Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Downtown Condo Sales Report

Downtown condominium sales for the third quarter of this year are at the lowest level in over five years. A total of 198 condo sales were closed during the period of July – Sept 2008. This compares to 474 units sold during the sale period in 2007, 287 units in 2006, 227 in 2005, and 211 in 2004.

The average sales price per sqft was $403. This value is roughly unchanged from last year and up just 2% from the third quarter of 2006. This indicates that although sales activity has slowed considerably, prices have been flat over the two year period.

These statistics are similar to the recent Case/Shiller Index report for the entire Portland area.

The September report (using July data) shows that current property value levels appear to have reverted to the levels reported for May 2006.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

October Real Estate Market Report

The RMLS market report for September was released yesterday. The Portland area is continuing to see reduced activity and declining values.

September saw a total of 5,409 homes sold. This is down 26.4 % from last year. Pending sales for September were down 18.5%.

The September median sales price and average sale price were both down when compared to August of this year: -4.6% and -4.8% respectively.

The number of listings on the market is declining as fewer new listings come on and unsuccessful sellers remove their properties from the market. However, this reduction is not enough to offset the reduction in sales, causing Portland’s inventory level to again creep up. At the current sales rate, it would take 10.4 months to sell the existing inventory of homes for sale. This is up from 9.9 in August, 10 in July, and 8.6 from September of last year.

The most recent Case/Shiller index report (showing data through July 2008) indicates that Portland area real estate values are down 7.06% from July 2007 and down 3.13% for a two year period.

While the Portland market has lost value, we can be encouraged by the fact that our reductions are not nearly as severe as many other areas of the country. We had several years of unusually high increases (2005 and 2006) and are now coming back to a more normal and sustainable point. Our current Case/Shiller Index value of 174 is roughly equal to the May 2006 value of 175.