Whenever I visit my parents in Arizona, its HOT. I'm told, however, that it's a dry heat. Well the market in Portland is sliding, but it's a SLOW slide!
Pending and closed sales are down around 12% compared to September of last year according to the RMLS Market Action Report. For the second month in a row we are seeing the median sale price ($267,000) and the average sale price ($315,300) drop, this time close to 5% from August. Quarterly stats show that compared to the 3rd quarter of 2007, we have a 15% decrease in new listings, and a 26% decrease in closed sales. We have a little more than 17000 active listings citywide, and with the rate of sales as it is it would take us 10.4 months to sell out of these homes.
The good news is that our 10.4 months of inventory is almost identical to the inventory that we had in April of this year. In fact, we have had a steady inventory level of around 9-10 months since February. This means our balance of new listings and sales has remained consistent this year. That is a lot more than can be said about our financial markets and the state of the market in most other regions of the country. Lots of inventory, lower prices, low interest rates...Why such a decrease in sales when we have such a buyer's market? It's the economy.
Buyers are having a difficult time in the mortgage market because banks and loan packages have gone away that were here a month ago. People are predicting that we will have a tough time well into next year. Money will be tighter, and its predicted that interest rates will creep up.
However, people have been talking about a difficult market in Portland since last year. So far we have not been nearly as slow as 99% of the markets in the country. In fact, there are several areas that have seen an increase in the value of properties over the last 12 months as compared to the same 12 months in 2006-2007. These areas are North Portland (2.7%), NE Portland (2.1%), West Portland (6.8%), and Lake Oswego (5.4%). The fact of the matter is that it has taken us a long time to get to this point, and Portland is still attracting new residents every month. The consensus is that we will be insulated from the worst of it until it finally turns around
Comments(2)