Nice duplex in a nice part of East Medford. Close to Costco, the airport and conveniently located to freeway access or the back roads to Eagle Point or RVMC. This property has been meticulously maintained by the owners over the years and it shows. Both tenants are on a month-to-month contract. Back tenants have agreed to an easy showing schedule and have been there for three years.

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My older brother is here from Australia and we were discussing the fact that when he leaves Australia at the end of this job they will require him to cash out his pension. He has talked about purchasing a home in this area as a rental to have a place to shelter his money. This is the first time for as long as he can remember that he even considered purchasing a home in Southern Oregon. It appears that on the family wages paid in this valley that folks can afford to purchase a home again!

Short sales are still a difficult proposition no matter who the lender is. I can sense the frustration of the sellers who feel that they have bent over backwards, sometimes for years, trying to work out something with the lender so that they can afford to keep their homes, only to be ignored, I recently had a home listed as a short sale as my client had been out of work for two years. I listed the house and within two months I had an offer to bring to the bank on their behalf. My clients needed to write a hardship letter and give them a written budget to get this offer to be looked at. My clients flat-out refused to ‘do another thing to help the bank out when we have been through all of this with them ten times already’. I explained to them that the foreclosure department was a totally different department than the others but they didn’t care. They were fed up and had had enough. Sad to say I had to take the property of the market and it will proceed to foreclosure. It was just a case of the bank just not ‘hearing’ the sellers for months on end leaving the sellers what they felt was no way out.

I feel that unless the government puts some sort of regulation in place where the lenders are required to HONESTLY attempt to work things out with the buyers, and unless short sales become more manageable we will continue to see people opting for foreclosure rather than dealing with the hassle and stress. It is a difficult situation we are in as a nation. If we don’t learn to manage money better as a people this can happen again. There are always those circumstances where jobs are lost, illness and divorce cause the loss of a home and those things cause great hardships on a family. We are in uncharted waters here. Hopefully there will be good economic news as we move into the fall months!

Close to schools, close to downtown, close to hospitals it really is almost smack in the middle of Medford!

1754 square feet of open floor plan. The living room has a fireplace and opens to the kitchen and past that through to the large family room and dining area. There is an office located at the front of the home.

The seller has been busy since approximately 2004 upgrading the windows to vinyl, replacing the roof, putting in a new rear fence, painting and replacing flooring.

This is a ranch stlye home with a huge galley kitchen with tons of cabinets. There is room at the end of the kitchen to add a huge pantry if you can’t control yourself at Costco!

The master bedroom has a nice large bathroom and is at the rear of the house. There are hardwoods under much of the flooring in the house that could be uncovered if you prefer.

The yard is nice and private and fully fenced.

The house is priced at $107 per square foot which gives any foreclosure property a run for it’s money at this price! The great part is that this house has been lovingly cared for and is mechanically sound so you aren’t buying someone else’s mess!

Check it out! Old East Medford for at $107 sq ft! Unheard of!

Nice small home in Talent that has had mechanical upgrades. In the middle 1990’s: double pane windows, roof, new siding, kitchen cabinets. 2008 new HVAC system and gutters.

Single car garage but could park two normal sized cars end-to-end. RV dump and hookups on the west driveway area. Great back yard. Very private with an enormous beautiful old tree for shade.

First time on the market since the 1970’s. Lots of character, French doors in living room, wood floors. There is a second toilet and shower but the sink has not been hooked up so it is being called a one bathroom at this time.

The main house is addressed as 734 Palm St. It is a three bedroom, one bath and the second unit is a one bedroom, one bath. They are both metered separately for all utilities so it would be easy to rent one and live in the other. The second unit is addressed as 342 Summit Avenue.

The total square footage is 1966 with the front unit having 1196 sq ft and the second unit being 800 sq ft. There is a two-car garage that is detached from both units and a great fenced backyard that is shared. Each unit has it’s own entry for total privacy.

The front unit has a nice living room and dining area, country kitchen, indoor laundry room and three bedrooms. It is heated and cooled by a heat pump and there is also a pellet stove. The second unit has a large bedroom and bathroom, a small kitchen, living room/dining room and indoor laundry area.

Both units are rented at this time and the tenants would like to stay. Both units are rented for $600 per month. The front unit is approximately $100-150 under market rent and the tenant does the yard work in exchange for the extra rent.

The property has been used throughout the life of it in many different ways. At one time the seller lived in the smaller unit and her daughter and family lived in the larger unit. Then the seller lived in the larger unit and rented the smaller unit to offset her house payments and finally both units are rented at this time. It would also work well if someone wanted to have a home office that needed to have a separate space. The possibilities are endless!

Gorgeous views of the entire southwest valley from this knoll top location. 7.88 acres of gently sloping pasture, 2040 sq ft home built in 1993 make this a very special property. The entire south facing portion of home has decking to enjoy the wonderful views and cool afternoon breezes. Water features with Koi to relax you. Great room w/vaulted ceiling and views of the Table Rocks. Nice large kitchen with hardwoods;informal and formal dining areas. Master has hot tub on the deck overlooking the valley lights.

You look out over the south valley all the way to Pilot Rock and Mt Ashland. Your immediate view is of the Table Rocks. Off to the west there is the pastoral view towards Grants Pass. The large country kitchen has hardwoods, tons of storage and a pantry. There is a breakfast nook just off the kitchen with a slider to the deck. The living room windows look to the south and take in the great views. The ceiling is vaulted and there are sliders out to the deck here. The wood stove is certified and the sellers say it is very efficient to use. The master bedroom is large with a large bathroom with a Roman shower.

There is a series of three small ponds that are all tied together and are located just past the deck. The sound of the water rushing between the ponds is soothing and relaxing. The ponds support a thriving Koi population. The seller has planted extensive gardens and has all the plants on drip systems. The area around the house is fully fenced with deer fencing. The property used to have a medical hardship approval which can be reused in the right situation. A buyer could build a shop where the medical hardship used to be as there is a septic and water storage there to service it already. The well is strong and also has a holding tank as the seller loves to garden!

The past two years have shown weak growth in the economy. Although there has been population growth there has been no housing demand growth. Builders incomes have dropped 70-90% and have been constrained by the lack of construction loans. Yun stated that is possible that in 2-3 years there will be a housing shortage due to the lack of new construction. He did state that housing starts are stable; but at a very low level.

According to Yun economists think that the recession ended last summer as we as a nation are beginning to produce more goods. The first signs of new jobs being created are out there. It will likely take more than 4 years to regain the 8 million jobs lost and from 6-8 years for us to recover from this recession. With the over-correction that took place on housing prices it has created a negative psychology among the people. He stated that this over-correction needs to be halted so the collateral damage of negative emotions is stopped. Only then will people begin to jump back into the market. As a rule, people don’t buy homes with cash. Rock bottom interest rates along with rock bottom pricing indicates an over-correction. The economic trenders, Case-Shiller data shows that we are currently at the zero line having returned to ‘normal circumstances’ regarding home
prices and the ability to buy homes by those that live in the area.

Medford has had 10 straight years of job losses while Washington DC has had the same number of years of job growth….likely driven by government jobs he said. He stated that to keep foreign investors confident in our growth we need to have a credible plan to reduce the debt. If they loseWeight Exercise their belief in us, rates will likely rise to between 7-9%. The government is trying to chip away at some of our tax deductions for home ownership such as mortgage interest and property tax deductions and having a capital gains tax for all sales. The National Association of Realtors are fighting these on your behalf. It is a proven fact that homeowners perform better in social
standards such as test scores,, juvenile delinquency and other standards. Artificially boosting the ability to be a homeowner is what created the housing bubble that eventually sunk the economy. Yun predicts that the mortgage rates will rise to approximately 6% at about this time next year.

The commercial real estate market follows the housing market by 12-18 months. This market is following the same bubble even though the bubble was not driven by  sub-prime loans. At this time since the loans are not government backed the now-profitable banks don’t want to let go of the money for commercial loans. Look for foreclosures and great prices on commercial sales and leases in the next few years. Fannie Mae has played a huge roll in keeping the interest rate low on home loans. They created a hedge fund that bet on the rise of the housing market which increased their profits. When the housing market crashed, the public took the hit.
NAR is advocating in Washington DC that Fannie Mae would never be allowed to do this again. Take the profits and ask the public to pay for them.

To sum it up Yun said that the increase in stock market activity was indicative of economic action by the wealthy where economists watching the housing market to take the pulse of the middle class. He was cautiously hopeful although the going is much slower than normal in a recovery. Be on the watch for political moves that take away the tax credits for homeowners.

Let me know if I can help you buy or sell your home….I am in it for the long haul!

Well, the numbers are out again for the sales in the area. I have downloaded the whole file so that you can see them all. It appears that some things look promising…the number of ‘normal’ sales which are
the ones that are not bank owned or soon to be bank owned such as a short sale. These seem to be a large number of the sales at first glance. For existing homes they add up to 51% of the sales where REO’s or properties commonly called foreclosures are only 38.8% of the sales.  Click on this link to see the stats in detail. stats may 2010

The most telling number…the short sales. These constitute 10.2% of the sales. When you add up the short sales and the REO’s which are basically transactions controlled by banks, it is approximately 50% of the market. Of properties on the market foreclosures are only 6.6% of the total. That tells me the banks are doing a good job of unloading their properties. In order to unload them they have to price them ‘to move’. What this means is that all other properties are in need of the same kind of pricing. If you want your home to sell or get looked at, the market demands you are at the same price as a foreclosure.

Consumers tend to believe that a foreclosure is a ‘great house at a great deal’. In some cases this is true. Generally a foreclosure is a home in which the seller lost all hope and let it go in more ways that one. They let the yard go, general maintenance on the home, sometimes the home has been stripped of appliances and even fixtures such as cabinets, lights and other removable items. When you purchase a foreclosure, you get what you get.

In a deal I recently closed my buyers got a great price on a house in East Medford. It was a foreclosure and it needed work. After the whole house inspection there were FIFTY items that FHA required to be repaired before the transaction could close. These weren’t minor items either. The buyer ended up having to raise the price of the property to cover the repairs. The repairs ranged from a HVAC system that actually worked, to ducts that weren’t full of water and mold, to a range/oven that turned on, and then a whole host of other repairs including a new shower that wasn’t covered in mold and held together at the drain by duct tape. Fortunately for us the buyers were well connected with contractors and got the whole thing done for an amazingly low price.

As you look at foreclosures, just remember, when the bank says ‘as-is’ that is generally exactly what that means! It appears that the banks are holding a bunch of properties off the market in order to not flood it with foreclosures and thereby driving up home prices a bit as people are competing over the available properties. That does not change the fact that there are whole flood of foreclosures yet to come!

On a final note, the stats show that home prices in our valley have dropped as a whole by 30.2% over the past five years. Talent and West Medford have lost over 40% of their value. It appears the pricing is stabilizing and with the lenders expecting a 1% increase in rates over the next year it might be somewhere close to the bottom in pricing. But then, my crystal ball could be a bit cloudy…..

Great lot for a two-family set-up.  It even backs up to a golf course you have nice views behind you! City planning says a duplex or TWO free-standing homes can be built. You could put on two mobile homes also if you wanted. Site plan/arch review required ($1100). OR CHANGE ZONE to SFR 6, subdivision app, flag lot and get four units. ($710 plus subdivision fees). Check w/Medford planning dept. The house on the property has NO value. It might work for a 203K loan. It will not be removed by the seller. 500 year flood plain no flood insurance required.


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