Here's what's on our mind.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, signed into law in December 2017, promised radical changes to the federal tax code. Many of its goodies were aimed and the real estate industry, but because of a critical drafting error, many commercial landlords and…

Local real estate investment firm NBP Capital acquired the downtown Multnomah County courthouse for $28 million this past November. The current structure was completed in 1914, although the site has been the home of the County courthouse since the…

Portland is a leader in managing stormwater runoff with green infrastructure. Nearly 20 years ago, the City began a serious effort to adopt green infrastructure – such as pervious surfaces, bioswales, vegetated infiltration galleries, and other…

According to the March 2019 Multnomah County Economic Indicators report, the Portland manufacturing sector has grown impressively since the great recession, having created close to 250,000 jobs since 2010.

Last month the IRS issued additional guidance in the form of more proposed regulations. The latest guidance is generally favorable to real estate investors, and reflects continuing efforts by the Government to promote the purposes and intent of the…

The Oregon Department of Energy has created a web tool showing the phenomenal growth of solar energy in Oregon in the last 20 years. In 1999, 15 tiny solar facilities were all that existed in the state. By 2018 the state appears to be carpeted in a…

Accurately forecasting and predicting terrorism exposure within the United States is difficult, to say the least. To make matters more challenging for the commercial real estate industry, reinsurers largely stopped reinsuring terrorism insurance…

With the Governor's signature on Senate Bill 608 on February 28, Oregon became the first state with a statewide rent control law. The new law took effect March 1 and is applicable only to residential tenancies.

A team of Portland's heavy hitters has proposed a new five-story structure in Skidmore/Old Town that could be certified as Portland's first living building. The project team for the PAE Living Building include Gerding Edlen, Walsh Construction…

Daimler Trucks North America, headquartered in Portland, recently added 200 jobs to its Automated Truck Research and Development Center here in Rip City. Daimler announced the job growth while unveiling its new Freightliner Cascadia automated truck…

The City of Portland has about 10,000 buildings, bridges, cemeteries, landscapes, and other resources that have been designated as historic. Of those, about 5,000 are "documented" on the City's Historic Resource Inventory, which was created in 1984…

You have likely been reading many articles and editorials recently about how the gentrification of Portland's downtown and neighborhoods has forced artists out of once inexpensive creative spaces. City Hall is poking around at some remedies. But now…

LIBOR, a key interest-rate benchmark for commercial loans, is published daily by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). After December 31, 2021, the FCA will no longer require banks to submit their daily rates, which FCA uses to calculate LIBOR…

As discussed in my previous blog post, we need to find ways to build more housing if we are to make a dent in our affordable housing crisis. One solution being explored this legislative session, and by Portland City Council, is to end the ban on so…

The January 24, 2019 meeting of the Oregon Chapter of NAIOP, the Commercial Real Estate Development Association, featured a panel of affordable housing experts who described the root causes of the crisis, and what is being done to fix it.

Created in 1988, the federal Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, reviews acquisitions of US-based assets by foreigners for potential national security implications. Using CFIUS's findings, the President can then block a…

For a community that has not seen a great deal of change in recent years, there are a lot of new developments happening in Mt. Hood's mountain village. When Collins Lake Resort and the nearby Grand Lodges were built in the early 2000s, it appeared…

October, rarely friendly to financial markets, has recently come and gone. But Portland keeps rolling along. In the last 12 months, Portland Metro has added 37,100 new jobs, a growth rate of 3.2%, while unemployment remains at 3.6% which is basically…

On Tuesday, Portland voters approved the $652.8 million bond measure to build thousands of affordable homes for low-income residents in Multnomah, Washington, and Clackamas Counties (detailed here). Measure 26-199 was proposed by Metro, which says it…

Several weeks ago my blog post (How Will Opportunity Zone Investing Impact the Portland Real Estate Market?) talked about the importance to investors and professionals of forthcoming guidance from the IRS. The first chapter of that guidance was…