Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Portland Market gets Fugly - 15 Months of Inventory!

The November RMLS report was released a few days ago, and it's ever worse than this pessimist expected.

Median prices are down 7% from Nov 07 to Nov 08 to $265k

The average price is down 11% from Nov 07 to Nov 08 to $308k

Closed sales are down 40% to 1041, the lowest level since Feb 1993

Months of inventory spiked almost 40% to 15 months - this might be an all time record

Total market time is now 135 days = about 4.5 months

My initial analysis says that the drop in closed sales is the result of the credit market, which isn't going to be better anytime soon. So unless people start saving more (right, anybody seen their portfolios recently?) or prices drop to the point that people don't need to borrow as much, sales will remain slow and inventory high.

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The latest reduction by Bernanke will not cause lending to resume. The influx of liquidity at all costs will not encourage banks to lend money for mortgages et. al. The pool of qualified buyers has diminished and banks are in risk aversion mode given the 2008 hits to their balance sheets. Look for inventory to to continue to rise. I think Portland will see its largest real estate loss in the coming year due to a continuation of the credit freeze and poor employment outlook.

PDX Outsider said...

I agree. Good arguments, too bad they are anonymous!

Kirk Coburn said...

LMAO @ fugly -- Why can't the newspapers have headlines like that?