Portland Area Market Activity - December 2006

The residential real estate market in Portland continues its inexorable and gentle settling.

Long-term homeowners will be pleased with continued appreciation gains, and home buyers have nearly twice the selection in available listings than they had in 2005.

For the year, as of the end of November, new listings were up about over 14% and closed sales have fallen about the same amount when compared to last year. Over 10,900 homes are now actively marketed, putting the available inventory at just over 5 months at the current pace of sales.

Average and Median Prices
The average sale price year-to-date in the market is now $318,200 (vs. $276,600 for 10/2004 through 11/2005). Half the homes in the metro area sold for more or less than the median price of $267,900 (up from $230,500 last year).

Appreciation
Over the past 12 months, Portland-area properties averaged 14.4% appreciation. North Portland, Milwaukie/Clackamas, and Lake Oswego/West Linn have surged late in the year to 18% or better. Areas such as West Portland (including downtown), Tigard/Tualatin, and NW Washington County have fallen to around 10% for the year. The median price is up 14.9% over last year.

Inventory
For the first time since January 2004, the Portland metro area has over 5 months of available inventory–10,965 homes. This means at the current pace of sales, all existing listings would sell out in 5.1 months, with no new inventory being added. This is roughly described as a ‘balanced market’, but seem to be tipping more in favor of buyers. The average time on the market for active properties through November was 42 days, versus 43 days this time last year.

I’ve published a tabular view of year-to-date results on my Market Activity page.
Appreciation percentages are based on a comparison of average price from the last 12 months (12/01/05 - 11/30/06) with 12 months before (12/01/04 - 11/30/05).

Source: RMLS, December 2006.

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Photo by stargazr. Used under Creative Commons license.

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2 comments December 20th, 2006