This is a series of blog posts about real estate in Salem Oregon written by Melina Tomson of Tomson Burnham, a small boutique real estate brokerage in Salem Oregon. The blog has articles about local real estate market conditions from Salem, Keizer, Independence, Monmouth, Dallas, Stayton, Aumsville and Silverton.
The blog covers topics from market conditions to happenings inside the real estate industry that might impact consumers to new technologies that are housing-related. Community information for home buyers looking to relocate to Salem is also housed in our blog as we discuss our local favorites.
Erik Hitzelberger wrote a little poem based on Green Eggs and Ham. I started a comment thread in his post, and well…it morphed into this. So this is dedicated to all Salem Oregon home buyers and Salem area real estate agents that try and work together to find the right house…whatever that may be. That…
Last weekend was the first fabulous weekend here in Salem Oregon. Like many other Salemites, my family headed to Minto-Brown to ride around the great bike/walking paths they have there. Armed with my camera, I took several shots of some geese and ducks that were playing in the pond at the park. A passerby said…
Okay, I made a few changes on my sidebar that I wanted all my readers, all 3 of you, to know about. First is my iPhone app. Yes, I love my iPhone and I am doing a little trial run with a Salem Oregon metro area home search iPhone application. You can search my IDX…
Yeah I know the saying is stop and smell the roses, but it is May and that means that the Keizer Oregon Iris Festival is in play now. The Tulip festival is the annual April event, and now the Iris are starting to bloom. (You can click the bottom right of the slide show to…
The other day, I wrote a post about how HUD was going to allow first time home buyers with FHA loans to get a “bridge type” loan on their tax credit so they can use it as a down payment. That has since been retracted. Personally, I am not surprised. It would take a while…
Down payment assistance programs, lovingly called DAP’s by we in the real estate industry, were nixed as of Oct 2008. Between asking sellers to pay for closing costs and then having the seller’s “gift” them down payment monies, many home buyers were getting into FHA home loans for nothing out of their pocket. The backlash…
Bank foreclosures are nothing new, but in California things are so bad in some areas that the banks are starting to destroy some homes. We clearly don’t have this problem in Salem Oregon. Our real estate market, while it has its issues, is far from destroying property. Here is a YouTube video that shows the…
I used to do drama in high school and one of the school plays was Arsenic and Old Lace. In 1944 it was made into a movie starring Cary Grant and the premise behind it was that a man finds out that his beloved aunts are homicidal maniacs that poison people with arsenic. It’s a…
Why is it that when you go to a conference you return home totally exhausted when you just sat there all day? I recently went to RE BarCamp in Portland. It’s a real estate techie kind of deal. Anyway…they pulled my blog up on the screen and I got some feedback and will have some…
I’m going to deviate from my normal real estate focus to share with you some photos. Originally I came from the Chicago area to Portland to Salem. I wasn’t sure how I would feel about giving up those “big city” things to do. I have to tell you that the local community festivals in Marion…