Oregon Real Estate Blog

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Country Property in the Mohawk Valley Oregon

This nice country home in the Mohawk Valley features solar power.

This nice country home in the Mohawk Valley features solar power.

This nice listing of mine is in the Mohawk Valley, Oregon, and it recently sold.  For those of you who haven’t been out there, the Mohawk Valley runs north east of Springfield to and beyond the little town of Marcola.  It’s picturesque and relaxed.

The house is on 3 acres, is clean and pristine, and has neat stuff associated with country property, like a chicken coop, a pasture, a shop , a woodshed and a greenhouse.  It also has solar power, which is a feature you don’t often see around here.  It’s also close to town, keeping those commute times and gas dollars low.

It’s RMLS # 12401459, located at 90470 Marcola Road, Springfield, Oregon.  It was reasonably priced and sold quickly.  If you’d like more information, on other country properties, please contact me.

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Bell Real Estate

Buying and selling real estate in Eugene Springfield is never easy.  Houses are big ticket items and getting it right is important.  How do you get it right?  I think the best way is to find a good Realtor who’s honest and understands the market.  Bell Real Estate is 100% local and has been serving clients in Lane County for over 45 years.  How do you stay in business that long?  We think by doing it right.

Bell is a full service firm, probably best known for its property management, in which we’re a market leader.  We also have Realtors, of whom I’m one, doing a brisk business buying and selling property for clients.  If you have questions about buying or selling real estate in Lane County, I’d be glad to help.

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Bell Real Estate’s Main Office at 630 River Road

 

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2013 Eugene Springfield Real Estate Prices: Up

The new year makes a convenient time to look back and also pull out our crystal ball.  2012 may have marked the bottom of our real estate market in Eugene & Springfield.  Prices have trended up in the last few months.  Mostly, this is brought about by lack of supply, that is too few houses actively for sale.

In real estate’s boom years, before 2008, supplies of houses for sale dipped below two months, which was a strong seller’s market.  At the depths of the Great Recession, supplies greater than a year were seen around Eugene Springfield, indicating a strong buyer’s market.  Lately, we’ve been at 6 months or less, which is a mild sellers market.

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Eugene Springfield January 2013

Why the lack of supply of houses for sale?  One reason is Senate Bill 1552.  This good intentioned Bill had the effect of decreasing the rate of completed foreclosures, so fewer of them are on the market and more are still in the process of foreclosure.  The Oregon Supreme Court is scheduled to take a look at this in January 2013.  My guess is that they or the Legislature will change something.

Fundamentally, the prices of real estate are affected by things like inward migration and unemployment rate.  We’ve had fewer immigrants to Oregon in the last few years, and unemployment rates are stubbornly high, although decreasing.

My prediction for house prices in 2013 for Eugene Springfield is flat to mildly increasing.  I’ve been wrong before, though, and we’ll have to wait and see.

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Oregon Tsunami Damage

Cities on the Pacific Ocean are vulnerable to Tsunami.

Tsunami damage to Oregon following the terrible March 11 9.0 earthquake in Japan was relatively light although Governor Kitzhaber is seeking disaster-area status for some coastal areas.  Damage in California was greater, and there was one known fatality.

Crescent City, just south of the Oregon border, was particularly hard hit—this area is unfortunately vulnerable to tsunamis and was devastated after the 1964 Alaskan earthquake.

Oregon’s major populations centers, namely: Portland, Salem, Corvallis and Eugene are all immune to tsunamis because the Willamette Valley is separated from the coast by tall mountains.  However, coastal communities like Brookings, CoosBay, Florence, Newport, Tillamook, CanonBeach and Astoria are vulnerable.  Fortunately, they have evacuation plans and procedures. 

Since the Japanese earthquake occurred thousands of miles away across the Pacific Ocean, there was a warning period of hours, and evacuations in Oregonwent smoothly.  The evacuations were prudent, but ultimately proved not needed to prevent the loss of life.  Better, of course, to be safe than sorry—the loss of life in Japan is over 13,000 people at the time of this writing, and no-doubt will climb.

Many properties around Lane County are in flood zones and may require flood insurance.  Typically, if you’re in the 100-year flood zone, your mortgage lender will require flood insurance.  Most homeowners’ casualty policies do not insure against floods or earthquakes without special riders.  You are only insured for what your policy says—not what you think you’re insured against.  It doesn’t hurt to ask your insurance agent for what perils you’re actually covered.

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Eugene: A Pipeline Runs Through It

Many Eugene residents don’t realize it, but we have our own 8” petroleum pipeline extending from Portland to Eugene at the tank-farm off Prairie Road.  The pipeline brings in 1.8 million gallons per day to Eugene, and was completed in 1962 at a cost of $7 million.

The tank farm has a capacity of 700K barrels, or nearly 30 million gallons.  Oregon neither refines nor produces liquid hydrocarbons so all that gasoline and diesel has to come from somewhere—and a lot of it comes from Portland to the Eugene terminal. Portland is fed by marine deliveries and two pipelines from refineries in Northwestern Washington.

In fact, 90% of the petroleum used in Oregon comes from just four refineries in Washington State, which get 80% of their crude oil from the Northshore of Alaska.

If your property has the pipeline running through it, your title policy should show an easement from about 50 years ago.  However, if your property merely has the pipeline near it, local knowledge is about the only way to know it—that and pipeline warning signs.

Carrying petroleum to a town near you.

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Green Buildings Are Worth More

Cap rates for LEED certified commercial buildings are ½ percentage point better than for standard, non-green buildings.  Green building is a nice concept, but the marketplace’s acceptance will really help it take hold.

In Eugene and Springfield, there are very few LEED certified buildings so it’s hard to know how they’ll fare in the marketplace.  One problem with both commercial and residential green buildings is that appraisers don’t yet value them appropriately.  Of course, that will change—but for now it can cause problems if lenders are involved.

More buildings are going green these days.

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Loans for Borrowers with 500 Credit Scores?

If the Great Recession has damaged your credit score like so many of us, getting a home mortgage has been nearly impossible.  But—Wells Fargo recently changed their policies to allow people with credit scores as low as 500 to get loans or home mortgages.

Although—to minimize risk—they’re requiring a higher down payment for those of us who are credit-challenged.

Will the other three big lenders (US Bank, Chase and Bank of America) follow suit?  While it’s too early to tell—my guess is yes.

 

Loosening credit: 1 down and 3 to go

 

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Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP)

According to a recent WSJ article, most mortgage modifications don’t work.  Less than 2% of the projected allotment of $75 billion for the HAMP program has actually been spent to help homeowners avoid foreclosure.

Nationwide, 6.7 million homes were lost to foreclosure or short sale in the decade ending in 2010.  Half again as many are projected to meet the same fate in the next 3 years.  If projections are accurate, that should keep it a buyer’s market through 2013.

The number of distressed properties in Eugene and Springfield isn’t exactly known—but they are common and I do a lot of them.  Rejection from the HAMP program was about 3 of every 4 participants in the western states, including Oregon.  If mortgage modification doesn’t work, a short sale may be a good option for you.

Most mortgage modificatins don't work.

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New Home Building Slows

New home construction fell to an all time low in February 2011, with an annualized national number of building permits at 517K.  In Eugene Springfield new residential building is very slow right now.  New building permits issued in January were reported to be 27, down 13% from January 2010.  466 building permits were issued in Eugene Springfield for all of last year.

Distressed properties are often cheaper than replacement cost, and there’s a lot of inventory of all types of houses to be sold; until both of those change, I don’t expect new house building to pick up much.

It’s still a great time to buy, though.  Prices are down in Eugene Springfield and there are some great values.

There are fewer homes being built in Eugene Springfield in 2011

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Eugene’s Railroad

We don’t often think about the Railroad in Eugene, unless there’s a problem–it’s just one of those things we take for granted.  We are on the main-line between Seattle and Los Angeles, and local manufacturers still ship and receive product by rail car, a very efficient transportation method.  (A train can move a ton of freight over 400 miles on 1 gallon of fuel, some three times more efficient than trucks).  And, shooting up to Portland or Seattle via Amtrack is popular.

Gone, at least for now, are the major switching operations in the Eugene railyard.  After Union Pacific bought Southern Pacific, many of the Eugene yard’s functions were consolidated to Roseville and elsewhere.  When I was growing up here, S.P.’s yard was a significant employer.  In the necessary drive towards efficiency, those jobs seem to be gone.  Interestingly, rail shipping rates in the U.S. are the cheapest in the world.

On a brighter note, the elimination of the Eugene switching yard has made the adjoining neighborhoods in Santa Clara, River Road and Bethel more desirable.   Train noise was a perceived problems when switching was occurring, but that’s been largely made a non-issue.

Eugene is connected to the U.S. by rail