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.