Vancouver WA Real Estate Market Update June 2023

The Reduced Number of Home Sales is Still Seeing Rising Prices!

We've been told that the US Federal Reserve's actions raised interest rates last year in general, with specific actions targeted to Mortgage / Home Loan Rates (via changing their purchase-actions related to Mortgage-Backed-Securities aka "MBS"); with the intent to Slow Inflation and bring it back down to a target of 2% per year. The initial "Shock" to the local market has seen a greatly reduced number of homes sold; with an initial tread of reduced sales prices.

With about a year now gone by from the Fed's initial change in direction, we are still seeing a greatly reduced number of homes sold when compared to prior periods; yet, Home Sales Prices have shot back up and have essentially recovered their prior Peak level!!!

The first graph (below) shows the same-month-end numbers from 2022 to this year (2023):

This time last year was when we first started seeing a significant reduction in Pending Sales thus, this time the year-over-year comparison for this item shows a smaller difference in this report (our report for May 2023 shows a -33.4% drop).

Our next graph shows the great reduction in Pending Sales activity that started in May last year, and is on-going:

At this point we continue to see a much lower level of Units sold. We also see that the seasonal increase this year is not nearly as robust (slope of the curve is not as steep) as we usually see.

Our longer term graph showing the rolling averages for Units Sold also shows this market is still struggling:

Usually at this time of year we see the 3-month line well above the 12-month line; while this year the 3-month line has only almost met the steeply declining 12-month line!!!

Finally, the Sales Prices, as we mentioned before, have returned to a strong upward climb and have neared their all-time high:

With Mortgage rates still at a high-level, and on the rise again; combined with continued rising Home Sales Prices; the Vancouver WA real estate market is becoming more and more un-Affordable again.