Portland Metro Housing Affordability

In the interesting but not definitive category:
Each quarter RMLS publishes a little talked about Housing Affordability Index, another due out when they release June numbers in a week or so.  It takes into account median family income (via HUD), median home prices and prevailing interest rates; then, assuming 20% down on a thirty year fixed […]

Portland Housing Blog, PMI, Transparency

Mainstream media love to denigrate blogs and bloggers for their lack of journalistic integrity and oversight - compared, say, to The Oregonian.  But blogs are held accountable by readers and other blogs, and the good ones earn credibility by immediately correcting errors of fact.  Thus I trust Glenn Reynolds infinitely more than anything I read […]

June Median Price for Pending Sales Ties All-Time High!

And so it goes.
The actual headline will be more like this:  “Median price up From May 1.6%, Down Only Slightly - 1.2% - from June 2006.  Portland Real Estate Market Much Better Than Most of U.S.!”
But.
Here are the prevailing price trends; blue is pending, green the actual sold price:

Clearly the gap between list price and […]

A (Real Estate) Tale of Two Cities and Four Zip Codes

For those who still doubt that all real estate is local, I thought it would help to compare two areas with approximately the same number of listings (detached single family).  The first - the southeast zip codes of 97202 and 97206, encompassing Woodstock, Eastmoreland and Sellwood - has 438 active listings; and the second - […]

For the Benefit of Mr. Git, Pt 2; the demand side of housing, inertia

[Part 1, supply, here.]
Demand = the number of buyers willing and able to buy a home.
Willing:  Local factors

[Downtown Lake Oswego]
Before we can find willing buyers, there must first, of course, be potential buyers. I admit fully to provincial bias when I say I’d rather live in the Pacific Northwest than anywhere else in the world - […]

March PDX Real Estate Numbers; First Look

As I said in an earlier comment:  Not pretty, not dire, about where it’s been since last August.
This is for all residential property categories in the greater Portland area, the same area covered in data released by RMLS in a couple weeks.  Note these numbers will change somewhat; books are still being updated.
MEDIAN PRICE

[As always, […]

UG’s Primer, Part 1: UGB, restricted growth, and the effect of supply on real estate prices

My last year at Nordstrom was 1979.  I was the divisional men’s shoe merchandiser for the six Oregon stores, and the national economy was that of Jimmy Carter: High inflation (12%), high interest rates (prime 12.25%); malaise.  Not in spite of that, but because of that we had a record year:  27% increase in sales, […]

Bubble Bloggers, Naysayer and Animal Rights Nuts

A comment on this post, from the perfectly named Naysayer: 
I love how you real estate people and the homedebtors try to blackmail the rest of us with your ominous threats about how the return to sane housing prices will be bad for all of us. Bullpucky.
Let it crash. Let it crash HARD. The dotcom bubble burst […]