Typically every month I post a lot of stats showing what our real estate market has in inventory and the number of houses, condos, new construction, income properties, lots, etc. that are active, pending or have sold.  Those stats give you a good indication to determine if it is a buyers market or a sellers market for a particular area.  I recently broke down several areas in metro Portland to show which areas in fact were either a buyers market or a sellers market in another post. 

Where we’re headed:

• If you look at the most recent six months of sales and, if a particular area has ten houses selling on average every month but you have 20 pending, you will see that the inventory will start to decrease.  You can tell whether  that area is selling well and whether it is a sellers market (i.e. less inventory).  On the flip side, if you have only five pending sales on average in a certain area, you know the months of inventory will increase and it is a buyers market (i.e. more inventory) in that RMLS™ area.
• Pricing always follows the number of houses sold. Therefore, if fewer and fewer homes are selling when you look at the last 12 months of data, you can bet the prices will continue to fall. The interesting thing is that there is a delay from when transaction volume changes and prices change if you are watching an area closely.  However, you will be able to see when a change is coming.

Today:

Pretty much the same thing has been happening all year:

• Inventory in the suburbs is up, market times have been longer, and transaction volume is down.  There have been huge price drops in out-lying areas particularly of note is Lake Oswego.  Close-in inventory (metro Portland) is low and selling due to demand staying strong from first-time home buyer purchases. Obviously the First-Time Home Buyer Tax Credit has been helping to energize our real estate market.  I recently posted that 49.6% of all the sales in Portland have been fueled by the first-time buyer segment.
• Transaction volume trends down as the season starts to shift.  We pretty much see that each year and prices are still down considerably from last year.   I expect prices will continue to take a hit in outlying areas with the closer in areas weathering the storm much better.  I started reporting that early in the year and it has consistently been the case through 2009.

As always seems to happen, just when I am about ready to publish a post, some data magically appears.  The Vice-President of our company recently passed out the most recent sale activity by zip code.  I extracted the data that is relevant to the three areas my blog covers–RMLS ™#147 Lake Oswego and West Linn, RMLS™ #148 West Portland and RMLS™ #151 Tigard:

(1) Report is for single-family detached houses and condos plus new construction - % Change is for the same period last year 

Source:  Data Quick and courtesy of Realty Trends

APPRECIATION RATES PORTLAND METRO - Q1 2009 - Q2 2009

Courtesy: Portland State University

The chart above is from Portland State University’s August 2009 Housing Market Analysis Report showing the Portland Metro areas appreciation rates for Q1 2009 - Q2 2009 for single-family detached houses.

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