Good news for Portland beer fans. One of our state’s favorite breweries is opening a Brewery and Public House in the Pearl District. The Deschutes brew pub, scheduled to open on May 2, will be on the corner of 11th and NW Davis Street - just across the street from the new Gerding Theatre and two blocks from Powell’s bookstore. Considering that this part of town is called the Brewery Blocks, doesn’t make this location a surprising choice for the Bend-based brewery.  Being a Pearl District resident myself, I am eagerly awaiting to welcome this Scottish-pub inspired business into our neighborhood.

Some good news for the Portland Real Estate Market by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight. While nationally declines during the fourth quarter erased earlier gains, pushing U.S. housing appreciation into negative territory for the year for the first time in 17 years Portland’s home value and appreciation are continuing to hold up. Nationwide, prices were down 1.3% compared with the third quarter, the OFHEO said, and down 0.3% from the fourth quarter of 2006*. But in Portland/Vancouver/Beaverton (which by the way ranks number 61 in national home price appreciation), home values actually increased by 0.30% in the fourth quarter. Our one year gain in home appreciation is 4.24% while over the past five years home values have appreciated by 66.54%. The fact that market prices are still increasing coupled with low interest rates is good news for prospective Portland home buyers. Read Home prices by city.

*City rankings are listed by metropolitan areas. The OFHEO’s House Price Index is published on a quarterly basis and tracks average house-price changes in repeat sales or refinancings of the same single-family properties. The index is based on analysis of data obtained from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from more than 30 million repeat transactions over the past 30 years.

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While home swaps have always been a popular solution for vacationers to save money while staying out of bland hotel rooms,  the idea of permanent house swaps is starting to gain in popularity. With far more home sellers than buyers in the market today some entrepreneurs have come up with web-based ways of putting sellers together with other sellers in hopes of meeting the needs of both. Four house swap sites that we ran across were GoSwap.org, DaytonaHomeTrader.com and DomuSwap.com. Last but not least, the popular Craigslist.org also is listing thousands of home swaps.

In our opinion, it remains to be seen if house swaps have a permanent place in the real estate market as there seem to be limited options for specific geographic regions. Even if you’re willing to move outside of your current market, you would still have to find a house you love and a homeowner wanting to swap and move.

The Register-Guard in Eugene, Oregon wrote a very encouraging article for Eugene home buyers, which assesses the real estate market in Lane County, Oregon.  The market is flush with homes and sellers are bound to continue lowering their prices.

Home sales in Lane County fell by 31 percent in January compared with a year ago, while pending sales were down by 24 percent, resulting in more homes staying on the market for longer periods of time. Median prices for homes in Lane County continue to rise, however, to $225,000, up 4.4 percent from January 2007. Median means that half the homes sold for more than that price, half for less. The average price was essentially flat in January compared to a year ago. The number of new listings fell by 6.1 percent, with fewer owners putting homes on the market.  Although still low by national standards, foreclosures are increasing locally and banks are selling some homes for less than the original loan amount.

This sounds like an interesting opportunity for prospective home buyers in the Portland area.

Buena Vista Custom Homes today announced that it will conduct a second auction of the company’s inventory of completed homes. 52 homes from nine of Buena Vista’s neighborhoods and 18 buildable lots from three different developments in the Portland metropolitan area will be auctioned on Saturday, March 8, 2008 at the Ambridge Event Center in Portland. The inventory is located throughout the Portland metro area including: Scappoose, Beaverton, Happy Valley, Sandy, and Hillsboro. The 18 buildable lots are located in the developments of Shadow Hills and Jackson Hills, both in Happy Valley along with Carson Crest in Beaverton.

A while back, I read this interesting editorial piece in the Oregonian about the city of Gresham, past, then and now. As Gresham has changed from a town of 10,000 to a city of 100,000 over the past 50 years, there have been a lot of very positive developments alongside with some minor concerns. Here’s a summary of the article’s main points.

Historic Downtown Gresham
There are a lot of attractive townhomes and condominiums close to downtown Gresham now, but there is not enough population density to attract a decent market , yet, and the quality and variety of shops aren’t quite there yet, either. This development is happening and downtown Gresham presents a good opportunity for potential home buyers.

Mount Hood Jazz Festival Site
The two-acre grassy site of the Mt. Hood Jazz Festival is proposed as the home of the Gresham Center for the Arts. With approval from the City Council, the project would bring a full complex of indoor and outdoor entertainment and event sites as well as a promising public-event plaza.

Leadership at City Hall
There now is unaccustomed potential at City Hall, too. For the first time in a long time, there is a uniformly bright, reasonably experienced and business-oriented council. There is great potential for quality development.

A developing multicultural population in Gresham
As far as a new multicultural population, Gresham used to be pretty homogenous — white — and mostly came from the Midwest. Now Gresham is an almost a polyglot population from around the world, still primarily white, but one can hear various Latin languages, those from Eastern Europe and a variety of Asian conversation on your average bus or MAX adventure. What we need are some stalls for these new citizens at the Saturday Farmers Market, some Latin or Cuban jazz at the festival and some enthusiasm among parents to encourage the schools to require a second language in their curricula. The potential for integrating and welcoming these new citizens to participate in Gresham is enormous.

The Gresham Outlook recently reported on the Gresham Redevelopment Commission decided to negotiate with a firm that’s earned a national reputation not only for its Pearl District work, but also for its projects in Portland’s rapidly developing South Waterfront area.  A few people have dared to hope that the Rockwood urban renewal district could mimic the fabulous success of Portland’s now-famous Pearl District, but this is a very positive development and definitely something that we’ll keep our eyes on for prospective home buyers in that area.