warrant the 'dynamic' bit, but there are good bones here. Exposed wood beams in the living room and master bedroom show us what has been covered up elsewhere in the house. It is full of potential and at $485,000 the price reflects that.





Up on Council Crest Drive, this Classic French Colonial sits on nearly half an acre, with panoramic views over the city, the mountains and beyond. It is stunning. The house has four bedrooms all on the lower level. Upstairs there is a large formal living room, dining room, kitchen and equally spacious family room. Definitely a great house for entertaining, but with some updating needed it'll be the view that will attract potential buyers to this $1,375,000.




Last on the list today is this lovely city home on SW Montgomery for $549,000. I had sold this around nine years ago and it was fun to revisit it and see what a great job the owner has done with it. Perched up high off the street, full of light and views across to the east, this feels like a summer retreat right in the heart of the city. Frankly the upper level is so comfortable, with master suite combining with spacious family room (and wood stove to boot) that like NE 37th, I'd imagine you'd rarely venture downstairs. the back yard is small but extremely low maintenance. Out front there is a nice tiled deck that is shared with the next door neighbors. Full of charm.



Pick of the Week: I'm going to go with NE 37th Ave, if for nothing else, it is always fun to see a house whose owners have done everything humanly possible in the name of comfort.