Posts made by author 'Lynnea Miller'

It's not that Kyle MacDonald had a "paperclip fetish." Actually, he says that "the best thing I ever did was to trade away that silly red paperclip in the first place." Which is exactly what he did when in 2015 he posted a picture of the red paperclip in the barter section of Craigslist and asked if anyone had something they were willing to trade for it which was "bigger and better." The first trade was for a writing pen shaped like a fish.  Then Kyle traded the fish pen for a doorknob.  Each trade was always for something "bigger and better" until after just 14 trades he ended up with a house located at 503 Main Street in Saskatchewan.

We love Bend! And if you own a home, you may love what has happened with Bend real estate values even more! During 2015, the average price of a Bend single family home increased 11.1%.  Bend homes have consistently been increasing in value since 2011, when the average price of a Bend single family home was $240,128; today Bend's average home is almost $386,000. If you bought your home anytime in the last 5 years, you most likely have seen an increase in your home's equity. What has caused this? People have continued to move to Bend; we all love the lifestyle  - from the many brew pubs to the amazing outdoor recreational opportunities and the beautiful, clean environment, good schools and fabulous parks! But while people in abundance continue to move here, the amount of homes being built has not kept up with the demand. At the start of 2015, there were 3.5 months supply of Bend homes for sale; at the end of the year there were 2.8 months - a balanced housing market has 6 months supply. At Bend Premier Real Estate, we cannot find homes for all our buyers. Those properties which hit the market are quickly snatched up and multiple offers have driven the sales price even higher. If you have ever considered selling your Bend home, now may be the best time for you to put your home on the market.

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If searches on our website are any indication of the market, potential home buyers are still looking for deals in Bend real estate.  Almost all home buyers today (over 90%) are spending time on websites like ours searching for real estate.  Over the past 2 weeks, the most popular home searched on our website was a single story 3-bedroom home listed at $239,900.  In fact, 7 of the top 10 searches were for homes under $300,000 with an average price of $289,000.  And the location of these popular homes is Bend except for the most searched property; this home is located in La Pine.  Although the average price of homes searched on our site is almost identical to the national average home price of $289,900, it is understandable that people are looking for a deal when you consider the average home price listed for sale in our Bend MLS in December 2015 was $564,000, and the average sold price $371,000. For more information on home sales tren...

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One of the hot selling items on Amazon.com right now is the St. Joseph Home Seller Statue Kit.  According to tradition that sellers say goes back thousands of years, burying the statue in the yard of your home and saying a prayer to St. Joseph will always bring a quick offer on your home for sale.  But it is important that you bury the statue in the right spot, lest you accidently help your neighbor sell their home quickly, and upside down so St. Joseph will work "extra hard to get out of the ground, and into a safe comfortable home."  Reviews on Amazon.com where this kit is often sold include comments such as "I put this in my front yard and the next day we had an offer on our house," and "My house sold in 2 1/2 hours and had 3 other offers, sight unseen the same night. Enough said!!!!" But, of course, they were also many reviews with the sentiment similar to this seller - "Bought this hoping our house would sell quickly because we were that desperat...

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When comparing Bend Real Estate trends from 2005 with those of 2015, we are seeing significant increases in home prices, a serious lack of inventory (especially in the lower end), and many homes for sale receiving multiple offers. The MLS Trend report from June 2015 shows that this imbalance of supply/demand in the market has resulted in an increase of about 22% in the average price per square foot of Bend single family homes between 2005 and 2015.

So what is different in the conditions now versus the bubble of 2005/2006? During the Bend housing bubble, lending practices were designed to provide loans to the maximum number of people. No doc loans were common and buyers could even finance their down payment. Buyers often flipped properties they had just closed on as the demand for these properties continued to escalate and values continued to climb. These practices were unsustainable, however, and the crash happened when over extended homeowner...

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