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Susan's Online Guide to PortlandLet me Help You Find a Home and a Neighborhood |
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Welcome to my Web site about the Portland, Oregon, metropolitan area. It's my way of helping you become acquainted with the neighborhoods and communities of the Portland metro area and to inform you about the Portland area housing market. Your comments and suggestions about my Web site are always welcome. If you have questions or if you are interested in buying or selling a home in the Portland area, contact me online or call me at (503) 497-2984. Susan Marthens
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Real Estate Market |
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Portland home buyers out in force, but sellers a no-show in AprilMay 16 − Home buyers were out in force in April, signing more sales contracts than they have since a tax credit spurred a buying frenzy in early 2010. But Portland-area homeowners are still sitting by the sidelines. New listings aren't showing up, leaving would-be buyers fighting over what's on the market. "This is the time of year when we typically see inventory balloon," said Peter G. Clark, a principal broker with Keller Williams in Portland. "They're just not bringing homes on the market. There's a real scramble for the inventory that exists." April home sales numbers released Tuesday by the Regional Multiple Listing Service show a market where demand outpaced supply. That contributed to an increase in the median sales price, a sign of stabilizing home values. The month's median sale price was $225,000, 2.3 percent higher than a year earlier. The average, however, fell 1.8 percent to $262,400. Read more... Ten housing market set for double-digit price gainsMay 19 − Ten hard-hit housing markets will record double-digit price increases through 2013, according to a report Wednesday. And with mortgage rates low, many house hunters have already started to pounce on bargains, said David Stiff, chief economist at Fiserv, a financial analytics company that prepared the forecast. "Some markets may have overshot to the downside, and people are jumping in to try to catch the bottom," Stiff said. Nationwide, home prices will start rebounding late this year and gain an average of 4% a year over the next five years, Fiserv projects. Read more... |
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Homes & Health |
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Pearl living at its best
Doubts case on the 'Good' in 'Good Cholesterol'May 17 — The name alone sounds so encouraging: HDL, the “good cholesterol.” The more of it in your blood, the lower your risk of heart disease. So bringing up HDL levels has got to be good for health. Or so the theory went. Now, a new study that makes use of powerful databases of genetic information has found that raising HDL levels may not make any difference to heart disease risk. People who inherit genes that give them naturally higher HDL levels throughout life have no less heart disease than those who inherit genes that give them slightly lower levels. If HDL were protective, those with genes causing higher levels should have had less heart disease. Read more... LEED BeachHaus I prefab
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News |
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News from the Pacific Northwest Portal
The Columbia River's worrisome chemistry
Oregon doesn't win the grand prize, but kids do well at Intel International Science and Engineering FairMay 19 — Oregon kids didn't bring home the big Intel International Science and Engineering Fair trophy this year, but three Beaverton students won Best of Category awards. Intel announced the winners Friday morning as the week-long competition with more than 1,500 young scientists came to a close in Pennsylvania. Some of the names are becoming well-known in the world of high school science. Naomi Shah, 16, Sunset High School, Best of Category Award, Environmental Science. Project: An Experimental Study of the Impact of Target Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) Emissions on Lung Health PLUS a Novel Risk Assessment Model to Predict their Effect on the Peak Expiratory Flow Rate (PEFR) and the Development of a New VOC Adsorption Filter Raghav Tripathi,16, Westview High School. Best of Category Award, Cellular and Molecular Biology. Project: Towards the Cure: Abnormal Protein Interactions Between Amyloid Beta and Tau as a Therapeutic Target for Alzheimer's Disease. They were selected from 446 local science fairs in nearly 70 countries, regions and territories. Read more... State denies city request to delay covering reservoirsMay 19 — The Oregon Health Authority has rejected the Portland Water Bureau’s request to delay covering open-air water reservoirs at Mt. Tabor and Washington parks. The decision means Portland must end the use of the reservoirs by the end of 2020. Portland had requested an extension until 2026. “We are very disappointed in this decision,” said bureau Administrator David Shaff in a prepared statement. “We made a case to the state that was very similar to the one made by New York City in successfully extending its reservoir compliance schedule. Oregon is clearly choosing a very different approach for administering federal drinking water rules." Read more... Residents of remote Oregon town build a gathering place
A new Sellwood museum celebrates the fun, magical world of puppetsMay 19 — The modest old storefront on Southeast Umatilla Street, once the Sellwood neighborhood's main commercial drag, has been through at least a half-dozen incarnations in the past century. Those include a grocery store, a warehouse, a bike repair hub and a cabinet-building workshop. But that prosaic past is but a prologue, now that Ping-Pong Pint Sized Puppet Museum has taken up residence. Walk through the doors of Portland's latest and proudest entry in the keep-the-city-weird sweepstakes and come face to face with a reproduction of Lamb Chop, the sock puppet of Shari Lewis fame. Hanging nearby are a monkey and a drummer boy, both original midcentury puppets that were predecessors to Howdy Doody, as well as a Miss Piggy dating to 1977 and a slew of elaborate puppets hand-built by the museum's founders and impresarios, Steve Overton and Marty Richmond. "This is such a fantastic world, this world of puppetry and animation. We are creating the illusion of life," says Overton, who has been bound up with puppeteering since the age of nine, when he traveled across Germany with his family putting on puppet shows at elementary schools, carnivals and military bases. Read more... Portland lands nine spots on Opinionated About Dining blog's list of country's best 100 cheap eatsMay 19 — After whiffing on last week's Travel + Leisure best burger city list, Portland is finally dominating again, at least in the completely arbitrary online best-of list department. The Opinionated About Dining blog released their list of the country's 100 best cheap eats last week, and Portland was heavily represented with nine entries, from Apizza Scholls to the Country Cat to Stumptown Coffee (at No. 2). The blog, which normally centers on fine-dining establishments in the modernist vein (Castagna was the only Oregon restaurant to make their overall best-of list), noted in their entry on Bunk Sandwiches that, "on a per capita basis, no other city in America might have as many quality inexpensive dining spots as Portland." Well said. Read more... Is it now Lloyd's District turn?
Milwaukie light rail line attracts $85M from fedsMay 18 — Oregon’s U.S. senators announced jointly Thursday that the Portland area’s transit agency will receive $85 million in federal money for the new Portland-Milwaukie light-rail line. The money, which goes to TriMet, comes from the U.S. Department of Transportation New Starts program. Senators Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden announced the funding on Thursday afternoon shortly before TriMet revealed it had also collected $7.5 million in federal grants to buy 18 buses, including four hyrbid vehicles. The Milwaukie line is expected to cost $1.4 billion, with federal money eventually funding at least half the project’s costs. “The Portland to Milwaukie line will expand Portland’s world class public transit system even further throughout the metropolitan region,” Merkley said in a statement. “As a nation we must reduce our addiction to overseas oil. The MAX’s success has proven that when people have good transit options, they often prefer to leave their cars at home. This grant helps give more people that option, which is good for them and good for our country.” Read more... |
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Imagine browsing at Powell's Books, catching a play at Portland Center Stage, people watching, and walking in this vibrant corner of Portland! This and more are possible while living in this light-filled two bedroom/two bathroom unit at The Pinnacle, situated in a quiet corner of the Pearl. You will be steps away from parks, shops, cafes, restaurants, galleries, and the Street Car. You can read the paper, have morning coffee, or afternoon treats while enjoying your northeast view of the river and Mount St. Helens. Unit includes deeded parking space and deeded storage space. Walk to three parks: 
May 18 — This is BeachHaus I in the White Rock area of British Columbia. The home (like the neighbor, BeachHaus II) is on the market, should you have an interest in a luxe, modern, prefabricated home with incredible views. BeachHaus — located at 15611 Columbia Avenue — is waiting for LEED certification from the CAGBC and has three bedrooms, two full bathrooms, two half bathrooms, a two-car garage, and about 2,085 square feet. BeachHaus is listed for sale at $1,350,000, which includes a clean design by noted architectural firm Pb Elemental, a factory-built structure of four modules by Method Homes, and the full project development by InHaus Development. To keep energy in check, BeachHaus has dual-pane low-E windows, Control4 home automation, an air-to-water heat exchange system, energy monitoring, soy-based spray foam insulation, an automatic skylight, Bosch appliances, and ultra-efficient laundry with steam dry, etc. For water conservation, the 
May 19 — Five years ago, scientists from the 
May 19 — Nearly every Northwest city and town has a center of gravity -- a place with a heartbeat. You know: Portland’s Pioneer Courthouse Square or Seattle’s Pike Place Market . But in the remote town of Arock , in southeast Oregon, that kind of spot has been missing for a long, long time. That’s about to change. Anna King has this story about a far-flung community that’s building a new place to gather. On the twisting gravel road to Arock, there isn’t much. Sagebrush, tall grass, barbed wire and a whole lot of wind. The nearest big town is Boise -– two hours away. This is way out there -- like way out. So when construction recently started on a new community center in town people in Arock took notice, including Kirk Eiguren. He’s 12 years old. He tells me about the winter day a truck dropped of the community center’s new septic tank. 
May 18 — That was the vision for the blocks around the Lloyd Center adopted by the City Council when it approved the Central City Plan in 1988. A 2007 analysis shows the area is zoned for nearly 32 million square feet of additional development, including more than 11,000 new housing units. Now, the first multi-block project to embrace this ambitious goal is beginning to move through the city's development review process. The proposal includes 780 new housing units and nearly 51,000 square feet of new retail space on four blocks at the intersection of the existing MAX light-rail line and the eastside Portland Streetcar extension that is scheduled to open later this year. Langley Investment Properties, a development company that owns the blocks and a number of adjacent parcels, submitted the proposal. According to documents submitted to the city Bureau of Development Services, the project would include four residential buildings ranging from seven to 32 stories. The tallest building would be 325 feet, roughly the same as the tallest residential tower in the South Waterfront project. Each of the structures would have retail stores on the ground level. 