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!

….Been a decent January for us, but there’s still trouble on the horizon. New disclosure laws went into effect, specifically Good Faith Estimates and a SLEW of new reforms. I am not sure at all that any of it helps, but after a long talk and some research, I can say this……I can see where they are wanting to head, but they didn’t get there with the current GFE and closing documents……

I think they’ll get there, but the revisions, can’t come soon enough.

Near as I can figure, a mortgage broker will need a worksheet on the front end to explain all the terms to a borrower. Then they will have the required GFE (which they can’t change much, and in some spots its just indecipherable, but I KNOW the people responsible for this already know this) and then they will have to have a settlement sheet to explain what the GFE really says and what the borrowers need to do in order to close.

Oh, and you can’t get a GFE anymore without an actual property, and an actual purchase price….so, you most likely have to get a “quote worksheet” when you get preapproved, do the deal,  get through inspections, and THEN fire up the mortgage brokers to quote rates and closing costs for you…..

Bottom line, If your Realtor can’t explain this stuff to you, get another Realtor. As of right now, I think I could explain it to you….but I honestly couldn’t swear it. Don’t fire me!

This and a few things will push out closings for a bit, and then they’ll snap back to the usual 30 days after awhile. Why, I just closed one today that too exactly 29 days….clean and simple. (actually they had the home inspection completed before the offer, so…..that was cheating a bit.

Banks are still defending their liquidity, and I’m finally seeing big media pick up on the fact that the banks are still playing a bit of a shell game.  They still have to lend, however, so they are being picky, picky, picky……

Our local bank bit the farm this week too. Not that it was a huge surprise, but…..it was a big surprise.

I fully suspect the home owner’s tax credit program to be extended, things are just not healthy enough yet. I suspect that the secondary market buying programs will continue as well, probably until the end of 2010.  That’s just me guessing, but I’m seeing a recovery, but not an improvement. (Recovery= market reassembles itself with moderately sane people in it trading at arms length. Improvement=anything resembling firming, like price uptick, volume uptick for multiple months, of heaven forbid, multiple buyers again. I can dream can’t I?)

There seems to have been another round of capitulation in the market too, in January. Price reductions have happened, but when there’s no market (or the sector is hibernating) there’s just no market. And it opens the door to the other scary question (what’s the value of a property when there’s no market?) I suspect this will continue until March, when all those discounted places will get snapped up, and we’ll have another round of firming, there will be an even bigger flush of new properties, and then….well, you get the picture.

Hey, at least stuff is selling.

About the kookiest thing to come out of the prior RESPA reforms (actually the HVCC) is the completely random lowest cost provider Appraisers. In a market where the HVCC is supposed to reduce the chance of coercion, I’m commonly asked by appraisers who are not from the local area what good comps are for their target homes. They don’t know or understand the market, and subsequently come up with some of the most random valuations I’ve ever seen. Apparently, being a local appraiser doesn’t count for anything anymore. It’s pretty hilarious, and a glaring flaw in the theory versus reality. I’m confident it will change over time, as a lot of the appraisers from out of the area have determined that the travel time is too great, and have given up.

And finally, check out the FB page for Copperwest. There are three good topics on there, including the morality of walking away, a recent report indicating that housing sizes are shrinking, but that the kitchen is still king, and…..the 2009 Home remodelers report, which tells you what you can expect to get out or any remodel by type and region, great stuff at Copperwest.com, and It’s going to be even Bettter Next Month!

When a business walks away from a building, somehow it’s for the good of the investors. When a person does it….it’s a deep flaw in personal integrity. How’s that again?

Great article by Roger Lowenstein. Think about it….