Success Story: 4750 NE Glisan ST

This beautiful bungalow maintains the charms of its 1923 construction while featuring the updated amenities of modern living. The expansive porch and diverse back yard provide endless opportunities for outdoor relaxation and entertainment. Inside, the angled framework around the doors and windows serves as a playfully classic flourish to augment the traditional wood floors and fireplace. The open, vibrant kitchen and its breakfast nook are a perfect combination. Also featuring an enormous family room on the lower level, this attractive North Tabor home is an ideal urban sanctuary.

The sellers moved out of this home to maximize stylistic control for the stagers, allowing them to fully envision each space without incorporating any resident furniture. The result is an artistic portrayal of each room, beautifully captured by the M Media Team. Striving to present what it actually feels like to be in the home, both the photos and videography focused on conveying the open, yet intimate nature of the property.

Such dedication to the emotional experience of the home resulted in a successful sale, after being on the market for less than three weeks.

Marketing is Everything

Marketing truly does make a difference when it comes to selling homes. Number of days on the market and sale price are the two important factors to most home buyers when selling their home. At M Realty, the numbers show that when spectacular, consistent marketing combines with a great agent, homes sell faster for more money.

In December, the average number of days on the market for homes in the Portland metro area was 100 days. For M Realty, the average days on market was 36 days less at 64 days on the market. Selling faster means more money in your pocket--one less mortgage payment, less selling expenses, and less hassle.

Open publication - Free publishing - More home

Exceptional marketing, both online and in print, helps your home stand out among the rest on the market. We do this by telling the story of every home we sell at M Realty, big or small, new or old. There's a buyer out there for your home, and a quality presentation of what your home has to offer will find the ideal buyer sooner.

Portland Streetcar Update

To those who missed the Grand Opening of the Central Loop on September 22-23, by the time you read this the Portland Streetcar should be alive and operating. The new route, called the Loop, begins at Portland State University and travels north through downtown, and  crosses the Broadway Bridge. From there, it proceeds along Northeast Broadway and Northeast Weidler streets, down Seventh Avenue, west on Oregon Street to the Oregon Convention Center, and south on Northeast and Southeast Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. to OMSI.  The return route is along Northeast and Southeast Grand Avenue and Northeast Broadway.  It will hopefully become a true loop in 2015 when the new Willamette River bridge is completed; currently the Portland Streetcar is $7.4 million short of the funds to make the connection from OMSI to the bridge.  The streetcar continues to operate its older west side route from Northwest 23rd to Avenue to Southwest Waterfront—giving downtown residents greater service.

Another new change is that downtown residents no longer have the free streetcar use they have been accustomed to. Starting in September, Portland Streetcar Inc. and TriMet, which runs the car on contract with the non-profit, instituted the following fare system: $1 to ride the streetcar for 2 hours: $2.50 to ride the streetcar and any TriMet facility - bus or light rail - for 2 hours, switching at will: $5 to ride any sort of mass transit all day. There are Honored Citizen fares for the elderly for $1.60, youth fares for $1, and monthly and yearly passes at reduced rates.  These can be purchased at Safeway or the Lloyd District Transportation Management Association office at 700 N.E. Multnomah St.

More Success Stories

Marketing matters. When exceptional marketing combines with the right price, anything is possible. In today's market, high quality photography, videography, and presentation stands out. Here are just a handful of last month's successes. 913 SW Westwood - $400,000

This classic Hillsdale bungalow features an expansive lower level and a great location in SW Portland. The M Realty media team did a full marketing production for this listing. The result was an outstanding custom website, flawless print materials, and interest from serious home buyers who fell in love with the property.

After this home went on the market, it received multiple offers within 6 hours. The house sold for $30,000 above asking price at $430,000, and the transaction closed within 32 days.

6900 SE 28th - $920,000

We captured the story of this gracious colonial home with our M Realty media team, which included our on-staff photographer, videographer, designer and copywriter. The team produced a beautiful website and print materials, such as our multi-page Super Flyer. All of these materials highlighted the incredible details and spaces in this classic Eastmoreland property, and ultimately helped find a buyer who fell in love with the home.

2201 NW Pettygrove - $609,000

With an exceptional location in the heart of Northwest Portland, this updated and spacious townhome offers plenty of space for entertaining and living in the city. An open floor plan connects the gourmet kitchen to the expansive living space, and the dining area opens to the terrace for indoor/outdoor entertaining. An abundance of windows keep the various spaces of this home bright and airy.

With a full suite of marketing materials, everything this downtown home had to offer was elegantly marketed to lots of potential buyers. This property was on the market for 46 days, and the open house had 27 potential home buyers. This home, which was listed for $609,000, sold for 99% of the listing price.

Northeast Portland Real Estate Snapshot

The story of the real estate market in Northeast Portland for the last year has been that there are buyers, but not many houses for them to pick from. The absorption rate topped out in June of 2011 at 18%, which means that almost one in five listings sold that month. That's a really good number. The number hovered around 14-15% for most of the rest of the year.

Stage Your Home, Even If You Have Good Taste

Staging a vacant or not so cute house is obvious, but your house is lovely. Special. Decorated Perfectly. To your taste, as it should be since you live there. But you are moving, and someone else has to find it lovely, special and decorated perfectly. For their taste, whatever that may be. Staging makes a home appealing to the widest variety of buyers. If done well, it highlights the best parts of the home, shows the best use for every space, and makes it the place where every buyer wants to stay. Permanently.

Don't think of it with a whoa is me my agent doesn't like my house. It is the same as hiring a professional to design a new product for the market.

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This staging has been done by Spade and Archer Design Agency. I know that whatever the style or price range of a listing, they can capitalize on the features of the house and feel of the neighborhood to make a home pop.

Southeast Portland Real Estate Snapshot

Southeast Portland has the most houses and usually has the most listings in Portland. Over the last year I have seen a reduction in the number of properties listed for sale across the Metro area, and this has been very dramatic in SE Portland. Over the last few years there have been around 1300 to 1600 houses for sale at any time, but in November 2011 there were on 800 actively listed properties for sale. The good news is that the number of sales over the last year has increased, so a larger percentage of the homes listed are being sold every month. This is called the absorption rate. On the graph above you can see that the blue bars- the number of properties for sale- trended down over the last year. The purple- sales- did a slight upswing through the summer. Normally the number of listings does a dramatic bell curve, peaking in the summer. This year the inventory of properties available to buy did not rise during the year, and I saw this affect my clients greatly. Qualified buyers have been looking for the right house all summer and fall, and they quality properties sell immediately. I think that there is a backlog of buyers, and once people start putting houses on the market in the spring, people will be surprised at how quickly homes that are in good condition and priced right sell.

The numbers are broken down in the chart below:

Beaumont Photo Tour

The Beaumont Neighborhood of NE Portland is known for a variety of house styles, mainly bungalows, English cottages, andclassic Four Squares. The neighborhood is also known for great yards, with lots of flowers, vegetable gardens, and unique landscaping features. I have taken many photos of the neighborhood and have made a gallery of them so you can see what the area is like.  If you are interested in what's happening in the real estate market you can view homes for sale in Beaumont. [nggallery id=3]