February’s Case Shiller Index was released today. CNN’s headline reads, “Home Prices Lowest Since 2002.” For Portland, home prices sit at July 2004 prices: 129.60 which represents a .36 slide from January’s Case Shiller Index. Case Shiller reports lag 60 days and are released on the last Tuesday of the month.
After the Index was set to 100 in January 2000, Portland seemed to lag about a year behind the rest of the country. The majority of the areas tracked started their rise and hit their peak about a year ahead of Portland. In recent years though it appears that Portland has fallen in line with the Composite indexes. The Dallas chart line is interesting as they never saw the highs or lows that the majority of the country experienced. Flat seems to be the rule for their market: talk about real estate being local!
Trying to compare RMLS Market Action to Case Shiller doesn’t work. They reports use different areas, methodology and the most up-to-date reports are always a month apart. RMLS reported the lowest inventory in years when the March report was released a couple of weeks ago which may put some upward pressure on prices. It’s too hard to tell what factors will have the biggest impact on the market. Does low market inventory, low interest rates and highest levels of affordability in years trump market jitters, foreclosures, political outcomes and economic concerns or vice versa?
I would love to see an area-by-area Case Shiller index for Portland. In the areas I follow I see few houses selling for 2003-2004 prices. If you see that someone paid $200,000 in 2003 you can bet that house will sell for $300,000+ in most Portland neighborhoods. I guess it goes to show how much things have fallen in the suburbs.
Case Shiller uses “sale pairs” to create its data. When a sale occurs it is matched to that address’ previous sale. I wrote Who/What is Case Shiller a few years back to help explain where their data comes from. I believe their raw data is available but I doubt anyone has the time to parse through it to answer the specific neighborhood question.
Thanks for shareing the information. I’m really interested in the Real Estate’s Portland market.
I know…it is just that the paired sales I see don’t match their data. I know they are suppose to match for condition but MANY homes selling these days are in far worse condition than they were a few years ago, especially short sales and foreclosures. I doubt they are able to see those issues.
The Texas line on the graph is very interesting. A national home inspection message board I frequent has a lot of Texas inspectors and they were all wondering what the fuss was long after we had crashed here (as in, they were staying plenty busy). They’ve been singing a different tune lately, though. For the last year or so things seem to have dried up down there…. at least volume-wise I’d imagine.
As you say, all real estate is local. As a local home inspector my company has seen a HUGE uptick in business starting last fall. But, we’re still pretty far below the “hayday” of 06/07.
Great data and article! It seems Portland and Seattle’s markets are not far off from eachother. The Texas line is definitely interesting.