Avoiding The Snarl

As a real estate agent, I’m stoked that home prices around here keep going up. As a person, it’s not quite as simple. Sure, my own home is worth more. But if I were to sell it, where would I go? Any house I’d buy would be more expensive, too.  Plus, I have lots of friends who don’t own their own homes yet and that has nothing to do with how persuasive I am. Houses around here are expensive. Even a 3% downpayment can be hard to save up when you’re subsidizing your landlord’s mortgage.  But hey, there’s a silver lining to that huge, dark cloud. The Federal Housing Finance Agency announced that starting in 2018, maximum conforming loan limits were increased to $453,100.  What does that mean in English? Up to a certain amount a home loan is what’s called “Conforming.” Above that, it’s “Jumbo.” Conforming loans require you to put less money down than jumbo loans. They also come with better interest rates. And allow your lender to consider a higher percentag...

You probably heard that there’s a new law in Portland requiring that starting in 2018, any home that’s sold has to have an Energy Score. Here’s a quick overview of what that means: You can’t game the score. A house’s Energy Score has nothing to do with how many times you flush the toilet or what temperature the thermostat is set to. It’s a measurement of how efficient the home is: The effectiveness of its insulation, the energy efficiency of its appliances, stuff like that. The idea is to give buyers a sense of what it would cost to live in the home.  The score is relative. A house that scores a 4 is less efficient than a house that scores a 5. Since so many houses in Portland were built in the early 20th century, nobody expects a ton of houses to score super well. The requirement isn’t just for houses. It applies to “...any residential structure containing at least one dwelling unit or house, regardless of size, on its own lot.” This includes attached single dwellin...