Portland real estate inventory continues to drop and June 2012’s 3.9 months is the lowest since March 2007 according to the June 2012 RMLS Market Action released yesterday.  It’s important to note that this is a totally different market than 2007.  The market peaked in July 2007 and there were nearly twice the number of listings and twice the number of closed sales in a given month.  Inventory is the ratio of closed sales to active listings.  North and NE Portland both have 2.9 months of inventory, SE Portland: 2.5 and West Portland has 3.8 months.  There are 8799 homes for sale in the Portland metro area.

The median sales price is up 8.6% since this time last year.  We’re not there yet but another month or two of positive numbers will force the Portland Business Journal to revise their doom and gloom theme as the 12 month rolling average is down just 2.1% and median price is down .9%.  Rolling averages compare the average of the most recent 12 months with the 12 months prior to that.  All other metrics are in positive territory compared to last year.

We’re still seeing the trend we’ve previously discussed: homes under $300,000 are hot commodities with tough competition and lots of instances of multiple offers.  Higher priced homes aren’t moving as quickly.  That’s too be expected but it feels more pronounced than we saw in the run-up to the 2007 market peak.