Best Buy of the Day

FOUND. BEST DEAL in Beaverton.

Here is a 3 bedroom ranch style home listed for $127,000.
It's a Foreclosure that needs some work. Perhaps about $10,000.
Make an offer of $100,000 and earn some instant and sweat equity together.

Link to Full Details

Affordabilty Continues as Housing Inventory Shrinks

Inventory isn't shrinking to a scarcity. However, it is much smaller this winter than it traditionally should be. In fact, in Portland, it is smaller than it was in the peak of summer. Typically, a summer inventory is small, and a winter is larger, because there are more buyers in the summer.

So, what is up with this winter? Well, the winter is usually plagued with homes that haven't sold. But this year, the sellers have reduced their numbers, and the interest rates have kept a sustainable number of buyers.

Thus making a lower supply and demand for inventory. Is it a great time to sell? or is it a great time to buy? The answer depends. If you want to sell and have less competition... Yes. If you want to buy and take advantage of a lower payment with an under 5% interest rate... Yes.

Will it be better in the spring or summer of 2011? No one knows. All we know is what we have right now. More buyer than normal, and less sellers than typical. Take your destiny.

Innovation starts and ends between Portland and Seattle

A couple of friends in cities near Portland and Seattle came up with a new concept of dispensing beer without having to use your hands.  Still provides a head, and frees up your hands to pour even more simultaneously.  The concept was tested and patented and now is being picked up in NFL stadiums and concert venues, such as big U2 sell out crowds.  Anheuser-Busch has offered them an undisclosed deal that has put them on the map.  Of course most of us beer enthusiasts would like our beer to take its sweet time being poured, but when I'm standing in a long line at an event, I would be pleased to see the hustle of guys like these with this new technology being able to fork out 56 beers in just a minute.

I think the only thing part about speed that we should be concerned with is, can the cashier keep up. The guy asking to break a hundred dollar bill for his 2 beers is going to have his knees knocked out by Tonya Harding's bodyguard. innovation

Read the story.

Wealth-Zip

Does your zip code rank in the top-5 wealthiest in the Portland metro area?

1. Lake Oswego, 97034
2. West Linn, 97068
3. NW Portland suburbia, 97229
4. Portland metro, 97221
5. Happy Valley, 97086

Map these zip codes yourself, click here.

Not a big surprise that Lake Oswego is #1.  However, Happy Valley took me back a little.  With some of the highest foreclosures in the city, the citizens of Happy Valley are bringing down some of the most dough.  Hmm.

A list complied by ESRI 2010 Demographic Data and Tapestry Segmentation, and printed in January's Portland Business Journal, ranks the top 25.

The study measures and ranks household income, home value, population per capita income and lifestyle.

It breaks down the demographic into a several groups.

Boomburbs

     33.8 average age, large population growth, double incomes, double cars, vacation at Disneyworld

Metropolitans
     37.7 average age, half singles and marrieds, often travel, and active in the outdoors.

Suburban Splendor     41.6 average age (this blogger denies being close to 40), well educated, love the home improvement, regulary hit the gym and travel for business.

Urban Chic 
     42.7 average age, well educated, married, large single family homes, travel extensively, play golf, track investments...  YES, if you are from Lake Oswego, this is talking about you.

Steve Roesch, pdxhomegroup

Portlandia on IFC

What did you think of the first episode???