By Ryan Frank, The Oregonian

September 23, 2009, 6:33PM

Real estate brokers tend to favor BMWs to BMXs.

They like pinstripes over racing stripes and spoilers to spokes.

Kirsten Kaufman doesn’t roll like that.

She’s the Bike Realtor.

Kaufman, a broker for three years, shifted her marketing last year to capture Portland’s growing ranks of home-buying bikers.

Portland is the country’s top bike commuting city among the 30 largest cities, Mayor Sam Adams said this week. That’s based on Census data that showed 6.4 percent of Portlanders surveyed biked to work last year.

Bike-friendly buyers tend to wheel around neighborhoods close to downtown. Those are the places where it’s easiest to commute by bike or use two-wheelers to get two loafs of bread from the corner store.
Read the rest of this entry »

As described in an earlier post, the ranking system at Walk Score measures walkability an address by using the number of conveniences located within a mile of an address, and creating a score ranging from 0 (car deserts) to 100 (walking heavens) on that address.

Reader response was mixed. An interesting idea, but what’s the point?

Here’s one: use it to measure increased home values

Economist Joe Cortright used Walk Score results to study the impact walkability has on home values in a paper titled “Walking the Walk“(PDF) commissioned by CEOs for Cities. The findings suggest that after correcting for other variables, homes in above-average walkability locations were worth thousands more when compared to homes with addresses rated as average.

Seems intuitive, doesn’t it?

Many home buyers looking within a city do so precisely because of a location’s convenience. They accept the higher “premium” to be in town. However, most people don’t consciously put a dollar value on that criteria. How would they? How much is it worth to live in a walkable neighborhood? Is it worth an extra 12%? 

The findings in “Walking the Walk” strongly suggest those numbers.

The study finds that with each additional point scored on Walk Score it is worth anywhere from $700-$5000 in increased home value. In some cases higher walk-values translated into a $30-$40 increase in home value. Read the rest of this entry »

September 25th, 2009
By Stephen Lee Davis

The latest batch of annual census data examining Americans’ travel patterns came out this week . The American Communities Survey surveys a cross-section of the country at random to find out, among other things, how they get to work. Do they take transit, do they walk, do they ride a bike?

Portland continued their national dominance of percentage of people who ride bikes, jumping all the way from 4.2% to 6.4% in one year. The city has invested in making biking safer and more attractive, which has paid off with more people biking, fewer cars on the road and cleaner air. With biking growing in popularity each year, scores of enterprising people have started bike-related businesses to ride the rising tide of bike culture in the city.

One enterprising Portland realtor combined the growing demand for homes in convenient locations with Portland’s biking fervor to boost her bottom line — filling a niche that was previously empty. When Portlanders want to buy a home that lets them bike to the office, the grocery store, or the post office, they call Kirsten Kaufman, whom Portland Live calls the “Bike Broker.”

Riding around Portland on her custom-built bicycle, she showcases homes that provide easy access by bike, by foot, and by public transportation — that is to say, the kinds of homes that more people want these days, but that other Realtors might not think to showcase. Kaufman has capitalized on the fact that convenience, short commutes, and access to the community without having to drive everywhere is as much a marketable selling point as good schools or low crime with a growing segment of homebuyers. Read the rest of this entry »

As gas prices soar, home shoppers are opting for tours on two wheels

PORTLAND, Ore. – With gas prices high, bicycles flying out of stores and a buyers’ market for houses, a handful of real estate agents around the country are touting the two-wheeled appeal of their listings.

Some even show houses exclusively by bike, wheeling through the neighborhood with potential buyers to show off bike lanes and bike-focused businesses and repair shops.

Clad in a purple helmet with plastic flowers dangling from her handlebars, Portland’s Kirsten Kaufman is part of a new generation of agents eager to replace the stereotypes of hauling clients around in fancy sedans or SUVs.

The mother of three starting hosting bike tours earlier this summer, doling out energy bars and apricots to a growing tail of clients whose passion for pedaling weighs heavily in their choice of homes. Some are hard-core cyclists. Others are moving into the city to avoid increasingly expensive and onerous commutes.

“It’s becoming more common to see families committing to driving less,” said Kaufman. “I think it’s a part of the market that will continue to grow as gas gets more expensive.” Read the rest of this entry »

Agents Show Houses by Bike, Pointing Out Paths, Racks, ‘Tuck-Under’ Garage

Cris Noreen, a broker in the Ventnor, N.J., office of Farley and Ferry GMAC, leads clients on bike tours of five homes at a time, riding five to 10 miles per trip. He says some 20% of his sales result from the tours. In Davis, Calif., broker Chad DeMasi got the idea from a client who met him at a showing on a bicycle, telling Mr. DeMasi he wanted to ride around each property’s neighborhood to get a sense of how bikeable it was.

While many of these prospective buyers pedal only for recreation — or view a bike tour simply as a fun alternative to sitting in a broker’s car — others want to cut down on daily driving. The number of people who use bicycles to commute to work grew 28% from 2000 to 2006, when 623,039 Americans said they did so, according to the latest Census Bureau data. The U.S. bicycle industry also has been growing, with sales totaling $5.4 billion in 2007, up from $4.7 billion in 2001, according to research funded by the National Sporting Goods Association.

Targeting the cycling community is a new marketing tool for the struggling real-estate industry. In June, sales of existing homes fell 15.5% from the same month last year, according to the National Association of Realtors. Riding down streets with prospective buyers attracts attention that could result in more business, these agents say. Some Realtors also attend cycling shows and “ride to work” days to boost their client bases. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Jonathan Maus (Publisher/Editor) on August 12th, 2008 at 11:37 am

Portland real estate brokerKirsten Kaufman knows that in order to sell a home, you’ve got to first sell the neighborhood. And increasingly, in addition to the quality of local schools and proximity to parks, Ms. Kaufman’s clients want to live in a place that is bike-friendly.

To capitalize on that trend, Kaufman has launched regular “Tour de Homes” where she pedals with potential homebuyers and points out things like bike-parking and bike boulevards.

“I’ve gotten a lot of interest and positive feedback in the tours,” she says, “And as we cyclists know, there is an intangible and priceless benefit to be gained in ‘quality of life’ by getting out of our cars and into our communities.”

The golden rule of real estate has been always been “location, location, location”, but Kaufman says she’s trying to get people to think instead of, “proximity, proximity, proximity.”

[Editor's note: For more on proximity,check out this article by contributor Elly Blue.]

Kaufman’s next “Tour de Homes” is planned for the Alberta neighborhood in Northeast Portland. The ride will meet at Black Cat Cafe (1203 NE Alberta St) this Sunday (8/17) at 10 am. Reservations are required and space is limited so email kkaufman [at] prunw [dot] com or call (503) 233-9513 if you’d like to come along.