May
21
2007
Survey Says
By Charles TurnerWe’re going to try running polls on the right-hand side of the blog. I’m thinking that they’ll run for a week and I will update them on or around Monday then post the results for posterity.
Ideas for suggested polls (keeping to Portland Real Estate and keeping it clean)?
Next week: As a buyer, what is the first thing you notice when you enter a home?
Inventory up 3.3% last week in PDX according to
HousingTracker.
That’s the biggest jump in any of the markets being tracked except for Seattle.
I kind’a doubt we’ll be down 5 to 10% this year, but down 2 to 5% looks pretty likely at this point. Then down about 5% more in 2008.
Problem is, how do we measure the prices? Asking prices? Selling prices? NAR stats? Cash-Shiller? Price/square foot? Z-Estimates?
Good point. What “price” should be used?
Example: Forest Heights home sells in 2003 for $375,000. Homeowner puts on market for $590,000 in 2007 with no renovations (probably not needed). The final selling price is $565,000. Was the final price considered a reduction of 4.3% from the original asking? Was the $590,000 asking price too inflated? Did the $565,000 include money back to the buyer at closing?
Oddly enough, in the areas of town I’ve been tracking it seems that the Z-Estimates are now often higher than the asking price. Six months ago the Z-Estimates were mostly lower than asking price, sometimes significantly so. Not sure if Zillow has changed their algorithm or if sellers are becoming more realistic.
(oh, and it should be Case-Shiller in my first post above, not Cash-Shiller)
We selected your blog as the best real estate blog in Oregon (most recent post). We created an award ribbon if you’d like, just drop me a line.
Henry
So I’m curious: what was the RMLS inventory listing for April? I see that the Bethany area listings under $1,000,000 have grown over 20% in the last month.
I think Zillow is great for square footage, sales history, neighborhood information. I think that Zillow is really lousy for pricing, particularly because it doesn’t give real comparable sales.
Good article about April nationwide sales: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=3208530
Oddly enough, in the areas of town I’ve been tracking it seems that the Z-Estimates are now often higher than the asking price. Six months ago the Z-Estimates were mostly lower than asking price, sometimes significantly so. Not sure if Zillow has changed their algorithm or if sellers are becoming more realistic.
Zillow data lags the market by a few weeks to a few months, depending on the area. When prices are on the way down, Zestimates will be higher than the current selling (or even listing/wishing) prices. The sharper the rate of price drops, higher this price delta (listing/wishing price minus zestimate) will be.
When the prices were rising rapidly during the bubble runup, Zestimates were usually lower than the actual sale prices as well as wishing prices.
Expect the current trend of falling prices to continue for the next 3-5 years. Zestimates should catch up with the actual market prices by that time.
PDXrenter
Not catching the falling knives.