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buying: You may have had the highest and best offer on a Beaverton home, but Google could cost you the home - 01/09/12 09:36 PM
You may have had the highest and best offer on a Beaverton home, but Google could cost you the home. Well, it happened this last week to another buyer that called me today. They put an offer in on a home and they said their offer was the highest and best. You know the story, above asking price, conventional loan with 30% down. But, that wasn’t enough thanks to the power of Google.
You see when this buyer was assured by his agent he had the highest and best and then 2 days later he got a rejection, he had to … (14 comments)

buying: Beaverton Oregon Real Estate: Don’t forget to pack everything - 10/07/11 03:35 PM
Beaverton Oregon Real Estate: Don’t forget to pack everything. The best way to make sure you do pack everything is to have everyone take an individual walkthrough the house. I can’t count the times I’ve gotten calls the days after close from a seller to say they left something behind and were wondering if they could come pick it up.
If you are thinking of selling in Beaverton, Oregon let us the Friendly Home Team take care of the real estate and you take care of the packing. Together we can help you a have a very successful move.
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buying: The key to getting more business is simple… Answer the phone! - 09/27/11 02:33 AM
Sounds crazy doesn’t it? But, how many of you don’t answer the phone when a potential client calls you? Think about it, do you really answer the phone when you aren’t busy? Well, I keep getting more and more clients because of agents who don’t answer the phone.

I would love to be the first agent these people talk to, but even if I’m not first, second or third, as long as I’m the last agent they talk to that is fine by me. When a person calls me and sounding completely frustrated and says “Thank you, you are the … (94 comments)

buying: Would your clients buy a home again if they knew what they now know? - 09/20/11 02:51 AM

I’ve taken a small survey of about 50% of my past clients who bought homes between January 2001 and January 2009 to find out if they knew what they know now, would they have purchased again? I can tell you this, the answer didn’t surprise me, but would it surprise you?
63% of my past clients said if they knew then what they know now, they wouldn’t have bought a home when they did. They said they would have bought a home, just not when they did. The number one thing I heard was “We got caught up in the … (37 comments)

buying: Bull Mountain: A little history from the top - 09/15/11 09:44 AM


Now, I grew up on Bull Mountain in Tigard, Oregon and I had heard stories of farmers, ranchers and cattle which all made sense since I did a lot of horse riding up there when I was younger. (This was long before the housing boom) I promise in the late 70s and 80s there were hundreds of acres of farm land still on Bull Mountain and I rode ever inch of them!
So, yesterday, when I took my kids to my old stomping ground we found something new at a Elizabeth Price Park within all these housing developments. What we … (18 comments)

buying: Are you thinking about making a move, if your last experience wasn’t great, call us! - 09/15/11 01:59 AM


I get many clients who used another agent in the past and when it comes time to sell and move again they decide to make a switch. They call us because they have heard from our past clients that the experience they had with us wasn’t ordinary it was extraordinary and they would never consider using another agent after using the ones on my team, the Friendly Home Team.

Are you thinking about moving, the give us a call, we are here to serve.

Click anywhere on the map to search all Beaverton, Oregon homes for Sale
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buying: How much is peace and quiet worth when you buy a home - 08/04/11 11:50 AM
How much is peace and quiet worth when you buy a home? This was the question some of my newest clients had when they purchased a home. Why did they have this question? Well, the house they were buying was one of the most expensive in the city and would have been the highest priced home sold in the last six months upon close.
Despite all that, they had to have this home, it was a worry when it came to the appraisal, but they were buying the home as well as the peace and quiet that came with this home, … (14 comments)

buying: I feel the Earth move under my feet - 07/18/11 03:11 PM
In Oregon we get a lot of rain and one of the things rain can do is move Earth and a lot of it. It may not seem like one drop of rain can make a difference in this little world of ours, but if you live on a hill or near a creek, it is something you need to consider when buying insurance for that home.
Above is a picture of my daughter standing on an old street and as you can see from the picture, where she is standing and the rest of the road, don’t exactly meet up … (12 comments)

buying: Congratulations you just bought the crappiest house on the block! - 06/29/11 12:57 AM
Have you ever went with your clients and look at a street of beautiful homes and then walk in to the foreclosure our clients are looking at to know that this is the absolute crappiest house on the block? Well, my wife drove by this scene today and just had to turn around and take a picture, because she knew there couldn’t be a crappier successful sale anywhere than this one!

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buying: Can you push your market in to moving faster? - 04/12/11 01:14 PM

As I watched my kids go faster and faster as my daughter pushed this merry-go-round, I asked myself, can we push our market to move faster than it is? I then looked around and saw there wasn’t an apartment complex in the area that had a vacancy.

So, what if I was to go to these apartment complexes and show them that the $900 they are paying is about $50 more than they would be paying for a house of the same size including taxes and insurance. Would this get our market to move a little faster?
In … (11 comments)

buying: What a deck! I’m so envious of these people! - 04/06/11 01:17 AM


I do have to say these guys know their decks having been on probably hundreds in their lives. But, they can’t get this home because they aren’t allowed to sign the loan documents. But, heck that doesn’t mean you can’t buy your own home with a beautiful deck that others can envy.
Call or email Todd Clark and the Friendly Home team today and let us help you find that perfect home with that amazing deck for your family.

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buying: Helping bridge the gap between renting and home ownership, one family at a time - 03/28/11 11:46 AM

Todd Clark and the Friendly Home team are here to help. Our goal right now is to help as many families go from renting to owning. With the historic low interest rates and prices that haven’t been seen in years, this certainly is the time to own.

So, call your brother, your sister, your parents, aunts and uncles, share the news that this is the time to own a home rather than rent. If you are presently renting, right now you could be paying less in a mortgage than you are for renting each month. (Amazing but true)
We are … (14 comments)

buying: Even with the real estate market spinning out of control, with the right agents, you can still be left with a smile on your face. - 03/24/11 02:30 AM

With all the doom and gloom in the real estate market you would think not a single house is selling anywhere, but that just isn’t the case. The fact is, we are seeing a record number of homes sold by my team, The Friendly Home Team at Knipe Realty in Washington County, Oregon.

Though many people feel the market is spinning out of control, just like this picture, my clients come out of the crowd and can be seen with smiles on their faces as they either sell a home through us or find that perfect home for their … (14 comments)

buying: The Oregon City Falls and the end of the Oregon Trail - 03/17/11 02:45 AM


Oregon City is one of the oldest cities in Oregon and many consider it to be the end of the Oregon trail, though many did end their journey here, there are still many miles to the Pacific Ocean. I do have to say with the beauty of the falls and the Oregon City area, I think I would have probably stopped here to have the very tough journey they all took to get here.

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buying: Finding out what is important to you! - 03/16/11 09:42 AM

One of the things I find interesting about both buyers and sellers in this business is everyone comes in to real estate knowing exactly what they want. However, they quickly discover that they need to ask themselves the serious question, “What is important to you?”

My important wasn’t my wife’s important when buying our first home in Beaverton, Oregon, and though we had talked about houses prior to getting one, we never really talked about what was important to us as individuals. Once we sat down and talked about our “What is important to us” we found a house … (23 comments)

buying: Would you help this person? Seems 12 other agents wouldn’t! - 03/10/11 01:39 AM

About two weeks ago I got a call from a person who didn’t live in the area and she wanted to buy a house. Now, these houses weren’t in my normal area, only a few miles away, but not a place I normally advertise. I’ve sold a few homes in that neighborhood and she found one of my old blog posts about that neighborhood.

She asked if I could go take some pictures of some of these properties since the listings only had one or two shots and most of those pictures looked like they were taken from the … (116 comments)

buying: Please, board your cats and dogs about a week before your move… A cautionary tale - 03/09/11 06:22 PM

It has been a couple weeks now since my buyers moved in to their new home, yet something seems to be missing. The family cat came up missing a day before the move, they did notice the cat was acting a little weird a couple days before close and just really didn’t think anything of it.

What had happened was the cat was getting just as nervous about the move as the family and though they were keeping it in the house, she managed to escape and now hasn’t been seen since. This was an outdoor cat, but even … (22 comments)

buying: Does that creek behind the house flood? - 03/07/11 11:51 PM

This is a great question to ask and is a big concern for a lot of buyers. The same creek that you see as a beautiful feature can also be a horrible risk. Now, first of all having a creek behind the house doesn’t always mean the house will flood every time there is a big rain. The fact is only about 25 of the homes along a creek such as Johnson Creek and Butternut Creek actually flood. (Those are just the ones you hear about on the news.)

Now, the best way to find out if a property … (18 comments)

buying: Dry basements and attics yesterday, don’t mean that today! - 03/03/11 01:58 AM

Yesterday we set a new record for the amount of rain on that day in a 24 hour period. The previous record was set in the 1950s and yesterday we shattered that by more than double. One of the things buyers seem to always ask is, “How is the roof?”
Since I’m not an expert at roofs and really don’t like climbing on them, (not because I’m scared of heights, heck I used to bridge jump) I’m just afraid of falling. I know, silly difference, but jumping off a 50 foot high bridge into water below, I knew what to … (17 comments)

buying: It is that time of year again… Todd, why did my payments go up on my mortgage? - 02/20/11 10:55 AM


Every year, at about this time, I start to get calls from people that their mortgage payments have increased. They call yelling at me saying “Todd, you remember at the closing table both you and the escrow officer insured us that this was a fixed rate mortgage, how come are payments have risen?”
Well, there are 4 parts to your mortgage, principal, interest, taxes and insurance. The first two principal and interest are fixed and those are what you agreed to when you signed the loan, they will be fixed for the entire 30 years and will never change.
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Helping Families Home is a blog set up to help families find that perfect home for them. I have a family and I understand how hard it can be to find a home that everyone is happy with. Let me help you find that home and help your family home.


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