This year we’ve seen several major trends rock the real estate market here in Portland, and for the next week we’ll be looking back at the big real estate trends and concepts that have made 2011 a great year for the McDonald Group Portland Real Estate experts. Next up, the trend of homebuyers caring more about location than square footage, style, and modern amenities.
Now more than ever, home buyers want transportation, walkability, good schools, and great dining, or they won’t consider the house. Luckily, Portland is full of such great neighborhoods, where most home owners can walk to dinner, school, shopping, and amazing parks and green spaces.
The great thing about location hunting in 2011 was the prevalence of great tools for homebuyers on the Internet. Abogoby the Center for Neighborhood Technology is a really cool service that helps home buyers understand the transportation costs linked to a specific address. You just type in an address and discover how transportation impacts the affordability and sustainability of where you live. Walkscore offers a similar tool for those going by foot or bike.
Trends in national real estate are showing that home buyers are increasingly interested in walkability, in many cases choosing smaller, more expensive, older houses with better access to amenities in pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods. In addition to good schools, low crime rates, and big yards, today’s home buyers are paying more and more attention to the proximity of stores, coffee shops, theaters, and parks. Traffic congestion and long commutes have become a fact of life for many Americans living in urban areas, increasing the attractiveness of a home situated in a place that would encourage them to use their walking shoes more than their engines.
Walking to buy groceries or go out to dinner saves on oil prices, and may be attractive to people who are worried about the sustainability of our oil markets. Urban experts say it’s also an issue of demographics: Baby boomers are reaching retirement age and facing too-large empty nests, and their grown children are buying their first homes; neither group wants large, modern lots in remote places where little is going on, and exciting, walkable neighborhoods are becoming increasingly attractive. If you’re interested in selling your home in Portland or the metro area, there’s a good chance looking up your walk score will increase your success and attract buyers.
_______________________________
YourRoadMapToHome.com is your resource for McDonald Group Realtors, Portland’s premiere real estate agents. Find new construction, foreclosure/short-sell updates and Portland neighborhood info, as well as search properties easily here.
