Most of this neighborhood went up in the 1950s. The house I sold on NE 18th Avenue was built in 1951, and it is entirely typical. Owners of houses that age often assume the year is holding them back. In the numbers, it mostly is not. AGE IS NOT THE VARIABLE Across recent sales here, homes built in the fifties sold across almost the entire price range. Some at the bottom, some near the top. If the build year were the deciding factor you would not see that spread. What you see

The median home in Poinsettia Heights sold in 93 days over the last eighteen months. Not two weeks, and not a year. That number surprises people in both directions. Sellers expecting a bidding war find it slow. Sellers who have heard the market is difficult find it reassuring. It is simply what normal looks like here right now. WHAT MAKES A HOUSE TAKE MUCH LONGER Almost always the first two weeks. A listing gets its most motivated audience the moment it appears, when every bu

Most owners start preparing about ninety days before they list. By then the useful window has closed. Ninety days is enough time to paint, declutter and take good photographs. It is not enough time to change anything that meaningfully moves the price, because the things that move the price are slow. WHY THE TIMING IS WHAT IT IS The items buyers pay for are the structural ones. A roof with life in it. Impact glass. Systems that are not about to fail. Those are permitting decis

Almost everyone who asks me what their house is worth is not planning to sell it. They are doing something else, and I think it is worth naming, because the industry tends to treat every question as the beginning of a transaction and that is exactly why people stop asking. WHAT PEOPLE ARE ACTUALLY DOING They are checking. It is the largest thing they own, and they would like to know it is behaving sensibly. That is a completely reasonable thing to want and it does not require

I closed 1503 NE 18th Avenue in July. Three bedrooms, two baths, 2,085 square feet, built in 1951, sold for $700,000. Whenever I finish something on a street, the neighbors ask the same question, so I pulled the numbers for the whole area rather than just the one house. WHAT THE LAST EIGHTEEN MONTHS LOOKED LIKE One hundred and twenty homes sold across the Poinsettia Heights grid. Not nine, not a handful. A hundred and twenty. The middle of that market was $745,000 and 93 days