December 2009 ended with 7.7 months of inventory down from 14.1 in 2008 and 8.5 in 2007. However, our inventory stats include theMarket Update Graph-bettyjung.wordpress.com Portland metro area along with Mt. Hood, Columbia Co., Yamhill Co., Marion/Polk Counties and the North Coastal Counties. I’ve been reading other blogs saying how great it is that our inventory has dropped from last year, but the RMLS™ stats cover a wide-spread area and not just the Portland metro area.

On the face of the RMLS™ report, 7.7 months of inventory is a good balanced market, however, that’s not the whole picture, or rather the entire story, for the Portland metro area. Yesterday, I wrote a post specifically about the Portland metro areas as to whether they were balanced, buyers or sellers markets. There’s still too much inventory. I broke down the stats for the Portland metro area and didn’t include all the other counties mentioned above that are included in RMLS™ stats that determine the total months of inventory.

Most if not all of the outlying areas of Portland still have too much inventory. It’s important to know neighborhood-by-neighborhood stats. Let’s take a look at the total market times for those areas as well for December 2009:

  • N. Portland=101 days total market time
  • NE Portland=118 days total market time
  • SE Portland=104 days total market time
  • Gresham/Troutdale=112 days total market time
  • Milwaukie/Clackamas=147 days total market time
  • Oregon City/Canby=140 days total market time
  • Lake Oswego/West Linn=235 days total market time
  • W. Portland=175 days total market time
  • NW Washington County=158 days total market time
  • Beaverton/Aloha=122 days total market time
  • Tigard/Wilsonville=178 days total market time
  • Hillsboro/Forest Grove=140 days total market time

The above total days on the market represent area by area and not a general overview of the entire market area RMLS™ stats represent. Gone are the days when a property sells when the ink drys on the listing contract. All areas show greater than 100 days on the market with Lake Oswego having the longest market time - 235 days. Certainly, it seems, longer market times are becoming the norm once again. In other recessionary time periods, we always had 90+ days total market times and it looks like this recession isn’t any different.

 Creative Commons LicenseALL ABOUT…..Portland.Oregon.Real Estate, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative askfirst1Works 3.0 Unported License. © Copyright 2008-2010 Betty Jung. All Rights Reserved. Use of this article, photos and images without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws. Based on a Blog at WordPress. (For more local and national real estate information, go to http://www.bettyjung.com/).