Hood River Real Estate and Columbia Gorge Real Estate

First off, sorry for being so tardy. I wanted to show you the very cool new mapping system (It allows you to create feeds, e-mail alerts, take notes on properties, and work with my brokers online. Very, very, very cool.) and we finally turned it live!  Go check it out. You will be very impressed. If you had an old account, and you didn’t get the e-mail telling you what the password reset was, shoot me an e-mail and I’ll get it working. This mapping system tracks searches for you, it follows specific properties for you, it allows us to make suggestions for you, and for you to take notes. Great product. Easily the best search engine in the Hood River Market!

And so, on to the market…..Well, we received the monthly sales report form January, and it was sort of……well basically nothing. Trendless…….Volume was up, but we knew that. All segments fired, so that’s cool, but nothing really giving indication that there’s anything but people finally deciding to move forward…..no hot neighborhoods, no hot pricing segments…….Awash in vanilla!

I follow a blog called The Portland Housing Blog, and this week they tipped me off to a recent report from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco About bankruptcies (residential and commercial) and it’s broken out by state, and region. Great stuff! I posted the link on my facebook feed…. It has past and future heat maps for both commercial and residential, and it says, among other things….this. “Be glad you are not Deschutes county Oregon, or Clark County Washington” Seriously……it basically does.

Outlook for March? Pretty busy, still a fair bit of uncertainty, and Boy, when your closing timelines suddenly jump from 30 days to 60 days, that sure can put a crimp in your cash flow! Even with the activity, I couldn’t tell you where the hot sector is going to be. Could be back in the under 300 range again, as a push of young buyers looks to make their move. Most of the young buyers though are still just trying to keep their jobs…..There’s a few people who are losing their homes (walking away? Gasp!) in this market. It’s still contained, but I think the duration is finally taking it’s toll. These are not speculators; they are hard working people who have lost jobs….and that’s just plainly unfortunate.

I think we will see a decent push of new families (yaay! Houses over $400!) around the spring break, and I continue to get the “Dude, I’m punching out” e-mails and phone calls. There’s a lot of ex financial types who are looking to create a new life out in the west……….

But still, there’s that uncertainty out there.  And how. Some of it is media bloviating, but I swear, I’ve got that “other shoe” feeling that I just can’t shake. Maybe it’s commercial…Dunno. (I should comment that the feeling has waned in the last few days…)

See you next month, and we are really looking forward to April and May, as we gear up to post some good numbers….how could they be bad?! Been down so long, looks like up, to me…..Go Big Red!