OregonLive recently had a story about a Norris Beggs & Simpson report indicating that prices in Portland are still too high by 6%. I recently posted Part 1 and Part 2 of the Q3 2009 stats. In that post, I indicated that inventory had dropped and that all the markets had improved as far as the number of months of available houses for sale. We base a lot of our stats and predictions on what that housing inventory is. Our inventory has been dropping, which is good. We’ve been wanting our inventory to decrease. However, in doing a comparison from June 1 to November 30, in the last month there has been:

• a decrease in the number of houses listed
• a decrease in the number of properties sold
• a decrease in the listing $ volume

According to the stats below, each market has had the number of houses listed decrease by 50% or more from June 1 to November 30. The listed $ volume likewise, and stands to reason, has dropped by 50% or more in each of those markets as well. In addition, only around half of the houses listed got sold. Below are the stats for the three areas my blog covers - Lake Oswego, West Linn (RMLS #147), West Portland (RMLS #148) and Tigard (RMLS #151).

RMLS™ #147 - Lake Oswego

RMLS™ #147 - West Linn

RMLS™ #148 - West Portland

RMLS™ #151 - Tigard

If you took out the first-time home buyers who purchased, our real estate market here in Portland would look a lot worse than it does. Even with that tax incentive, our sales volume has dropped by more than 50% just in the last month. Now that the tax credit has been extended, it will be interesting to see if sales will continue on an upswing, or if we will continue to see the numbers dropping as they have lately. My guess is that inventory and sales volume will continue to decrease over the next several months due to 1) seasonality 2) weather 3) high unemployment and 4) owners losing their homes to foreclosures and short sales.

Our official November stats from RMLS™ will be published around December 14 and I will be completely surprised if it doesn’t show a decrease in inventory once again. I’ve seen many houses come off the market in the last week where people are either tired of their homes sitting unsold, are being taken off the market because of the holidays, or perhaps are now facing either a short sale or foreclosure. We won’t know what 2009 really looked like until the end-of-the-year report from RMLS™ which won’t be available until mid-January. Foreclosures and short sales are still at record numbers due to our high unemployment. We need jobs for our economy and our real estate market to fully recover here in Oregon.

There is a meeting being held today at the Home Builders Association by leading economists. It will be interesting to hear their 2010 predictions.

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