Market Conditions Ending January 31, 2009

The Portland Real Estate Market hit an all time high in inventory again since the RMLS began reporting data in 1992. There is currently 19.2 months of inventory which is up over 5 months from December 2008. This means that at the current rate of sale it would take 19 months to clear out the current inventory assuming no more inventory were added. Yes the Portland market is slow but this is not a true measure of what happened last month because what the Portland Real Estate statistics do not show is that in December the Portland area struggled through an immense snow storm. In fact, it was so large that the last time there was a snow storm that large was about 40 years ago. This hindered people from shopping for groceries let alone real estate. Closed sales as expected dropped 32.5% and pending sales dropped 26.1%. Another note is that 15% fewer people decided to list their homes for sale. This measurement is very telling in many ways. First consumer confidence is down. Second people may not have enough value to sell their home. Third if people cannot sell then they cannot buy. Finally, people now understand that real estate is not moving very fast in this market and are realistic and not overpricing their homes and in 15% of the cases choosing not to even list their home. Year to date from January 2008 - January 2009 prices dropped on average 13.3% while the median sales price dropped 10.7%. The average sale price in January 2008 was $342,900 and now the average sale price is $297,200. In the same reporting period the median went from $280,000 to $250,000. The average market time for houses that have sold is now 152 days or about 5 months. The February statistics will be much more telling as to the overall state of the Portland Real Estate market because the weather will not have impacted people and in most cases stopped people from getting out to buy real estate. You should see closed and pending sales at a higher percentage from this point alone.