How's the Market?

 Crazy!  The November RMLS real estate stats just came out.  This year’s activity is blowing last year out of the water and our inventory of houses is quite low.  Compared to last year the prices are down, but the month-to-month comparison shows the median sale price up by 3.3% over October.    

Our inventory in months (a combination of the number of houses currently for sale and the current rate of sales) dropped down to 6.2 months.  6 months of inventory is generally considered to be a balanced market – neither a seller’s nor a buyer’s market.  Our inventory has been between 6.2 and 7.2 months for the last 9 months.  That’s a trend I’m happy to see! 

RMLS reports that the number of active listings on the market is the lowest that we’ve seen in Portland in the past 3 years. 

Compared to last year, the number of closed sales is up 18.9% (awesome!) and the number of pending sales is up 18.2%, which indicates more good sales numbers in December. 

I constantly hear about how horrible Portland’s market is right now, but I’m just not seeing it.  Don’t get me wrong.  The market could be better and I’d love to see prices trending upward over a couple/few months, but Portland is no Las Vegas.  Honestly, if some of our “huge shadow inventory” doesn’t hit the market soon, we’re going to run out of houses to sell!