Portland Prices Run in the Red

January results of the Case-Shiller home price index report reveal the perhaps inevitable news about the Portland real estate market.

In Case-Shiller’s estimation, Portland can no longer claim to be an appreciating market. From January 2007 to January 2008, it’s year-over-year pricing change was -0.5%. It’s just the second smallest decrease nationally (behind just Charlotte, NC), but the the rate of price declines is accelerating.

Tom Cusack over at the Oregon Housing Blog reads into the data a little deeper and finds it to be the first time ever for a year-to-year decrease in Portland’s index. He also notes the January results to be the largest monthly decline in the study’s history and the sixth straight month of declines since the market’s peak in July 2007 (down 4.1% total).

Some believe that our downcycle is timed about 1 year later than other national markets.

Note that the Case-Shiller index lags the current market by 2 months. So, what do more current indexes of asking prices suggest? Altos Research sees a 1.3% decrease in pricing over past 3 months (see chart above).

If there is a nugget of good news in this, perhaps the affordability gap is closing. I will run preliminary sales figures for March around April 5 and we’ll see if the news is any more encouraging.

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6 comments March 25th, 2008