Local broker: Market here ‘alive and well’
Local real estate professionals say this is a much different market than the one in the national headlines
Jaime Valdez / The Times
SOLD — Real estate broker Eva Sanders stands in front of a Bull Mountain home that recently sold within a week of being on the market.
Lessons for today: Get rid of the shag carpet and stop thinking the national news about housing markets applies to this side of the country.
First, take a look at national headlines. They’ll scream, “Is the housing market getting worse?” or “Has the housing market bottomed out?”
Maybe it has everywhere else but not in Oregon — and definitely not in Portland or its surrounding communities, including Tigard, Tualatin and Beaverton, according to local agents.
The trouble seems to be that not very many people realize this.
“What’s going on nationally is not necessarily relevant to the local market,” said Brian Bellairs, principle broker at Meadows Group.
Meadows Group is based in Tigard and Portland, covering both the west and east sides.
“Different states have their own different markets,” said Bellairs. Portland itself has “many, many markets.” What may be a problem in another state, or even another city, may not be such a big deal here.
“I think our market is OK now,” said Bellairs. “It’s a very good time for buyers to buy. Anyone who doesn’t get in right now will look back (and) they’ll say, ‘I should have bought then.’”
“The market is alive and well,” said Eva Sanders, also a principal broker at Meadows Group.
But she says there is always the challenge of making sellers understand that if they want their home to sell well, they have to present it well.
She says many sellers still think they live in a 2005 housing market when buyers were basically standing in line for houses.
“2005 was an incredible sellers’ market,” said Sanders. “In the east side, there were multiple offers on a single home. People thought, ‘I can get anything for my house and I don’t have to do anything to it.’ That has all changed.
“It’s not 2005. Now buyers have more inventory to choose from. It’s just like when you’re shopping; you can pick up and put back. Buyers now have the ability to comparison shop.”
Her rule: “If you compete you can sell, if you’re not willing to compete, you won’t sell.”
Sanders recommends taking “out the obnoxious yellow carpet in the back bedroom... If you’re going to leave in the green shag carpet, why would a buyer buy your house?”
She says it’s been a struggle to convince sellers that there is a different market out there now.
Bellairs agrees it can be a challenge to show people how the national problems are not necessarily the local problems.
“We still have a good market,” he said. “But we don’t have a market like 2005 and 2006.”
In fact, he said, “Oregon has one of the best markets. It’s steady and predictable.”
He says he usually doesn’t have a problem convincing sellers of the necessity of cleaning up their homes. With the exception of the “extremely hot market” in 2005 and 2006, this is what he has always advised.
Sanders recently sold a house on Bull Mountain in less than a week. Of course, it took the sellers around 30 days to get the house ready.
“They did everything,” she said. And it sold.
Another part of looking at the market locally instead of nationally is for sellers to understand exactly what sort of home they are trying to sell.
“It depends on where you are and what you have,” said Sanders.
If, for example, it’s a townhouse up at Progress Ridge in Beaverton, Sanders says, “There are way more townhouses than we can absorb for a long time. It’s probably not going to sell.”
Here’s where the Realtors come in.
“We take your house and look at it specifically,” said Sanders.
Bellairs says most sellers understand that this housing market is “not a market to sit back and hope your home sells. I’m having people coming to me . . . and saying, ‘You’re the expert. I need to listen.’”