I’m not defending the condo graph from the previous post regarding March RMLS Market Action which has a graph showing 34% condo appreciation. Is something is wrong with it? The data is from RMLS, not NAR and I think it is fairly safe to assume that the data is culled from the RMLS database that is fed by Realtors using RMLS to list properties. Unlisted sales would not show. We don’t know what criteria was used to run the searches.
Using Prudential’s Transaction Platform search engine (fed from RMLS) I ran a few searches with very basic criteria: Properties listed as condos in Portland that have sold:

1/1/06-12/31/06
Overall condo sales: 2476
Condo sales over $1M: 26 (1.0%)

1/1/07-12/31/07
Overall condo sales: 2994
Condo sales over $1M: 65 (2.1%)
Change in overall closed condo units: +18%

Transact is designed as a search engine not to create market data reports. It smokes with under 100 records (like the NW Ryan CMA) but I’d still be here this time tomorrow running 5000 records through it. Hell, it will take awhile but I accept the 50 at a time and wait for the next page to reload. Going to be annoyed if it crashes.

An hour has passed:

2006:
High sale $2,188,850
Low sale: $61,900
Average $283,563
DOM Average: 46 days

Two more hours pass:
2007:
High Sale: $2,800,000
Low sale: $15,600 (!)
Average: $313,301
DOM Average: 67 days

I calculate a 9% change in average price. My numbers are based on a full calendar year so should serve as a check to RMLS’s graph, not an indictment of.

Comments are closed because I want the discussion to continue on the previous post as the comments there are valid to this thread. I’ve never done it this way so hopefully it will have the desired intent of keeping the conversation flowing.

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Added 1:30 PM 4/16/08 from John Weiler at RMLS (with permission):

Hi Charles – I’m the assistant editor of Market Action and I enjoy reading the blog.

Turns out your suspicion of the condo appreciation statistic was right on. When I triple-checked the stat, I found the issue. We typically pull all of our statistics automatically from the database into Excel, but this particular stat is still pulled manually and we, unfortunately, pulled the wrong number from the Home Sales Report (notice the striking similarity between the condo average sale price and the PDX average sale price?).

I will be posting an announcement on RMLSweb shortly – please feel free to join me in spreading the word. Thanks for your vigilance – it is appreciated as we truly want to provide you with the most accurate information possible!

The correct price was $264,300 – a more modest 5% increase.

Joel Weiler
Regional Multiple Listing Service
Communications Assistant

Good job PortlandRealEstateBlog commenters and thank you RMLS for getting to the bottom of the question.

I am going to turn comments on now. I don’t think it was a good choice turning them off this morning. Also added a title which I apparently forgot to do this morning!