Tax day has come and gone, and with it...real estate season in Salem Oregon has begun. Now, that is the normal real estate season, which will be funky this year due to the tax credit. We should have two more months of really good sales numbers and then we should see a bit of a drop. Even if we drop, I still think it will be an improvement over last year's sales numbers...which were beyond dismal. So my prediction will be sales will be up and prices will be down for the next few months.
May was up 24%, which is not a big surprise as buyers that were eligible for the tax credit were out trying to take advantage of that and last year was such a dismal year in real estate here in Salem Oregon, that I can't imagine the numbers being too much worse...from a sales volume perspective. Inventory is 9.9 months right now, which is still high, but I'll take it. The fact is that it will take a while to eat up all this inventory. A while being a couple of years.
Home prices dropped, not unexpectedly from last May because in order for sales volume to go up home prices needed to come down to put that supply and demand thing back inline. Home prices were about the same this month as in 2005. So, what does all this mean? I still stand by my opinion that we will have ongoing mild price declines for this year. I'm still predicting that next year will be relatively flat and will probably be the official bottom of the real estate market. Data was crunched from the WVMLS.
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