Archive for the ‘RMLS Market Action’ Category:

Writing for me is like going to the gym.  Love doing it but get out of the habit and it’s hard to get back to.  Today’s release of RMLS Market Action should get me back in the groove.  Inventory is four months lower than it was this time last year.  That partially because there are currently only 9,451 active residential listings and partially because closed sales are up 18.9% from November of 2010.

Average price is down 4.6% from this time last year but edged up .3% from October.  Can we be cautiously optimistic about the Portland housing market going into 2012?  I previously wrote about the Case Shiller article predicting gains.  Yahoo/CNBC wrote “Residential Housing Ready to Waken?” on Friday of last week.  We should note that Portland has typically been about a year late to the party.

“It has become increasingly apparent to us that the pieces for a housing rebound next year are beginning to fall into place,” declared Barclays Capital analyst Stephen Kim in a recent note to investors.

Affordability and interest rates are as good as they have ever been in recent years.  There’s plenty of reason to be a pessimist too: jobs, politics, Europe being just a few of them.

RMLS Market Action for October 2011 was released yesterday.  The average price of residential property in Portland is $258,700.  The median price is $221,000.  So what does the NBA lockout have to do with that?  CNBC reports that the average NBA player has lost $220,000 in wages thus far due to the lockout (Kobe has lost over a million dollars).  That means the NBA’s 450 players could have purchased 5% of Portland’s housing inventory and reduced the current 6.8 months of inventory to 6.5 months just by playing some basket ball.

In reality most of that salary income would not have been spent in Portland and it is not the players losing out.  The economic impact to Portland is of far greater concern than the impact to millionaires fighting with billionaires.   The NY Times which has a documented love affair with Portland reported on how cities that are a one-team-town suffer the most (they failed to acknowledge the Timbers).  Joe Freeman at the Oregonian also wrote of the impact to the local economy which was repudiated by economist Patrick Emerson.  The Rose Garden employs 900 people a night and the City gets $77,000 for its coffers on games days.  Six games of revenue would have paid for the police overtime last weekend at Occupy Portland protests.  All the money referenced above will be spent one way or another but a large portion probably won’t be spent in Portland.

Moving off the soapbox, let’s go back to RMLS Market Action.  The average and median prices referenced above are both declines on both an annual and monthly basis.  Inventory has pretty much remained static, up just one tenth of a month.  6.8 months of inventory is lower that it was at any point in 2010.  A positive note is both pending and closed sales are up compared to October 2010 and year-to-date compared to 2010.  More houses are selling but for less money.

RMLS Market Action for September 2011 was released on Friday afternoon.  I’d consider the report mostly neutral.  Inventory, median price, pending and closed sales were up but average price and the number of new listings decreased compared to August.  Note that an increase in inventory is not considered a positive though at 6.7 months it is lower than it was at any point in 2010 and all but one month in 2009. (more…)

RMLS Market Action for August 2011 was released yesterday.  Inventory is up to 7.0 months.  Six months has been considered the equilibrium in the past but with the market changing so much in the last few years one has to wonder if there will be a new normal?  There are just under 12,000 home for sale.

Pending sales and closed sales were both down compared to June 2011 but up considerably this time last year.  The average sales price was up 3% from June 2011 but of course is still below July 2010. (more…)

RMLS Market Action for June 2011 was released just before happy hour on Friday afternoon.  I’ve updated our graph of housing inventory levels in the Portland and local market areas and the trend continues that City inventory averages about a month less than Portland Metro as reported in Market Action.  North Portland has just 4.2 months of inventory whereas West Portland is at 7.1 months.  Metro reports in at 6.0, the lowest level since July 2007.  Southeast Portland, which I wrote about last week, has 4.7 months of inventory.  The average sales price in Southeast Portland is $218,600 compared to West Portland’s $408,500.

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RMLS Market Action for May 2011 is out with mixed news.  The average sales price in Portland is down from April 1.8% to $262,400.  During the same period the median price increased .1% to $220,000.  The average sales price has dropped 7.3% over the last year.

Inventory levels continue to decline.  New listings have dropped and pending transactions are up.  RMLS reports Portland Metro as a five county area.  We’ve updated our inventory graph for the more localized markets.  The trend continues that the City of Portland has about one month less inventory than Portland Metro. (more…)

RMLS Market Action for April 2011 was released yesterday with mostly positive month-over-month news.  I consider a .1 month drop in inventory a positive even though mathematically a loss.  The average sales price went up from $261,000 to $267,300 and the median price also increased.  The average sales price over the last year has declined 5.2%.

April, May and June were the strongest months of 2010 Portland  real estate with a sharp drop off in July.  In previous years May, June and July saw the highest number of closings in a given year.  The difference for 2010 can most likely be attributed to the expiration of the First Time Buyer Credit on April 30th and the need to close those transactions (note the spike in inventory from 7.3 to 10.8 between June and July last year). (more…)

RMLS Market Action for March 2011 in the Portland Metro area shows  some strong gains from February.  Inventory dropped 35% from February to 7.1 months.  I’ve updated the tracking of the local Portland RMLS areas and what is most striking is that North, Northeast and Northwest (Washington County) Portland have inventory levels below six months (see graph below) and the RMLS Area Map (RMLS reports a five county zone).  The average inventory for the five City of Portland areas is 6.0. That’s the traditional line of demarcation between a buyer’s and seller’s market.  Portland’s local inventory has been at least one month lower than Metro’s since I started tracking it. (more…)

Yesterday’s post was about the Portland Metro RMLS Market Action report for January.  Last April I started tracking how the five RMLS areas that make up the City of Portland track compared to the five country Portland Metro area that the report covers.  City inventory is 10.0 months compared to Metro’s 11.3.  “West Portland” which includes both SW and closer in NW Portland took a huge hike from 6.7 to 13.1 months.  Closed sales for the area dropped from 196 in December to 101 in January.  Overall City closed sales dropped from 683 to 428.  North Portland has the lowest listing inventory. (more…)

December 2010 RMLS Market Action for the Portland real estate market came out yesterday afternoon.  Portland had a rough year but that may have laid the foundation for a stronger 2011. The median sales price is down 2.9% and the average sales price is down 2.7% for the year.  Days on market also dropped 6.6% which is a positive.

The report shows that listing inventory in the metro area dropped from 10.2 to 7.9 months.  In the last three years inventory got as high as 19.2 months but never lower than 7.0.

In April of this year I started tracking a more local “Portland city” inventory.  Whereas RMLS reports inventory for the metro area which includes five counties my breakdown is for each of the five RMLS areas that make up the city of Portland.  Since April, Portland city inventory has averaged 1.3 months less than Portland metro inventory.  In only four (8%) instances was a local area’s inventory higher than  the metro inventory for that month. (more…)