This Week in the Mercury
Friday, January 16, 2009
Portland / News Condo Crash!!! Snooping On Portland's Deserted Open Houses...
Posted by The Unpaid News Intern on Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 3:19 PM
Speaking of adventures in unpaid newspaper work, this intern got to spend his last two Sundays at condo open houses, hanging with people named Sean Mele and Ruth Fox, and bugging old people about their employment status.
CONDO CRASH: No, the other kind...
What did I find out? Story after the jump.
On a recent Sunday afternoon, at the open house for a $699,000 condo in the new Hollywood Park building in NE Portland, few people showed up. Most of those who did said they had no interest in buying the place, they just wanted to see what a $699,000 condo looked like on the inside.
One older couple who'd lived in the the area since the '70s said they thought the place was nice enough, and great for people coming in from the East Coast, but added that they didn't want Hollywood to start looking like Portland’s downtown Pearl District. Another, younger, couple said they'd recently moved to Portland from out of town, and rented a house in the area. When asked if they could afford the condo, they laughed and said, "No way."
Meanwhile, over in John's Landing, Broker Sean Mele was able to spend most of his Sunday afternoon watching football, instead of wooing would-be buyers. His open house for a one bedroom $249,000 condo, located off the waterfront, drew about the same number of people as the one in Hollywood.
"The last two or three times, nobody came through," Mele admitted.
A few older couples stopped by, none of whom would say they were "in the market". One attorney, who has an office in the area, expressed some interest in the unit. She said she was looking to downsize from the muti-bedroom unit she's living in right now.
Mele says he's actually starting to see a slight pick up in condo sales, as sellers start to bring their prices more in-line with the depressed market, but things are still far from good, or even stable.
There are currently about 2300 active listings for condos in the Portland Metro area according to the Regional Multiple Listing Service. That number—which doesn't include condos that are under construction or being sat on by investors—is up modestly from six months ago, when it sat at about 2200. But perhaps a more telling statistic: While 398 condos were sold last year in the month of June, only 109 got sold in the month of December. Assuming the rate of sales doesn't drop any lower, it will take Realtors almost two years to sell off Portland current condo stock.
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