Archive for the ‘Real Estate Market Stats’ Category:

We’re getting a better look at how 2009 wrapped up with yesterday’s release of RMLS Market Action. For the year, there were fewer closings than in 2008 but not by much (18,955 down from 19,132). The rolling 12 month average sales price was down 12.1% to $289,000 (median down 10.8% to $247,000). (more…)

RMLS Market Action was released yesterday. The last page of the Portland Metro report focuses on condos. The median sales price is down considerably but has seen an uptick the last couple of months.  Closed sales appear to be fairly consistent but the number of listed condos has declined more than 20% since November of 2008. [both graphs from RMLS] (more…)

A couple of weeks ago I took a look at whether RMLS Market Action could help us predict what the trailing Case Shiller report might look like?  The answer was no, at least not as reported.  It was pointed out that the methodologies are different.  RMLS Market Action does not include Clark County.  Case Shiller uses the entire Portland MSA which Wikipedia defines as:

The Portland-Vancouver, Oregon-Washington, Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), also known as the Portland metropolitan area or Greater Portland, is an urban area in the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington centered around the city of Portland, Oregon. The U.S. Census Bureau’s definition for the MSA is currently all of the following counties: Clackamas County, Oregon, Columbia County, Oregon, Multnomah County, Oregon, Washington County, Oregon, Yamhill County, Oregon, Clark County, Washington, and Skamania County, Washington. The Washington counties are separated from Oregon by the Columbia River. (more…)

The new Property Investment Profiles (PIP) and Market Tracker reports are available for September.  These reports are emailed monthly.  The Property Investment Profile report is property specific.  We set them up to report on comparable properties.  In the case of larger condo towers, we usually set them up to be building specific.  This report is for The Henry in the Pearl District.  (more…)

The chart above is from the June RMLS Market Action.  It shows the historical affordability of the Portland housing market.  The National Association of Home Builders publishes the NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Opportunity Index (HOI). (more…)

The research stems from the question, “how much should I offer a bank owned property?”

The result from running some searches:

• In Beaverton and Tigard since 1/1/2009 bank owned single family properties priced between $200k-$400k have sold for an average of 97% of asking price (70 of them).
• In Portland, the same criteria yields 137 properties that sold for 98% of asking price.
• There are over 1400 sold properties that were neither bank owned or third party approval in Portland.  Beyond the number crunching realm.  Narrowing it down to the 97214 zip code results in 42 properties that sold at 98% of asking.
• The 89 properties listed as third party approval sold for an average of 97% of asking in Portland. (more…)

Today’s planned post can wait. This is more time sensitive. I can’t get the graphs on MacroMarkets.com work so no visual but according to the just released Case-Shiller S&P Index results, Portland dropped 2% from between this Feb. and last Feb. There has been a monthly decline for each of the last six months.
There is more data available on Standard & Poor’s webpage. (more…)

The Standard & Poor’s Case –Shiller report is pretty much what we expected having recently looked at declining prices over the last few months in a previous post. The weight of the recent months has finally brought Portland year over year prices down -.5%. That’s compared to the 20-City Composite Index which dropped 11%. Once again, Charlotte and Seattle join Portland as the top three in the index.

The Oregonian reports that Portland was buoyed by Californian’s moving to the area but, “that’s over now.” Maybe I missed the news of the CA/OR border patrol sending Californians south at the border. My clients yesterday must have slipped through. Their plan is to be here in August in time to put their kids into school. I must have dreamt about coffee with a San Francisco family and the subsequent emails last week. Maybe I have the only two Californians moving here but broad media strokes imply that part of the market is dead are wrong. What we don’t see much of now is the California investor who is selling one property there to buy two or more here anymore though. A good portion of our clients now are moving from out-of-state to Portland. We just had dinner with friends that moved here who felt priced out of the Vancouver, BC market.

It does seem like we are seeing more media balance. Portland Monthly’s “Buy Here Now” edition is on newsstands and unless I heard wrong, I thought KGW’s business piece last night was brighter than they had been reporting in recent months. I think it underscores that there is little agreement and no defined outcome and that “Portland Home Values Take First Dip” might be a little late to the party as a front page headline caption. Most of the real estate blogs have been acknowledging that declines in the most recent data would weigh numbers downwards and that it was a matter of time. As I underscored to both of my recent California clients, you have to look at the whole picture to make your decision. Many think that there is a 20% plus correction coming (the Oregonian posits 15%). I don’t see it being that drastic but in poker parlance, we’re pretty close to being all in. (more…)

Will 2008 real estate be great? Will Portland’s real estate market deflate in 2008? It’s the crystal ball question. What if we head back to business school for a few minutes and try a SWOT Analysis; (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) to the market? Let’s develop this together. I’ll start but make no claim to having all the answers (or that you’ll agree with me). I’ll compile the list and we’ll have the first Portland Real Estate Blog Market SWOT Analysis. The strengths and weaknesses are internal to market. The Opportunities and Threats are external). We’ll probably find that in some cases we think an item belongs in more than one category (UGB as an example) (more…)

Quick cheating cut and paste job while vacationing in England:

Home prices in 20 major U.S. cities were down 6.1% on average in the past year as of October, according to the Case-Shiller price index released Wednesday by Standard & Poor’s.

Since October 2006, prices in 10 cities fell 6.7% — a record drop. The prior largest decline was 6.3% in April 1991.

“No matter how you look at these data, it is obvious that the current state of the single-family housing market remains grim,” said Robert Shiller, chief economist at MacroMarkets LLC and co-developer of the index.

Eleven of the 20 metro areas posted a record low annual growth rate, and six of the metro areas posted double digit declines. Also, all 20 metro areas declined from the prior month.

San Diego posted the largest decline of 2.6%.

Miami sustained the largest drop over the past year, with a decline of 12.4%. Next came Tampa, with a drop of 11.8%; Detroit, with a drop of 11.2%; and San Diego, with a drop of 11.1%.

Home prices are going to decline “considerably further” in coming quarters, likely reaching a double-digit pace on a year-over-year basis, according to Joshua Shapiro, chief economist for MFR Inc.

“Given conditions relating to mortgage financing, and the number of unsold homes that is piling up, all regions are likely to continue on a negative trend in the months ahead, and those with the greatest oversupply (at the bottom of the pack at the moment) will continue to fall by the most,” wrote Shapiro in a research note. (more…)