When you go searching for the latest Portland real estate news online, as likely as not you will find the lion’s share is dominated by advertisements (not to complain: I advertise, too) and the current Portland Metro area listings. There is rarely any true Portland real estate news as such—since what’s ‘new’ is principally the arrival and departure of the latest batch of homes in the northwest for sale.

All the other nuggets of Portland Metro area real estate “news” are actually news’ first cousins: features about real estate—most of which deal with the age-old verities of the field rather than anything that is truly up-to-the-moment new. The other day, while hunting down the latest Portland Metro area real estate goings-on, as usual, our national Realtors’® web site kept coming up. This is not unusual, since our organization is one of the most active trade organizations in the country, quoted often right here. But one of the features stood out, and I clicked on it.

The video in question was brand new last month: “3 of the Dumbest Home Loan Mistakes You Can Make”—a fairly irresistible title. The three were: don’t lie; don’t buy an expensive auto while applying; don’t use an out of town lender who doesn’t know the market, and don’t skip getting a second opinion (I know that’s four, but I threw in ‘don’t lie’ myself, since that’s the dumbest of all).

Once you begin looking around for interesting real estate videos, what really stands out is how many of them are lists. Apparently people (including people like me) find it hard to resist titles that promise to list things. That could be because everyone is curious about other peoples’ opinions of what’s important…and how important (what’s first and what’s last).

At any rate, a quick scan of the titles among the real estate videos revealed something that would be hard to guess. Not only are there a whole lot of lists—there are a whole lot of them whose list stops at three. Top 3. Best 3. Dumbest 3.

There were 3 Secret Tips to Winning a Bidding War; 3 Tough Conversations Sellers Can Avoid Having with their Realtor; 3 Insider Hacks for Staging Your Home; 3 Home Improvement Projects You Shouldn’t Do Yourself; 3 Sneaky Ways to Make Your Kitchen Look Expensive (declutter and clean; replace hardware; and fix fixtures…the only ‘sneaky’ thing about this list was the title).

All of those were on that single Realtors’ web site! And when you start looking around everywhere else, you come up with an avalanche: 3 Things to Consider Before You Pull the Trigger on Real Estate; The 3 Things Real Estate Marketers Can Learn from Black Friday; 3 Things Poker Can Teach You About Real Estate (no surprises there: “weigh risk vs. rewards;” “know the odds;” “pay attention to the human factor”); 3 Things to Know Before You Buy Your First Home (these three weren’t very illuminating: “get preapproved;” “save up”; “consider your lifestyle when house hunting”).

It was tempting to try to see if the Top 5 lists were even more numerous, or the Top 10; but by then the clock had already run out on the Real Estate List Research project. There are more than three items to act on when you decide to sell your Portland home, or begin looking for your next. For a dependably good start, begin with Item #1: call us!

Craig Reger Group

503.893.2022

We sell more because we do more.