 |
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Susan's Online Guide to Portland Let me Help You Find a Home and a Neighborhood |
|||||
|
Welcome to my Web site about the Portland, Oregon, metropolitan area. It's my way of helping you become acquainted with the neighborhoods and communities of the Portland metro area and to inform you about the Portland area housing market. Your comments and suggestions about my Web site are always welcome. If you have questions or if you are interested in buying or selling a home in the Portland area, contact me online or call me at (503) 497-2984.
|
|||||
|
Real Estate Market Trends |
|||||
|
|
|
||||
|
Case-Schiller: U.S. home prices rose one percent in June August 31 − A crucial index on home prices in the United States rose in June, the last month that benefited from a tax credit for home buyers. The Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller 20-city home price index, a widely watched indicator, on Tuesday reported a 1 percent rise in June from May, the third consecutive monthly increase. ationally, the index rose 4.4 percent in the second quarter of 2010, after having fallen 2.8 percent in the first quarter. Home prices in the nationwide index are 3.6 percent above their year-earlier levels in the three-month period. espite the improved numbers, David M. Blitzer, chairman of the Index Committee at Standard & Poor’s, offered a cautionary note. While the numbers are upbeat, other more recent data on home sales and mortgages point to fewer gains ahead,” Mr. Blitzer said. Read more... Follow the Portland metro area housing market and subscribe to Susan's free monthly newsletter.... |
|||||
|
Community News |
|||||
|
Vandals target Happy Valley family with racist graffiti, threaten to burn down their house September 3 − Neighbors expressed bewilderment as much as shock Thursday after a Vietnamese American family suffered racial harassment and threats as they began moving into their new home. Jami Onchi, 32, who lives down the street, said ethnic diversity was one reason she and her husband moved to the neighborhood. "My husband is Japanese, and we have half-Japanese children," Onchi said. "I can only say this is extremely strange." On Monday, vandals spray-painted racial slurs on Sang Huynh and his family's new home and left a note threatening to burn it down. The FBI and Clackamas County authorities are investigating the incident as a hate crime. "It's just terrible because we just moved here, and it's my dream area," said Phong Tran, Sang Huynh's wife. "How were we supposed to know this would happen?" Read more...
Man to 9-1-1: 'I just need a hug and a warm cup of hot chocolate' September 3 − A homeless man who sneaked into a Beaverton hot tub then called 9-1-1 to ask for towels, hot chocolate and a hug will spend more than three weeks behind bars. Mark Eskelsen had been soaking in a private tub in the 15000 block of Southwest Village Lane for several hours Sunday morning when he called emergency dispatchers and asked for help. First identifying himself as "the sheriff of Washington County," Eskelsen complained to the dispatcher that he had been sitting in the tub for about 10 hours, his towels were wet, his voice was hoarse from yelling and his fingers looked like prunes. "I just need a hug and a warm cup of hot chocolate with marshmallows in it," Eskelsen later said. Neighbors had already called 9-1-1, concerned about the man bellowing from the fenced pool. Read more...
|
|||||
|
Home & Health |
|||||
|
Measure 49 housing boom is a bust September 2 − It may help that Jim Beecher is in his 80s, raised crops for years and thereby gained the patience and perspective that age and farming instill. Building a house on one lot and placing a triple-wide manufactured home on another required an estimated 50 trips to the Yamhill County planning department over the past year, multiple surveys and inspections, wrangling over well and septic systems and spending thousands for permits and fees. But Beecher is one of the lucky ones. In the three years since voters overwhelmingly approved Measure 49, which was supposed to give rural landowners the right to build a few homes, only a handful of people have built anything. Beecher's four-bedroom home, rising amid the oak trees off Cunningham Lane, is a rarity. "I feel like it was an act of God, frankly," Beecher says. Read more... |
|||||
|
Living Green |
|||||
|
|
|||||
|
Sports and Outdoors |
|||||
|
Duck call helps fight breast cancer September 2 − Anne Cross May just wanted to name a duck call after her 4-year-old granddaughter, Vivian Rose. So she and husband Jim May, co-owners of Kum Duck Calls in Rickreall, created a pink version of their new line of beginner calls and named it "Wild Rose." It was designed for women, of course, and (naturally) simulates the call of a hen mallard. But for cancer survivors and patients, pink has become a very, very good color indeed. "I am writing to tell you about how one of your pink calls is being used to raise funds to fight cancer," wrote Joe Reinhardt of Reno, Nev. "Our local retriever club holds an annual AKC hunt test and we have a raffle/auction during the event. We were given a call and I decided to auction it off to support cancer research. Read more...
|
|||||
|
Portland Blogs and Web Sites
Web Sites
|
|||||
|
|
|||||
|
|
Susan Marthens |
|
|||
|
© Copyright 2000-2010 All rights reserved Web by Dasan Design ● Telephone (503) 819-0011 |
|||||
Broadway
Bridge packs on the pounds September 3 − The Broadway Bridge
will do what millions of Americans can only dream of - add 240,000 pounds
without changing its weight. When two of the four lanes of the Broadway
Bridge reopen to traffic Saturday, drivers will travel along a bridge that
has been following a rather complex weight-loss plan: For every pound the
bridge added in the form of steel streetcar tracks, it had to lose a pound
of existing materials. The tracks had to be added to the bridge as part
of the city’s $148 million Portland Streetcar Loop Project. But the Broadway
Bridge is a bascule bridge, which uses counterweight and balance to lift
the spans. The added weight of the steel tracks could throw off the balance,
preventing the spans on the bridge from lifting high enough for boats to
pass underneath. So engineers had to calculate how to maintain the delicate
balance of weight required for the bridge to operate.
Echo,
a small town in northeast Oregon, tries for fifth America in Bloom award
September 3 − Beaten down by hoofs and wagon wheels more than 150 years
ago, the Oregon Trail near the 
Congregation
embraces change, warms to shelter September 2 − Linda Loeffler
still doesn’t remember one word of what she said, or why she changed her
mind. But she did change her mind, and she did speak up, and partly as a
result, there will be one more place for homeless Portland families to stay
overnight this fall and winter. Poets would have us believe that, sometimes,
a life can be distilled into one defining moment. Three weeks ago, parishioners
at Eastminster Presbyterian Church in outer Northeast Portland found that
may be true about the life of a congregation as well. Eastminster, the focus
of a Tribune story last winter on Portland churches, was a thriving congregation
of 450 in 1972. Today, it has 38 members whose average age is 79. Pastor
Brian Heron arrived in 2006 to help the church deal with its uncertain future,
including the possibilities of shutting down or merging with a younger church
in need of the space Eastminster has in abundance.
Oregon
farmer renounces dairy license to support raw milk September
2 − Customers wanted raw milk and cheese from Mookie Moss’s goat farm. So
last week, the farmer turned activist — or maybe it's activist turned farmer
— took to a stage on his 64-acre farm near Jacksonville and announced to
a crowd that he was renouncing his grade-A dairy license and selling off
his herd of 43 dairy goats in shares. The move toward herd-sharing at Siskiyou
Crest Goat Dairy marks the first time in Oregon that a certified dairy has
shirked the oversight of state food safety programs. It’s an emerging concept
in dairy farming nationally, however, in which farmers avoid restrictions
on the sale of raw dairy products — enforced by the
Rafting
season about to get going on Washington's Tieton River west of Yamika
September 2 − During the first week of September, after the Labor Day holiday,
the Tieton River west of Yakima transforms from lazy water to Class III
rapids due to the annual fall water release. This makes it a destination
for many of the Pacific Northwest's licensed whitewater guides, as well
as for private kayakers and paddlers. Throughout September, the U.S. Bureau
of Reclamation releases irrigation water from the Rimrock Reservoir to assist
salmon during spawning. The Tieton has an average drop of 55 feet per mile,
compared to most rivers that drop at 20 to 30 feet per mile, so all that
water rushing down creates plenty of whitewater adventure. "This is one
of Washington state's most unique and undiscovered adventure opportunities,"
said John Cooper, president and CEO of the Yakima Valley Visitors and Convention
Bureau, in a statement. "As an added bonus, the water being released from
Rimrock has been warmed throughout the hot summer months, making it the
warmest whitewater rafting experience in Washington state."
