Redfin’s Free Home Buying Class on October 20th in Hawthorne

Redfin’s Portland team is hosting a free Home Buying Class at the Lucky Lab Brew Pub on October 20th from 6 p.m. – 9 p.m. Our local agent Jeff Bale, along with other speakers, will be on hand to give you the latest stats on what’s going on in the market, guidance for picking the right mortgage loan, navigating the offer and closing process, and what it’s like to work with Redfin.

The class is free and we’ll also have free dinner and drinks provided. Please sign up here:

RSVP for our free Portland Home Buying 101 Class

If you’d like to meet with one of our agents before the class, please get in touch.

Hope to see you there!

Case-Shiller: Summer is Kind to Portland Home Prices

Before we get going with this month’s Case-Shiller post, I’d like to apologize for the lack of an update last month. Long story short, this particular duty slipped through the cracks while I was out on leave. We heard from a number of readers who were lamenting the missing post. Rest assured, we have heard you and it will not happen again!

It’s time for our monthly check-in of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices (HPI). The Case-Shiller data is generally considered to be the most reliable measure of overall home price changes for a region, since they only consider repeat sales of homes when calculating their index, instead of looking at all the homes that sold in a given month.

For the full source data behind this post, hit the S&P/Case-Shiller website. For a more detailed explanation of how the Case-Shiller Home Price Index is calculated, check out their methodology pdf. Also remember that the data released on the last Tuesday of a given month is for the period two months prior (i.e. – July data is released in September).

Here are the basic Case-Shiller stats for the Portland/Vancouver area* as of July:

Only two of the twenty metro areas tracked by Case-Shiller saw a decrease in their HPI between June and July (vs. none from May to June): Phoenix and Las Vegas. Weirdly, Detroit saw the biggest increase, followed by Minneapolis.

Here’s a look at the latest local tiered data, back through 2000:

And here’s a closer look at the recent changes, with the vertical and horizontal axes zoomed in to show just the last year:

All three of Portland’s tiers gained ground in July. Month to month, the low tier was up 0.8%, the middle tier rose 0.2%, and the high tier increased 1.1%.

Read the rest of this entry »

Case-Shiller: Spring Continues for Portland Home Prices

It’s time for our monthly check-in of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices (HPI). The Case-Shiller data is generally considered to be the most reliable measure of overall home price changes for a region, since they only consider repeat sales of homes when calculating their index, instead of looking at all the homes that sold in a given month.

For the full source data behind this post, hit the S&P/Case-Shiller website. For a more detailed explanation of how the Case-Shiller Home Price Index is calculated, check out their methodology pdf. Also remember that the data released on the last Tuesday of a given month is for the period two months prior (i.e. – May data is released in July).

Here are the basic Case-Shiller stats for the Portland area* as of May:

Only three of the twenty metro areas tracked by Case-Shiller saw a decrease in their HPI between April and May (down from 7 in April and 18 in March). Boston ousted DC for the biggest increase, gaining 2.7% on the month. Only Tampa, Las Vegas, and Detroit continued to fall.

Here’s a look at the latest local tiered data, back through 2000:

And here’s a closer look at the recent changes, with the vertical and horizontal axes zoomed in to show just the last year:

Portland’s low and high tiers had a decent showing in May, but the middle tier actually lost some ground. Month to month, the low tier was up 1.1%, the middle tier fell 0.5%, and the high tier increased 2.1%.

Read the rest of this entry »

Android!!!!

In case you missed it over on the corporate blog, Redfin has just launched our Android app!

(And there was much rejoicing.)

Android fans have been very, very vocal about wanting their own Redfin app, and thanks to the hard work of a crack team of engineers, the day has arrived.

Go find out more! Go! Go you crazy kids! Be free!

Photo courtesy Stéfan via Flickr.

Sweetly Dig Into Redfin’s Local Stats

Case-Shiller: Spring Arrives in Portland as Home Prices Inch Up

It’s time for our monthly check-in of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices (HPI). The Case-Shiller data is generally considered to be the most reliable measure of overall home price changes for a region, since they only consider repeat sales of homes when calculating their index, instead of looking at all the homes that sold in a given month.

For the full source data behind this post, hit the S&P/Case-Shiller website. For a more detailed explanation of how the Case-Shiller Home Price Index is calculated, check out their methodology pdf. Also remember that the data released on the last Tuesday of a given month is for the period two months prior (i.e. – April data is released in June).

Here are the basic Case-Shiller stats for the Portland area* as of April:

Only seven of the twenty metro areas tracked by Case-Shiller saw a decrease in their HPI between March and April (down from eighteen the previous month). The biggest increase was in Washington DC again with a solid 3.0% gain. Other markets that saw increases above 1% were San Francisco (+1.7%), Atlanta (+1.6%), Seattle (+1.6%), Denver (+1.5%), and Cleveland (+1.2%).

Here’s a look at the latest local tiered data, back through 2000:

And here’s a closer look at the recent changes, with the vertical and horizontal axes zoomed in to show just the last year:

Portland’s home prices were almost completely flat, save for the high tier. Month to month, the low tier was flat, the middle tier was flat, and the high tier increased 0.2%.

Read the rest of this entry »

Details, Details

Hey all,

So, my original plan was to write a big long post going over every last nook ‘n cranny of our reader poll results in painstaking detail. But then I remembered that I basically have the attention span of a fruit fly.

So instead, I’m just going to post Pretty Bar Graphs of the results, and also give you a link so you can download the full excel version of the responses.

Without Further Ado… Pretty Bar Graph #1

As you can see, Updates on the Local Market was our big big winner, with around 425 votes. Trailing the pack was Profiles of Agents, with four votes.

And Now… Pretty Bar Graph #2

(…in which our hero discovers which feature types are most popular among readers.)

This one was a bit of a shockeroni for me, because I really thought video was going to dominate here. I mean, you kids love the YouTube and the Hulu and whatnot, right?

But I was wrong, as is often the case. Graphics and Illustrations came in first, and Nope, Just Articles was second, because you people love your precious words. So my next blog post will be a six-thousand-word essay on the impact of the Battle of Hastings on the 2000-2007 Real Estate Bubble. It should be riveting.

Point/Counterpoint was also pretty popular (with one truly awesome person actually suggesting that I team up with Jane Curtin), as was Instant Polls/Surveys.

Not Video, though. Or Contests. Which means I got my legs waxed for nothing.

Holy Cow! Guess What? It’s Pretty Bar Graph #3!

(…in which our hero runs out of clever subtitles and considers going to the supply closet for a Twix bar.*)

Okay, so this is where I asked about the name of Sweet Digs, because I’ll be honest with you, around the office it’s kind of a running joke. And not the funny kind of running joke, like when Steve Carrell would say “That’s what she said!” on The Office. No, more like the painfully tragic kind of running joke, where you’re laughing from a nauseating mix of nervousness and contempt, like anytime anyone said anything on the entire eight-season run of Full House.

But another surprise, people still like the name Sweet Digs, and the chart above proves it.

So there are all the pretty bar graphs, like I promised. If you’d like to read the full excel details, which includes all the free-form responses (minus identifying, info, of course), just click here to download it.

Whew! Thanks everyone.

*It was delicious.

Fannie Mae Covers Closing Costs on HomePath Properties

As part of their neighborhood stabilization program, Fannie Mae is offering buyers’ assistance through a couple of different programs, HomePath and First Look.

HomePath

HomePath helps buyers buy covering their closing costs, up to 3.5% of the home’s purchase price.

To qualify, buyers must be purchasing a HomePath property; this is a home that is owned by Fannie Mae, usually as the result of a foreclosure or owner forfeiture.  Buyers need to make the initial offer on the home on or after June 14, 2011, and the purchase must close by October 31, 2011; initial offers made prior to June 14 are not eligible.

• View full details on qualifying for this program.
• Search for HomePath properties.
• Read an FAQ on the HomePath program.

First Look

In addition to HomePath program, Fannie Mae also offers an edge to buyers hoping to purchase a primary residence (as opposed to investors, or buyers looking for a second home). Under the First Look program, only offers from primary-residence buyers will be considered during the first 15 days that a Fannie-owned REO property is on the market.

Redfin agents and partner agents are always available to help you make a purchase on a Fannie Mae-owned property.

Waving as I Run By

Hey everyone!

I wanted to say a big fat wet sloppy thank you to everyone who participated in last week’s reader poll. There were nearly 800 of you, and almost everyone had something useful, informative, or enlightening to contribute.

(There was, of course, a small but vocal minority who did nothing but make dirty jokes and request that we start posting illicit photos, but that’s life on the intertubes.)

We got so many responses with so many good suggestions, in fact, that I’m basically drowning over here. I promise I’ll give y’all a nice, thorough run-down of the results, but as for today, I’m going to give you the Xtreme Reader’s Digest version.

Big Winners:

Updates on the local market, market statistics, and profiles of local neighborhoods were the top three requests, in that order. Message received. You want more hard data, more often, and more tightly focused on the neighborhood level.

Interesting Thing I Noticed:

We had a lot of requests for things that are already on Redfin, which tells me that we’re not doing a great job making that stuff easy to find. That’s pretty much my fault.

For instance, tips about home buying was a very popular request, and we have an entire free online guide for home buyers right here. It has a ton of information on the entire home-buying process, much of it tailored to each individual Redfin market.

Other Interesting Thing I Noticed:

Readers seem to fall into two camps: people who want more “fluff” (like cool homes, tips on design, stories from agents, etc.) and people who want no fluff at all and think fluff is stupid and would punch me in the face right now if I would just stop saying “fluff.”

I don’t think there’s a way to make every post appeal to everybody, but it does seem like more variety will keep everyone intermittently not-unhappy. And what more could you ask, really?

By Popular Request:

Finally, a lot of people asked in the free-form comments why we don’t just go back to the old days, when we had lots of different bloggers writing content for every city’s version of Sweet Digs. This was all before my time, but basically it was just too big an operation for us to handle at that point, and we needed to focus more on the core business (which is, of course, panda-cloning.)

We also had the loose-cannon issue crop up a couple times; bloggers saying things in the Redfin name that were completely ridiculous, like that we were cloning pandas.

But moving forward, we do want to distribute the writing work on our blogs out a bit more, both among our agents and (possibly, don’t quote me on this) among non-employees.

How will we approach that? No idea. I’m making this up as I go.

More soon on the survey results, including a downloadable spreadsheet of the results (stripped of any identifying reader info, naturally).

Until then, thanks again, and keep the good ideas coming.

What Do You People WANT?

I’m just going to level with y’all.

It’s one of my performance goals to write one of these blog posts every week, and every week, I approach the goal with a healthy heapin’ spoonful of a little something I like to call dread, or as they call it in German, dredenscheiningruvenshtocken.*

Now at first I thought that this dread was just some sort of performance anxiety, but I had an epiphany yesterday. Okay, maybe epiphany is a little strong. Maybe “duh-moment” would be more accurate.

I have no idea what you guys and gals want to read about. None at all.

But I’m not supposed to admit that, right? I’m supposed to just keep trying different articles and then track your pageviews like I’m some sort of criminal mastermind, then slowly and gradually hit on a winning formula of pure crowd-pleasingness; drawing you in, addicting you to content without you ever even knowing it. Mwa ha ha.

Frankly, that sounds like a lot of work, and really, I’m not the mastermind type. So I thought I’d just ask. Nicely.

So, could I please ask you to take a minute to fill out a little survey I came up with? Please? Pleeeeeease? (It helps if you picture me staring up at you with big puppy-dog eyes. It works especially well if you picture me as an actual puppy.**)

Take the Sweet Digs survey!

I can’t really promise you any toys or treats or anything, but I can promise that I’ll do my best to give you something worthwhile to read. And then everybody wins.

Thanks all!

*Not real German. Sorry Germany!
**Seriously, can you imagine that? Some cute puppy sitting at a keyboard, typing away with his little paws? That would be adorable!