Before-and-after photos of a home renovation in Palm Springs, California ..read more

Welcome to the fifth installment of our series: All About Data!  Last week we discussed how sellers and their agents set a list price (click here for last week’s post); this week we’re moving on to the next section of our Heat Map – Listings. Specifically, New Listings and what we can learn from their patterns and trends. How New Listing are Determined New Listings are homes that have just come on the market. On our Heat Map, the number of New Listings in a given month is factored into Inventory as well as the percent of homes sold. Sometimes a listing will go under contract (also called ..read more

Welcome to the fourth installment of our series: All About Data! Last week we discussed the trends we see in prices (click here for last week’s post); this week we’re talking about how sellers and their agents determine a LIST PRICE. Setting an accurate list price is a difficult feat and setting the price too high or too low can have negative consequences for the seller. Setting a list price that is higher than the market will bear means a home will sit on the market for too long and potential buyers may not even consider it. Eventually the seller must either cut the price to induce more inter ..read more

Think is busier than ever! And to continue to provide world-class service to our amazing clients, we are hiring a Marketing and Operations Manager! Details: Monday – Friday, 9am-5pm Work from home until office reopens, at which point the job will be located at the Think Real Estate office in northeast Portland Health insurance, ten paid holidays, three weeks paid vacation per year. About Us: Think Real Estate is a successful real estate brokerage in Northeast Portland. We are a team of over 30 brokers and 15 support staff, and we pride ourselves on doing an excellent job for our clients whil ..read more

Welcome to the third installment of our new series: All About Data! This week we’re talking about Price Trends. Now that we have an understanding of why we use Median prices (click here for last week’s post!), let’s look at how we use Median Sales Price data to identify trends in the market. As you may already know, prices have been going up up up in the Portland Metro area. In the month of March 2020 the Median Sales Price was $425,000. 12 months later – in February 2021 – it had risen to $479,100, an increase of over 12%.  Chart 1 Current Trends Compared to Historical Trends If we loo ..read more

The Median Home Price jumped up quite a bit in February, to to $479,100 – a new record high for the Portland Metro Area. This represents a 17.7% over February of last year, which is the largest year-over-year increase in Median Price for a single month in over eight years. Continued low inventory is pushing prices up. Inventory in February was just 1.0 month, which is just over half the inventory we had last February. New listings and pending sales were both down compared to last year as well. With how low inventory is, the drop in pending sales compared to last year (15%) is not unexpected ..read more

Welcome to the second installment of our new series: All About Data! Last week we introduced our new Think Heat Map and this week we’re talking about PRICES: In real estate there are two different price metrics we have available to us: Median Sales Price and Average Sales Price. We prefer to use the Median Sales Price when looking at market trends and making forecasts. What’s the difference? Most people are familiar with Averages, but how does the Average Sales Price differ from the Median Sales Price? The Average Sales Price is calculated by adding up the price of each home sold during a give ..read more

We at Think love data and education and we are very excited to introduce a new tool we’ve developed! Below is our Think Heat Map. You may be wondering, what is a heat map? A heat map is a way to organize data in a visual way to highlight trends or abnormalities across various data sets. (Click here or on the image below to see the full PDF.) We’ve created this heat map to show you what’s going on in the Portland real estate market. As you can see, this is A LOT of information. What does it all mean?? Well, over the next few months we will be diving into this data and breaking down what all th ..read more

The intense seller’s market we saw in the closing months of 2020 continued in January. Up 13.3% from last year, the Median Sales Price hit $460,000 in January – matching the all-time high we saw in October. Even in a strong market, prices in January are typically lower than the height of the previous year and are the lowest point of the year to come. This does not bode well for buyers in the local housing market as we’ve already seen prices climb almost 50% in the last five years. The number of homes that sold in January dropped by over a third from December, reflecting the record low invento ..read more

In December the Oregon legislature allocated $150 million to a Landlord Compensation Fund to help landlords that cannot collect rent due to the ongoing pandemic. If you own residential property in Oregon and have been unable to collect rent from your current tenants you may be eligible to receive funds. To be eligible, your tenants must have declared financial hardship due to the pandemic and you must apply online. The State of Oregon’s Housing and Community Services department launched the first monthly application round online this week. The application portal will be open until 4pm on ..read more