Portland Blog: This Week in Portland July 28 - August 4 2012

Welcome to the weekend- the glorious weekend- & of course, another edition of our all local Portland Blog!  This weekend, we've got a few things on our minds and they are start with B. Breakfast (Olympic Provisions!!), Beer (It is *still* beer month) and Brewing! 

We are into the 5th year of our Cascade hops and boy, are they are glorious. What started out as three small simple vines has grown into a mammoth wall of hops and seemingly thousands of little reaching arms going every-which-way. Lets put it this way: our neighbor has hops now, too. Lucky for us, he loves them.

Not only are they beautiful but they are so intensely fragrant- even now, as little hops. In a few weeks time, some will nearly double in size. By the end of August, our whole yard and probably half the neighborhood will be heavily perfumed and by September, we'll all be drunk. (I'm only kidding...right?)

On Labor Day weekend, we'll bag them all and the great Hop Harvest will yield some homebrew. We can't wait!

Most awesome marriage proposal of all time. And yes, it happened here in Portland, folks.

Powell's Bookstore Picks

We love Powells!   Portland Book Review of the Day   Portland eBooks   Powell's Author Interviews

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The Portland Photo of the Week

The Portland Photo of the Week is by local Portlander, Gerry Villani, who shares a fun shot of Portland's Old Town China Town.

Old Town/Chinatown is a mix of commercial office space, popular bars, nightclubs and restaurants. Most folks know Oldtown and Chinatown for three reasons: the Portland Saturday Market and the Classical Chinese Garden, as well as world famous Portland VooDoo doughnut. Read more about Old Town China Town

Our Portland Photo of the Week winner gets a $20 gift certificate to a local Portland business of our choosing. This week our winner is treated to Olympic Provisions: one of our favorite brunch spots in all of Portland.

Olympic Provisions is home to Oregon’s first USDA-approved salumeria, established in 2009. With two locations in beautiful Portland, Oregon, both Olympic Provisions operate as European-style restaurants, bustling neighborhood delis, and onsite meat-curing facilities.

Olympic Provisions Southeast is guided by the capable hands of Alex Yoder, whose food focuses on clean, bold flavors of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. Come in to feast on our menu of small plates and tasty bites. The restaurant and our first meat curing facility are both located in the historic Olympic Mills Commerce Center, a beautifully restored cereal mill and a landmark in Portland’s lower Southeast Industrial neighborhood

Olympic Provisions Northwest kitchen is led by Chef Erin Williams, who creates beautiful rustic Italian food in a neighborhood cafe setting with a antique French rotisserie. The restaurant is also attached to our new meat plant that has allowed us to expand our product line and availability.

Salumist Elias Cairo crafts American Charcuterie using local, high-quality ingredients for wholesale to grocery stores, restaurants and wine bars around the region. Many products, including some that are available nowhere else, can be sampled at the restaurant and purchased directly from the deli case.

Park It

Written by PortlandNeighborhood Guest Writer, Rob Creighton Garrison

One of the first places in Portland my wife and I visited when we first moved to Portland was Governor Tom McCall Waterfront Park.

We only knew two people in the city, a couple who were acquaintances of the missus' family in Texas. They helped us move into our tiny apartment downtown and turn in the truck at the nearest U-Haul facility.  After ensuring that we were safely ensconced in our new place (soon to be our first OLD place because doods!, we were three adults – one being my mother-in-law – and three cats in an apartment that measured less than 600 square feet; NEVER rent an apartment sight-unseen, particularly when the photos of it are taken with a fish-eye lens. This lesson is my gift to you), they left with promises to show us some sights later in the week.

That first sight was the Oregon Brewers Festival. 

THAT'S the way to introduce someone to a city, mang!  We were agog not only at the titanic amount of beer available, in tastes and colors we ex-Dallasites had never seen (Berry beer? What??) but at the veritable sea of humanity gathered on the green under sunny skies queueing* up for said libations.  Of course we lined up ourselves for samples.  My wife was drawn to the fruity options and became a fan halfway through her first Purple Haze, while I chose a beer so dark the Sun seemed to dim slightly.  Heretofore I wasn't much of a beer drinker and stuck mostly to the pale yellows of the macro pallette; my true appreciation for beer began with this day at Waterfront Park.

I looked around at all the people drinking and eating, mingling with friends, wriggling in time to the music of bands on the stages.  I looked at the waterfront itself and at the glittering water of the Willamette, then turned to stare at the backdrop of downtown.  I know I was grinning ear-to-ear (this was early on, before I had to find shade and lie down) as I took it all in.  I was in a new city, it was cool, I was excited, I was just a leetle dronk but had a designated driver upon whom to rely.  You might expect obnoxiousness and hooliganism at a venue like this, but I remember nary a cross word or screamed epithet, and the police presence was non-intrusive, choosing for the most part to man the perimeter and look on with amusement.

“You know”, one of our friends said while waiting in yet another beer line, “they actually tore out a freeway to build this park”.

“Say what? You're kidding!” (I was fresh from the Land of the Necessary Pavement, so this statement sounded like a fairytale, or beer-fueled nonsense).

“S'true!  Harbor Drive.  Just peeled it up and made the space for this park.”  He saw my expression and added “This town just does that kind of [stuff].”

It was a great day, one that helped us to conclude we'd made a great choice for a new home.

I've attended a few more brew fests since then, as well as a Blues Festival or two and a Bite of Portland here and there, but I don't need alcohol or food to entice my appreciation of the park.  Year-round this is a popular place for striders and bikers alike, and just maybe the best lounging spot in the city.  I think I was in Waterfront Park the first time I saw the magnificent Hawthorne Bridge shrug it's belly for a passing ship (a much better view of the operation than, say, sitting in a car waiting to cross).  The people-watching is neck-and-neck with Pioneer Courthouse Square, although you'll see more athletic wear. Bring some spare change for the buskers, unless they suck.

So. It's summer in the city, and you're indoors reading this. Are you not getting the point, or what?

* That word always looks wrong to me, like I stutter-typed.

Read and comment on the original post here. Like this article? Check back weekly to see what Rob's up to.

Enviro Deer found roaming wild at Maryhill Museum of Art by Earl R Thomas

Featured Portland Events this Week

Here's the latest roundup of our featured Portland events for you to enjoy!  Mark your calendars and feel free to add your own!

Add your own events to our Portland events calendar! Its totally free. If we like it, we'll include it in this weekly Portland blog.

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The Foster Powell Neighborhood Real Estate Market Report

By Ross and Leah Seligman

Foster Powell is bordered by the South Tabor, Creston-Kenilworth, Mount Scott-Arleta, and Lents neighborhoods.  To learn more about Foster Powell by reading its neighborhood profile, click here.

 
If you are looking for homes in the Foster Powell neighborhood, visit this link where you can search for homes by particular neighborhood: Click Here

On to the report:

Here is the overall chart of inventory, sold, and pending for the Foster Powell neighborhood in the last 15 months:

In June 2012, there were 55 closed sales, 85 pending sales, and 171 homes on the market in the Foster Powell Neighborhood.

One year change from June 2011 to June 2012:

Inventory (how many homes on the market for sale): Down 34.2%

Homes sold: Up 1.9%

Homes pending sale: Up 37.1%

Chart for average price per square footage:

In the past 15 months, the average price per square footage in the Foster Powell neighborhood has been between $107 and $129/sq. ft. In June 2012, the average price per square foot in the Foster Powell neighborhood was $129.

One year change from June 2011 to June 2012:

Change in Price Per Square Foot:

Percentage Change: Up 2.9%

Days on Market, Sold/List Price:

This chart is showing us two things. First, how many days on the market that a home is spending, on average, before being sold. In June 2012, the average time on market for a home in the Foster Powell neighborhood was 57 days.

The second thing that this chart is showing you is what percentage of the listing price the owners actually are getting when the house is sold.  This is a great indication of the pressure on prices.  In June 2012, sellers in Foster Powell received, on average, 96% of their original listing price.

More stats for you:

Change from June 2011 to June 2012:

Time on Market: Down 9.5%
Sold/List price % difference: Up 2.1%

Average price for sale vs. average price of sold:

This chart shows us that the average listing was and what the average sale was. In June 2012, the average price of a house on the market in Foster Powell was $194,000. The average sale was $210,000.

More stats over one year:

Average active price: Down 11%
Average sold price:  Up 5.5%

Months of Inventory:

Months of inventory gives a time line of how long it would take for all of the current listings to sell.  Anything above 4 months is considered a buyers market.  This figure is a good indicator of supply and demand.  June 2012 in the Foster Powell neighborhood had 3.1 months of inventory.

By the way, this does NOT mean that it will take 3.1 months for your home to sell. That figure was, on average in June, 57 days.  Inventory is a figure that means that, if not another home were to come on the market in Foster Powell from this point forward, in 3.1 months there would not be another home to sell.  They would all be sold.

In my monthly Portland real estate report, I always talk about how each individual neighborhood is a micro-market. The first thing you will notice about individual neighborhoods as compared to the overall Portland reports are that the numbers can be wildly different month to month. Basically, the bigger the pool of data you are working with, the smoother the stats become. As we focus on smaller areas, many different things can happen month to month.

If you are looking to buy or sell in a particular neighborhood, the most crucial information that you need to know is what is going on in that neighborhood. In this situation, the overall Portland market report is less important and the national real estate report is just about useless. This posting is a real estate report for the Foster Powell neighborhood of all homes in all price ranges. Feel free to request particular neighborhoods in which you are interested in buying or selling and I am be happy to do a report, just contact me on this forum or at http://www.propertiesofportland.com.

Best Deals in Portland this Week

Visit Ross and Leah's website where you can search all Portland metro area homes for sale and real estate from the RMLS, including neighborhood and school information.

Did you know there are nearly 100 unique Portland neighborhoods?  Read and learn all about these interesting urban communities.

Very Portland by Gerry Villani

Thanks for loving this Portland Blog!

Tune back next weekend for another edition of our all-local Portland blog. For now, bookmark us, read our Portland neighborhood pages, get involved and most of all, share PortlandNeighborhood.com with your friends and family!  Want to find back issues of this blog? Boom.

Find more photos like this on PortlandNeighborhood.com