Market Snapshot: October 2012 Portland Real Estate Update

Regional Multiple Listing Service (RMLS) just released it’s monthly housing report, and for the month of October our local Portland real estate market continued the same theme we’ve been seeing for most of 2012: the housing market continues to improve. In fact, the real estate market appears to be building steam at a time when sales and prices traditionally begin to taper off as we head into the holiday season.

Sales Prices

Prices are continuing to hold steady. Average sales prices year-to-date through October were $273,400 – 3.7% higher than the same 10-month year-to-date average in 2011. The median price of $232,500 was 5.2% higher. Month-to-month, October average sales prices were 1.1% higher than September 2012 and 10% higher than October 2011. Recall that all of last year’s gains in prices were wiped out from September through the end of the year, so seeing anything but a decline at this point in the year is a very good sign for the Portland housing market.

On an annual basis, average sales prices for the current 12-month period were 2.3% higher than the previous 12-month period. The median was 4.1% higher.

All in all, things look positive for Portland area home values.

Sales Activity

Sales activity continues to march in a positive direction as well with October posting the best October sales numbers since 2006. Comparing October 2012 with October 2011, there were 15.9% more pending sales than in the same month last year. Closed sales showed a whopping 42.7% gain over the same month in 2011.

Month-to-month, October pending sales posted a 5.8% gain over September 2012 and a 11% gain for closed sales. This is drastically different than the significant decrease in pending and closed sales we saw last month when comparing September 2012 to August 2012.

New listings held steady with less than a one percent decrease over October 2011. New listings were 1.5% lower than in September 2012.

Inventory

With such a large increase in sales activity coupled with a relatively flat movement in new listings coming onto the market, the Portland metro area’s inventory of active, for-sale housing would be exhausted in only 3.8 months at the current sales pace. In October 2012 there were only 7,981 active listings on the market. Compare that to October 2010′s 13,805 active listings or even 2011′s 10,012 active listings, and all I can say is this: wow. With interest rates so low it’s a great time to buy, but with inventory so low it’s also a great time to sell simply for the fact that there are so fewer homes to compete with on the market.

Time on the Market

Total time on the market year-to-date is at 102 days. That’s a 21% decrease from the same 10-month period in 2011. Looking at just October, total market time was at a 102 days, the same as in the previous month but a 24.7% decrease from October 2011.

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