Thank you for taking a few minutes to peruse my newsletter. If anything here interests you, contact me and we’ll talk in more detail over coffee!

Market Overview

This year I set a goal to produce quarterly
videos with the most accurate and up-to-date information on the local real estate market. I am pleased to tell you that I just finished the filming of the first one and should have it back from the editor by the time you read this newsletter! In the video I share information from the Oregon Housing Economic Summit and some other powerful resources like a talk I attended by the Executive Vice President of Capital Markets for Guild Mortgage, David Battany.

Automatic Valuation Models

AVMs. Every website has them. Zillow’s Zestimate is the most ubiquitous. I use a program called Homebot that generates them. It’s better than most I’ve seen but still not as good as a Comprehensive Market Analysis (CMA). If you’re tracking your home’s value by one of these automatic methods, I applaud you, but don’t read too much into that number. If you really need to know what the market value of your home is, let me know and I’ll prepare a CMA for you, gratus. Attachment to the AVM number can lead to several problems, all stemming from basing your expectations on something that may or may not be accurate.

That’s why I like Homebot because I can fine tune the value it suggests to you. Does your Homebot value need tuning? Would you like to be signed up for it and aren’t? Let me know! If you want to know what your home is worth I want you to have the most accurate information possible!

Real Estate Reviews

Once a year I prepare a report for you that gives you an update on the real estate market. This report shows you national trends, state-level changes, Eugene-Springfield data and what’s happening in your specific neighborhood. In order to make sound decisions we’ve got to have good information. It’s my hope that this report will help keep you well informed about your investment in real estate. This is the second year that I have been doing these real estate reviews so I may not have gotten a chance to deliver yours to you yet. I tend to schedule them near the anniversary of your sale or purchase. If you’re not a past client of mine I don’t have that mechanism to remind me to put yours on my to-do list. The pictures below show you a couple of the pages from the ten page report so you can get an idea of what kind of information it includes. If you’d like one, let me know and I’ll make it a priority!

Small Business Spotlight

My life-long friend Sam Gressett officially became the owner of Chinook Properties, Inc. this year and I couldn’t be more proud of him!

About the same time I was getting into the real estate business Sam got his property management license and went to work at Chinook. He put a plan in place with the previous owner to make the company his own once he had learned the business inside and out.

Sam has always been one of the brightest people I’ve known and I am so lucky to have a resource like him to call on when I need to know more about the newest landlord-tenant law or want an estimate for what a house could rent for.

As a property manager Sam’s focus is on protecting the investment of the homeowner. He and his team do a fantastic job of handling all of the details so that his clients’ property is put to its highest and best use with the minimum effort, stress and expense on the part of the homeowner.

If you own rental property give Chinook a call and see if they can make it easier and more profitable for you!

Xander’s Slice of Life

As I write, our baby boy is officially 15 months old! In the last month Lindsay has leaned into the Montessori method in a number of really cool ways. She built him a wardrobe that’s on his level so that he can be empowered to pick out his own clothes and help put them away. So far his favorite thing to do is to dump his socks out but it’s a start! Mrs. Sachse would be proud.

Joe has really gotten into our living room edition of basketball and now demands that I raise the hoop up so that it’s harder for him. Of course, right after that I have to lower it again so he can build his confidence back up. The big news in his life and in our family is that we will be welcoming a new member in July! That’s right, that fuzzy gray image represents our newest edition.

We are squeezing in a kitchen remodel and a whole lot of organization and decluttering in anticipation of being pretty overwhelmed once we have two babies to care for!

I don’t think Joe knows what’s coming yet but we’ve started talking to him about it and talking among ourselves about how to help him grow into the best big brother he can be.