The Portland housing market is still improving, but slowly-August 2009

Avoid the crowds.

If you’re looking to buy in our “reduced price” home market, these next couple of months are perfect for three reasons.

1.  Those first time home buyers going for the $8000 tax credit are mostly in escrow by now so they can close by the Dec 1 deadline for the credit.

2.  We’re headed into the holidays when many buyers sit out the market until the beginning of the year.

3.  The average home price in Portland is down 10.6% from August 2008 and the median price is down 10.8% (And August 2008 average price was down 3.9% from August 2007)

All of this translates into the perfect buyer’s market. Are you ready to take the plunge?

Here are the housing numbers for August 2009. We have a cautiously improving housing market for the Portland metro area. The market continues to improve over 2008, but the August 2009 numbers are very slightly down from July 2009 statistics. Since we need to look at trends, rather than individual months, this doesn’t bother me.

For example, the average months of inventory (our indicator of a buyer’s or seller’s market) is 7.8 for August 2009. That is significantly down from last August (2008) but up only slightly from July 2009. See the chart at right to follow the trends. Closed sales and pending sales are both up from the previous August, but down slightly from July 2009.

In the entire Portland Metro area:

The 12 month average appreciation rate is: -10.6%
This month’s Average Sales Price is: $296,300
This month’s Median Sales Price is: $249,900

The average days of market time is 135

Questions or comments about the market?

Email me Mailto:Anne@PortlandHomeSource.com