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 […]

May Numbers; On Being Accustomed to Food

Something I admit but can’t fully reconcile:
There are two parts of being a successful real estate agent:  Doing the job an agent is hired to do, professionally representing clients in the buying and selling of real estate.  I’ve said before, good agents earn every cent of what they’re paid: that’s testified to by the fact that the […]

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 - […]

April numbers: There’s somethin’ happenin’ here, what it is ain’t exactly clear…

I said before I people and situation watch, because that can give early cues before the numbers catch up: 
Nationally the DOW just went over 13,000 - up 13.5% since January - unemployment went down when it was expected to go up, and fresh $600 checks are taking some of the mental agony out of $3.60 gas prices.  […]

Forecasting the housing market: Presumption, projection and personal observation

[This began as a one paragraph caveat to the next installment of For the Benefit of Mr. Git, but grew.  I’ll post the latter later.] 
I’m not an economist.  If you want one, NAR’s Lawrence Yun was named by USA Today as one of the top five in the United States.  His tables are elaborate, his analyses detailed and nuanced, […]

Oregon mortgage delinquency rates

The Wall Street Journal published an interactive map today that dovetails nicely with the map linked to by Ron Ares a couple days ago on foreclosure risks.  It details by state delinquency (30-120 days past due) rates of first mortgages, second mortgages, HELOCs and the overall.
The good news is Oregon is still 44th in the […]

In Housing (as in all things) the free market works

George Will is always good, this morning particularly so because it’s particularly pertinent, and should give a little more definition as to where I stand on government intervention.  It’s worth reading in its entirety, but key:
The market, which bewilders and annoys liberals by correcting excesses without the supervision of liberals, is doing that as housing […]

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, […]

In praise of Terradatum

A good company is defined by three things, each of which reinforces the others: the quality of the product or service provided; the quality of people it employs; and how well and quickly it follows through on fixing problems. Standard seems to be that the rep or support person - or even president - tells […]

More on Portland Housing Supply …

Terradatum has just added a new search algorithm that gives a condensed and more up to date view of a given market:  Six months, broken into weekly and twelve week increments.  It came out yesterday so I haven’t had time to go over it in depth, but one chart stands out.  This chart (click for […]

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