Portland real estate market conditions January 2011

The Portland real estate stats for January 2011 are in. There’s some good news — closed sales are up and inventory of homes for sale in Portland is down– and some not so good news –home prices are still going down.

To compare January 2011 figures with December 2010 check my previous blog.

Comparing January 2011 Portland real estate numbers with January 2010: closed sales increased 5%, pending sales decreased 3% and new listings are really down—20.5%. The average sales price for Portland real estate dropped 11.9%

January 2011 compared with December 2010 Portland home sales: closed sales dropped 29.2%, but pending home sales increased 23.1%. This bodes well for February closed sales. New listings also increased a huge 62.5%.

At the current rate of sales the Portland real estate market has 11.3 months of inventory. (In December there were 7.9 months of inventory. See the chart and explanation below for more details.)

The inventory in months chart doesn’t go back far enough to see the real trend of decreasing inventory of Portland homes for sale. January 2011’s 11.3 months of inventory is the lowest January inventory figure since January 2007 (the beginning of the real estate demise) when there was 6.2 months of inventory.

Sales Prices are still declining. This is the bad news for sellers. For buyers, let’s get together and take advantage of the low prices and low interest rates.

The average sales price for January 2011 compared with January 2010 declined 11.9% and the median price of Portland real estate declined 10.4%. Compared with December 2010, Portland home prices also declined by 10.5% for the average and 6.5% for the median sales price. (See the Portland Metro Residential Highlights chart below for more details.)

Is it a buyers market or a seller’s market? See the chart below.

It’s all based on the number of months of inventory. How many months would it take to sell all the homes currently on the market if no new property came up for sale? Less than 4 months inventory is a sellers market; 4-6 months is a neutral market; and more than 6 months inventory is a buyers market. All information is courtesy of RMLS.