With real estete such a topic of conversation in the news and everywhere we turn, I thught it would be a good idea to give you some facts about the Portland Oregon real estate market so you can know what is actually going on.  Home prices are down from a year ago, and inventory is high, but there seems to be some slight improvement in the numbers over the last couple of months.

The average price if a house in the Portland OR Metroi area was $324,300 in October, down 5.1% from October 2007.  While this isn't good, it is less than the 5.6% decline in September or the 7.3% decline in August.  Hopefully this point to a trend of prices starting to stabilize some.  Only time will tell just when we will hit the bottom, but I believe that the reality is better than what most people think or fear.

The inventory of homes for sale is still very high, and we will need to see the number of homes for sale come down before we see any strong recovery.  In October, there was 11.1 months of inventory in the Portland OR Real Estate market.  What this means is that at the current rate of homes being sold, it would take 11.1 months to sell all of the homes currently on the market if no new homes were put up for sale.  Again, this is  anumber that is more usefulto look at as a trend.  The inventory in September was 10.4 mkonths and in August it was 9.9 months.  Inventory does tend to build this time of year, so the increase over the last couplr months is not surprising.  What is probably more relevant is to look at the last two Octobers where inventory was 8.4 months in 2007 and 4.6 months in 2006.  For a little comparison, in March 2006 , we had just 2 months of inventory at the height of the seller's market.

There  are about 30% fewer homes selling this year than last year.  Once buyers start to feel more confident, I believe that we will start to recover fairly quickly, but we will probably still be in for an exciting few months.

All of this information is about the Portland Oregon market as a whole.  Each town and neighborhood is different, and if you have any questions about a specific property or neighborhood, you can call me at (503) 484-7370 or contact me at my Portland Oregon Real Estate website.

Thanks for your time!

Adam Highton