On Saturday, June 4th, the 2016 Portland Modern Home Tour will give area-residents the rare opportunity to explore eight incredible modern homes in the City of Roses and meet the local architects behind the designs. Modern Home Tours also welcomes the Architecture Foundation of Oregon as the tour’s non-profit partner for the first time.

Portland, Oregon (PRWEB) May 13, 2016

The first weekend in June marks the return of the annual Portland Modern Home Tour. For the 5th consecutive year, Modern Home Tours visits Portland to showcase eight of the area’s most unique homes that exemplify modern architecture and living. Portlandians are invited to get an up close and personal look at these homes, learn from homeowners what it’s like to live in a modern home and find out from where the architects got their inspiration. The tour is self-guided and self-driven, so attendees can explore these architectural treasures at their own pace. This is every Portland resident’s chance to check out “that cool house on the block…”‘

Welcomed as a new addition to the tour this year is the support of the Architecture Foundation of Oregon. They will help staff the event, in return for a donation and the opportunity to use the tour as a fundraising vehicle.

Local architecture expert Brian Libby, founder of portlandarchitecture.com, has carefully curated, selected and confirmed the eight participating homeowners and architects for the 2016 Portland Modern Home Tour:

• For a second year in a row, take a walk through a (different) floating home that lies on the Willamette River in the Sellwood area of Portland. Designed by Integrate Architecture & Planning, p.c., the first floor of the home is an open plan with clear site lines all the way through from east to west. The entry is angled in plan toward the south to be easily visible from the community walkway while also providing a playful geometry which engages the guest. Plants in the solarium, off of the kitchen, provide an interactive privacy for the home and community. The stair walls are fluted glass block, which provide natural light and privacy.

…Participating homes in the 5th annual Portland Modern Home Tour will open their doors for viewing from 11AM – 5PM on Saturday, June 4th, in the Portland, Oregon area. All are invited to attend. Tickets for each tour are $35 in advance online; $40 on the day of the tour. An after-party will be open to all tour-goers after the tour at a location and time TBD. For details on all participants and to buy tickets, visit: http://modernhometours.com/event/2016-portland-modern-home-tour. Additional promotional considerations are offered by Gray Magazine and The Oregonian/Oregonlive.com.

The whole article can be found  HERE  on benzinga.com

Oregon’s unusual and complicated property tax system puts the brakes on how much your bill can grow each year, but it also allows for unavoidable and unexpected exceptions to the rule.

Housing reporter Luke Hammill recently explained some surprising changes in tax bills for residents of Portland’s Lents neighborhood between 2014 and 2015.

To help identify this and other trends in home prices and taxes, we compiled extensive data from tax collectors in Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington counties for both years and calculated differences for every property.

The resulting maps allow you to see where you stand.

The maps indicate both changes in real estate prices across the region and changes in taxation.

You may know that unlike in other states, changes in real market values don’t always correspond directly to changes in Oregon property tax bills.

Effective rates, meaning the size of your bill compared to what your home is worth, vary widely. Gentrifying neighborhoods often end up paying lower effective rates because of the Measure 50 limitation on annual growth.

The system causes a majority of homeowners to pay more than their share of the cost of governments services based on home values, an analysis by The Oregonian/OregonLive found last summer.

Check out the whole story HERE on The Oregonian’s website.

 

In an effort to counteract an increasingly problematic housing crisis in Portland where soaring rents and housing costs have displaced thousands of residents, the Portland Housing Bureau has delivered its highest funding allocation to date to support the construction of affordable homes. Roughly $47 million in both local and federal funding was earmarked last week for eight proposed affordable housing projects.

The city expects the support to create 585 new affordable housing units, as well as preserving another 255 units through renovation. Of the renovated projects, more than 120 of them are specifically targeted for the lowest-income households, meaning those earning at most 30 percent of the median family income.

Last fall, Commissioner Dan Saltzman ordered the Housing Bureau to dispense all of its available resources into Portland’s housing emergency, including urban renewal funds allocated for future years.

The bureau will be working with Home Forward, Central City Concern, Bridge Housing Corp, REACH, and the Meta Housing Corp on these projects, with developments and renovations spanning from north and northeast Portland all the way to the Hazelwood, Lents and Montavilla areas.

The projects were selected to align with a new N/NE Neighborhood Housing Strategy, “A Home for Everyone” plan to end homeless, and give priority to longtime and displaced residents under a new preference policy.

Additionally, the non-profit housing organization Human Solutions is negotiating with Portland housing officials on creating 40 affordable housing units for low income families in Gateway, as well some specifically reserved homes for families at risk of becoming homeless or who are already homeless, and refugee families.

“This unprecedented level of funding is helping move the needle be providing affordable housing for vulnerable Portlanders,” said Kurt Creager, housing bureau director.

The whole story can be found HERE on The Portland Observer website.

When Caitlin and Charles Vestal began looking to buy a home in January, the search quickly felt like a full-time job…

Here’s what they found:

• A market that posted the nation’s largest year-over-year gains in home values for four straight months between October and January.
• Prices that have risen by double-digit percentages in the past year: 17 percent in Portland, according to Zillow, and more than 13 percent region-wide.
• A remarkably low inventory of available homes, even in the traditionally slow winter sales months. In December, inventory hit its lowest level since at least 1999 and has only budged slightly since then.
• Housing prices that haven’t been seen in Portland since before the recession, or, in some cases, ever.

So how to navigate such an intimidating market?

“We just kind of had to wise up very quickly to the fact that it’s an insane game,” Caitlin Vestal said. “And that list prices basically mean nothing.”

The Vestals made four offers. They were rejected three times. Another time, they walked away because of issues with the home. “We had to really emotionally unhook from every house we made an offer on,” Caitlin Vestal said. “Because it was so depressing to keep getting rejected.”

Finally, they found a home: a three-bedroom, one-bathroom bungalow in North Portland’s Portsmouth neighborhood. The Vestals beat out 28 other offers with their $386,000 bid – 29 percent higher than the list price of $299,000.

They recently closed on the property, but they can’t move in until May. In an increasingly common practice, the deal was contingent on letting the previous owners rent the home, free of charge, for 60 additional days – because in this historically tight market, they were concerned about finding another home of their own.

Rising home values expand the market

… At first, buyers didn’t want to look east of Northeast 57th or Southeast 60th avenues, Brennan said. Then, it was 82nd Avenue. Now, buyers are happy as long as they’re west of Interstate 205. The same thing has happened on the city’s southern fringe.

“It used to be, don’t go south of Powell [Boulevard],” Brennan said. “And then it was don’t go south of Woodstock [Boulevard].” Buyers are still continuing to move southward, he added.

Neighborhoods like Foster-Powell and Mount Scott are particularly hot these days, according to Brennan. And the trend extends to suburban areas such as Milwaukie – where a new public transit extension opened last year – and Washington County, which will be home to massive expansions of single-family housing in Hillsboro, Beaverton and Tigard in the near future.

… It’s very common for homes to be on the market for less than a week. In Northeast Portland’s Sabin neighborhood, the median number of days on the market for the 71 homes that sold in 2015 was five, according to data provided by Redfin. The $595,000 median sale price there represented a 28 percent increase from the year before, third-highest in the region.

Renting can be even tougher

… As tough as Portland’s market is for home buyers, it might be even worse for renters. The latest biannual report from the rental industry group Multifamily NW found Portland’s rental vacancy rate was below 3 percent late last year. In close-in east side areas, average units were vacant for less than 12 days.

Rents were rising at an annualized rate of 14 percent, the report found – in some areas of the region, such as Beaverton, prices were increasing twice that fast.

… Another bubble?

Krautter said the most frequent questions he gets from clients are, “Are we in a bubble again?” and, “Is this market sustainable?”

But Krautter doesn’t believe home values are going down anytime soon, as long as inventory remains so low.

“You don’t all of a sudden see prices go down when the market’s this tight,” he said. He thinks “we have a minimum of two years” before prices will stop rising.

Plus, nearly a quarter of home sales in the Portland area in 2015 were all-cash offers, according to the housing research firm RealtyTrac. In those cases, there’s no risk of the buyer defaulting on a loan – and bad loans were a hallmark of last decade’s housing collapse. Increased regulations surrounding mortgage lending have made it tougher to qualify for a loan, as well.

Oregon state economist Josh Lehner doesn’t see price appreciation slowing much in 2016, either. The region is still underbuilding housing relative to the growing population, he said.

“It is increasingly likely that we will not see much improvement in housing affordability until the next recession,” Lehner said. “That is when we know for sure that demand will fall. Population growth will slow considerably, as it always does in recessions, and household formation, as well.”

But right now, Lehner said, “the regional economy is going full throttle.” In January, the state’s unemployment rate hit its lowest level since 2007.

“I just do not see a big enough increase in the housing supply to hold prices down or even slow them considerably,” he said.

**Several paragraphs were omitted from the original article.  Check out the whole story HERE, on the Oregonian’s website.