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Oregon Winter 2022

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It’s February, the month of love! Seems like a good time to announce my new and also not-new service: Match-making!

It’s for all of you who have not yet found a love match in a house during this extended inventory shortage, whether you’re currently renting, or an owner who has fallen out of love with your current place.

You find yourself wondering WHY there is Nothing on market that would save you from your too-pinchy house or your too-many-stairs house or your too-far-from-everything house?

The answer is that the folks in the house you’ve been day-dreaming about can’t find what they want want. So, Everyone is staying put in the worst case of Couch Lock ever.

What is needed is to match the off-market seller with an off-market buyer.

Some of you have been the beneficiaries of this service in the past. It’s time to dust it off again. Only this time, it’s going to be more structured:

Do you see yourself moving in the next year if the “Right” property came along? What would that Right property be like?

Text or email me what Rightness looks like in your book and I’ll see if a Love Match can be found! And yes, I do have partner agents in other states, so if out of state is where you want to be, let me know that, too.

Your part is this: Email me what you have right now (town, square footage, bed/bath complement, number of levels, and lot size) and what you want (same list) and your preferred timing for a move (1 year, 1 month, yesterday).

For my part, I will match you with someone whose Have matches your Want. Make sense? Awesome!

Email your particulars to [email protected] and we will get started. If I find a match for you, I will contact you and provide you with pictures and data from the other would-be seller and we will see if we can make a match!
Just so you know, addresses and names will not be shared.

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Refer-a-Friend Rewards Program

Picture of Lisa Baker
Lisa Baker

Principal Broker | REALTOR
RE/MAX Equity Group

It’s time for something nice to arrive in your mailbox. Starbucks coffee, Subway sandwiches or dinner at Red Robin. Yes! It could happen to YOU!

Just refer your friends to me and I’ll not only take great care of them as they shop for a house or market their houses with me, but I will send You a gift card for something delicious, too!

Is that a great deal or what?!

Ode to the Million Dollar House

If you had a million dollars to spend on a house, what would you buy?

Talking to buyers locally, most would say land. Acreage. Distance from neighbors and traffic.

A second popular answer: A view – of the valley, city lights, the mountains, a river or a lake, a meadow.

And if they can’t either of those things, well, the house had better be ….Grand. Awe-inspiring.

A double-door entry to a spacious, vaulted foyer. A living room that could accommodate at least 12 couples doing a Viennese Walz. A fireplace with a substantial surround, mantle and hearth. Floor-to-ceiling windows. True hardwoods, no cheaping out with laminates or even engineered woods.

The staircase should sweep.

In fact, there should be some art in the house’s architecture: Molding, archways, wrought iron accents, ceiling medallions, a couple of diamond paned windows…

Maybe even a turret.

Price: $1.12 Million
Price: $1.12 Million

A kitchen for a million dollar house better be sized for a team of cooks. Quartz counters and stainless appliances at the minimum, a walk-in pantry to hunker down in for a few months of quarantine. A six or eight–burner gas range or if you must, induction stove. A pot filler. A double oven. A spacious food prep island and yards of counter space. A whisper quiet dishwasher and oversized refrigerator.

Onto the master suite. If you can’t execute at least three cartwheels in it without hitting a wall, it’s not grand enough. For $1.3 million, there should be sufficient space for a major tumbling run. A walk-in closet should be large enough to house a dressing area. The bath should include both the free-standing soak tub and the double-head, step in shower – a full height tile surround, No fiberglass, no old chrome, no four-inch ceramic tile. Under foot, a heated tile floor. The vanity should include double sinks and above it, a mirror that makes Everyone look slim and trim.

Rooms. Simply having a lot of rooms does not make a house worth a million dollars. The value of each space is a function of use and size. Once you have the requisite five or six bedrooms, and like-sized office, a hobby room, library, and a fitness room, what is left? In the U.S., additional rooms must be equipped: A pet boutique with puppy shower, a billiards room, and a theater room with built-in recliners, maybe. After that, what else is there? What does one do with a conservatory, other than plot the murder of Colonel Mustard with the wrench?

Price: $925,000

In this, we are unlike Europe, where having lots of rooms, whether particularly outfitted for a purpose or not, IS valuable. There, the rooms of grand houses have fancy names — salon, drawing room, sitting room, parlor, morning room. While richly furnished, they appear to have no special purpose beyond standing or, as mentioned, sitting.

Parking. Don’t skimp on parking. Nothing worse than spending a cool mil on a property only to have to park your fave car/golf cart/canoe/RV out in the rain. Ditto the driveway – It should be big enough and wide enough to avoid the 16-point turn.

Price: $1,6 Million
Price: $1,6 Million

Privacy: If you can’t have acreage, the least you should have is privacy. If you can’t gaze out your floor-to-ceiling windows at the countryside, at least you should be able to avoid people looking in as they wander past your front porch on the way to the bus stop.

Sadly, though, Oregon is going the way of California in its housing policies. The latest attempt at halting the stacking of human beings in tinier and tinier spaces has failed at the Legislature. Again. Prepare for the million dollar 2-bedroom bungalow!

Offerings between $900k and $1.6M this week:

Luxury bathroom with sunken tub.Tigard:

A 3000 sf 2-level built in 1985 on a half-acre. 4 bedrooms plus a bonus room, 2 baths. 3-car garage. Some hardwood, mostly wall-to-wall carpet, no A/C. Let me repeat: No A/C!!! $904k.

Sherwood:

3400 sf built in 2016, 4 bedrooms plus bonus room, 3-car garage (tandem) converted to living space so now, truthfully, no garage at all but at least there is A/C and “premium carpet.” Here’s the kicker, it’s on a 7000 sf lot. $925k.

Wilsonville:

3100 sf, 4 bedrooms plus bonus, 3 baths new construction on 7000 sf lot, 2 car garage (2 car!!!)

St. Paul: 2500 sf living space, 4-bedroom, 3 bath, 3-car garage, 3/4-acre on the River, flood zone property. But that’s okay because it’s constructed so that if it floods, the water just runs through the garage and out the other side. No word on how you get out. Bring water wings? Flood zones are not usually deal-breakers, but they’re also not usually $1.6 million, either.

Yamhill County:

by contrast, is a breath of fresh air. Latest offering in the $1 mil category ($1.2M to be exact): 4000 sf on half-acre of professionally landscaped beauty complete with full outdoor kitchen, pond and stream. 4 bedrooms plus bonus, 4 baths, 3-car garage, stone turret, commercial grade range and hood in the kitchen, granite, hardwoods, butler’s pantry, a library with floor-to ceiling arched bookshelves, extensive glass, trimwork, wrought iron. And of course, A/C. Fully private. Gated community.

So, I guess the lesson learned here is If you’ve got a million to spend, do it in Yamhill County! Or Kansas, I suppose. You can get great deals in Kansas.

Of course, you’d have to live in Kansas, so there’s the downside.