Cedar Hills

Nov 19 2020

Are you planning to buy or sell a home in Cedar Mill or Cedar Hills? First take the temperature of these neighborhood markets with my quarterly newsletters tracking hot and cold prices, activity and speed!

As Oregon enters a new Coronavirus “freeze,” I’m more determined than ever to provide valuable content across all channels, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and this website. Public health concerns limit opportunities for face-to-face communication. But video can help to offset social distancing, offering a more personal and compelling alternative to the written word.

So going forward, my blog will do double duty as a vlog. Click the play button below to view Episode 1 of Homing in on Portland. (It’s short and sweet at just under 1.5 minutes.) Then subscribe to either or both of my quarterly newsletters by sending your name and email address to catherinequoyeser@kw.com

Sep 14 2018

Homing in on Portland’s neighborhood housing markets – They’re not easy to track but here’s your guide to Cedar Hills and a leg up on the rest of the west side

Portland Business Journal tracks the Metro area’s hottest zip codes quarterly

The Portland Business Journal has good news for lots of homeowners on Portland’s west side. The zip code 97229 (Forest Heights, Bethany, Cedar Mill) continues to be one of the Metro area’s hottest neighborhoods and 97225 (Cedar Hills & Raleigh Hills) broke into the ranks of the top 10 in the 1st quarter of this year.

I feel fortunate to have had a front row seat on the trends. I recently listed homes in the areas (two in Cedar Hills and one in Cedar Mill) and repped buyer clients in the sale of a 4^th in Cedar Mill. On average, the three listings sold in 2.3 days at 99.5 percent of asking price.

One of my Cedar Hills listings – a detached home at 11445 SW Lynnvale Dr

I aim to be a realtor of choice for area residents. So last month I created a quarterly newsletter on real estate activity in Cedar Hills. Market data is readily available for cities, towns and zip codes. But that’s not the case for neighborhoods, though they’re probably a more meaningful affiliation for most people.

So my work was cut out for me. I did my best to copy by hand the intricate boundaries of Cedar Hills from the map published by its homeowners association in a small search window on the Regional Multiple Listing Service (RMLS) website. I decided to include two small islands surrounded by the neighborhood (Forest Hills Village and Lynnridge) and two areas on its fringes (Belvidere and 2015-13 Partition Plat). I delivered or mailed Homing in on Cedar Hills to about 300 homeowners and linked it to a Facebook ad for digital access.

While working on the newsletter, I consulted Q2 neighborhood rankings for context. I wondered if 97225 had kept its spot among the top 10. But it proved impossible to track that trend because at the time Portland Business Journal published the so-called “Heat Index” – overall rankings based on equal weighting of volume of sales, speed of sales, and average sale price – only in the 1^st and 3^rd quarters of the year.

I reached out to Brandon Sawyer, the journalist on the hottest neighborhoods beat, to ask if he could share the info and to suggest that the Heat Index be published every quarter. He not only obliged on both counts, but wrote me into his August 21 article.

It turns out 97229 and 97225 slipped in the overall rankings, taking 6^th and 29^th place in Q2. Still, not bad. And 97225 took 7^th for average sale price – 2 places ahead of 97229.

If I can answer any questions about your neighborhood market or you’d like to “subscribe” to Homing in on Cedar Hills, dear readers, drop me a line (catherinequoyeser@kw.com or 503-705-5725). The next issue comes out in October and I’m thinking of launching a counterpart for Cedar Mill.

My wall house listing at 11470 SW Lynnvale Dr

My Cedar Mill listing at 9883 NW Nottage Dr

May 20 2017

Get on the fast track to community — and the heart of Portland living — through your neighborhood association

1865 home of Cedar Mill founding father, John Quincy Adam Young

One of the things I like best about my work is being out in communities – walking or driving streets, talking with residents, and engaging with institutions and businesses that serve them. Neighborhoods expand and deepen our sense of home, offering connection and belonging beyond property lines and family ties.

The spirit of place thrives in Portland. Did you know that it has 95 recognized neighborhoods? And each is represented by an association that gives residents a voice in local governance? The city’s Office of Neighborhood Involvement (ONI) provides funding, information and technical support to help Portlanders build more inclusive, safe and livable communities.

Grand Central has become Cedar Mill hub since launch of 1st suburban location here 12/15

Signs of Cedar Mill’s past – site of 1855 business that gave community its name

In 2005 and 2006, Portland’s League of Women Voters published a two-part study of our neighborhood associations – past and present. They grew out of the activism of the 70’s. Some weighed in powerfully on land use decisions in the early days, helping to limit freeways and nudge the city toward walkable development and mass transit solutions. Over the past 40+ years, they have continued to evolve – through dissent and conflict as well as partnership, across changing political climates, and in good and bad economic times.

The vitality and achievements of our neighborhood associations command national attention. To take just one example, Portland occupies the whole final chapter of Better Together: Restoring the American Community (2003). Co-authored by Robert Putnam, a professor of public policy at Harvard, the book focuses on the power of networks or “social capital” to help people renew their communities and improve their lives.

Rare lull at Market of Choice wine bar in Timberland Town Center

Open spaces and native flora protect Cedar Mill's water quality

At the same time, associations have struggled with top-down city programs; insular perspectives or NIMBYism (“not in my backyard”); limited funding and capacity; lack of accountability and inequities in how resources are used and shared across the 95 associations and five area coalitions they make up; and not enough diversity among those who participate in them.

Monthly meetings of Cedar Mill’s Community Participation Organization are held at Leedy Grange, built in 1903

It is both because I value community and see opportunities to strengthen it that I recently started attending meetings of my neighborhood association. If you haven’t and would like to, here’s how to get started:

Type your home address in the search window of portlandmaps.com and hit enter.
The name shown beside the heading ‘Neighborhood’ is your association.
If you live in Multnomah County, the name will be a live link. Click on it and you’ll see contact and meeting info for your association.
If you’re outside Multnomah County, simply copy and paste the name to a new web browser window and you’ll soon find your way to your association website.

Of course, as a practical matter it’s also my job to do desk and field research that will help clients decide where to live. Neighborhoods are one strand of content in my blog. So far, I’ve written about Cedar Hills, Forest Heights and Cully. Up next? The West Slope. Stay tuned.