Portland Prices Down 13.5% in June - RMLS

June sales data was released yesterday according to the Portland Business Journal, and the average sales price for June was down 13.5% from June 2008, about the same as last months drop.

Closed sales were only down 5% from June 2008, which sounds like the rebate might be having and effect as well as reducing inventory.

More analysis later, TGIF! Enjoy the weekend folks!

Median Home Price Drop 14% in March - RMLS

The March RMLS data was released this week, and there doesn't seem to be much sign of a recovery just yet.

Ignore the mainstream media comments about sales being up. They always rise in the spring, the real measure is of course how they compare to last year. And in that comparison things are bad. Even the RMLS was unusually stoic stating:

"Portland metro area market activity continued to grow over last month, but fell short of reaching March 2008 levels."

There were 1184 closed sales in March 2009, down 30% from March 2008.

Sales were up 28% from February 2009, but they were up 22% from Feb to March 2008, and I'm sure they were up a similar amount in 2007.

A couple other highlights:

The March 2009 median price was $246,400, down 14% from $286,500 in March 2008.

3685 new properties were listed in March 2009, down 28.5% from March 2008. This is the one bright spot, as new listings fell to their lowest level in 10 years, signaling that the glut of inventory might eventually start clearing up.

Total inventory dropped 8%, from 15,388 to 14,208 in March 2009. This also signals that the bottom might be coming, as inventories shrink prices will eventually stabilize.

Unfortunately prices are still dropping like a rock with no sign of letting up, which is all most folks really care about. And given our 12%+ unemployment rate I don't see things getting better anytime soon.

Lying with Statistics - Why All Newspapers Will Be Bankrupt Soon

The February RMLS report was released a few days ago, and this is how the Oregonian reported it:

"The good news: Home sales up in metro area"

Jeff Manning starts the article with "Closings jump 17.1% in a month" and of course the headline is skewed to be positive. To be fair he does talk about the fact that closed sales are DOWN 38.1% from Feb. 08.

That's the real news. Closed sales are way down, and don't show any sign of increasing. The increase from January is meaningless, and Jeff should know this.

Real estate sales are seasonal, so comparing month to month variations are meaningless. Of course sales were up in February, they always are. That's not news.

So then why report it? Is it because the Oregonian is heavily reliant on ad revenue from the Real Estate industry, and is afraid of offending them?

I can only assume so.

Frankly, the need to pander to advertisers is why I have lost all respect for serious newspapers. Bloggers might not always get it right, but you can be sure that I don't have any hidden agendas or advertisers that I need to protect.

I honestly believe that most newspapers will be gone soon (as do others) and I can't say I'll miss them. I don't trust much of what I read these days (certainly not on Fox, but also on the mainstream outlets) as most papers are too tied to their advertisers to be neutral.

The Oregonian's web site is also a joke. I can rarely find articles that are in the print section, the front page is a mess, there is no structure, content is hard to find, it's just sad and pathetic all around.

I'll post more about the results later.

How Well is Your Neighborhood Holding Up?

While most people here are interested in the monthly RMLS reports and Case Shiller data, what they really want to know is "how is my neighborhood holding up?"

To answer this question I was able to get a year over year view of median prices for the Portland market by RMLS neighborhood for January 2009, and the results are interesting. (click on the chart for a larger view)

[edit] Tom at Agent503 has year over year data for a few zip codes here.

A few highlights:

For the 4 inner Portland neighborhoods, NE Portland is holding up the best with median prices down 1.8% from Jan 09 vs Jan 08.

Columbia County is faring the worst, with median prices falling 26% in Jan 09.

If you're interested in a beach house, coastal prices are down 17.4%.

The overall Portland market is down 10.7% year over year.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the 'why's behind the differences.

Next up I'm going to look at why I belive the RMLS methodology for calculating growth rates is seriously flawed, and why you should ignore them - something I have mentioned repeatedly. I will also look at sales rates by neighborhood. Stay tuned!

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.

Portland Median Prices down 6.7% in August - RMLS Market Action

RMLS released their August sales data and in what shouldn't be a surprise at this point, median Portland prices continue to decline, falling 6.7% in August compared to last year. Average prices are also declining, falling 9.7% compared to August last year.

One major change to note is that the RMLS is now reporting the total time a property has been on the market, not just the most recent time since a re-listing. The change from 56 days to 121 days is largely due to this change, although some increase is due to more properties on the market and fewer buyers. This should help reduce the number of re-listings as re-listing a property will no longer reset it's time on the market, unless the property is off the market for over 30 days. Charles Turner talks about this in more detail on his blog.

Inventory in Months seems to have stabilized around 10 months of supply. I believe a "normal" market should be between 3-6 months of supply, but this is a metric that seems to change regularly.

The above chart also shows changes in th emarket by sub-region. This shows that some areas such as North Portland and NE Portland are holding up a bit better than areas such as Milwaukie/Clackamas. However take this data with a serious grain of salt, this is 12 month rolling data, not monthly data, so any significant changes are still being masked and areas such as N and NE Portland might be negative Year over Year, but won't show up for a few more months.

I'd love to see the RMLS report their data monthly instead of a 12 month rolling average. I bet it changes once the market picks up, as they'll want to highlight the increase. I'd like to see the change now.

Portland Median Price down 2% in April - RMLS

The June RMLS report was released today, and it shows a 2% decline from $295k in June 2007, to $289k in June 2008.

Months of inventory are at 9.5 months, almost double the 5.0 months for June 2007, and 4 times the 2.6 months during the peak of the bubble in June 2006.

Closed sales are down 31.3% from June 2007, and pending sales are also down 30%. New listings are only down 16.3% year over year, which to me means that people have figured out that they should only list their house if they absolutely need to sell it.

I still don't see signs of a bottom, but hang on, the ride will only get bumpier what with the Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac issues now coming to light.

Months of inventory are still high at 9.5 months.

Price Declines Hold Steady for May - RMLS

The May RMLS data was released last week (yeah, I know I'm late to the party, it's been a busy week and I certainly wan't spending Father's day weekend inside on the PC instead of playing with my daughter!)

The median price in May 2008 was 287,500, down 3.2% from last year, but up 5% from April's median price of $275,000.

I'll post more once I get more info from my source. I could use a second source if anyone has access to RMLS data that they'd like to share.

Ruffling a Few Feathers

Apparently I have ruffled a few feathers over on Trulia when I asked if their heatmap data was based on RMLS (inflated) figures, or on assessor data (more accurate IMO).

The thread is here if you'd care to join in.

Frankly I'm tired of having to keep portlandmaps.com up whenever I see a house listing, to get the true picture of the size of the house. I heard from a Realtor that RMLS requires Realtors to input the total size of a house (including unfinished basements and attics) not just livable space.

I realize that the assessor data can be wrong, but I feel that it's more accurate than the size data that RMLS posts. I'd like to see them change this policy, what do you think?

March RMLS Data and Analysis

The March RMLS data was released this week and it's not as bad as I expected. A big thank you goes out to Chris at Johnson Gardner for help with the analysis. I thought I was a good analyst, but Chris is better. Click on any of the chart to enlarge them. On to the charts!



The median price in March was basically flat, up only 0.6% Year over Year, and up 2.7% from February. Year over year growth has basically been flat for three months now.

Inventory as measured by the absolute number of homes on the market rose again in March for the third straight month, nearing 15,900 units. So while inventory in terms of months has fallen since January as a result of a more accelerated (seasonal) sales pace, the total number of sellers on the market has increased. In other words, the rate of sales in the first quarter has yet to keep pace with new additions to the market. The rate of sales is down 39.1%, and I believe that the lack of buyers will eventually drive down prices.

The affordability measure in the metro area fell in March for the second straight month. This was partially the impact of a monthly increase and median prices [$280,000 in (Feb 08) vs. $286,500 (Mar 08] and a slight uptick in the average 30-year FRM.

The results of this figure are deceiving. This chart calculates the spread of listing to sales prices in an attempt to measure seller optimism (or reality). While the results for March indicate a narrowing spread, this was the result of a higher sales price and stagnate listing prices. This would indicate that on average--at least in March, that buyers came back to the sellers in terms of price and not vice versa.

Chris also added a couple cool new charts and some more detailed analysis this month.

This is a cool visual that scatter plots all sales under $1,000,000 by price and sq. ft. The trendlines would indicate that prices have in fact remained roughly consistent year over year.

This chart shows the distribution of sales by price cohort. Using $300,000 as a benchmark there was a slight 1.1% shift toward higher priced homes (Above $300,000) obviously accounting for the modest uptick in median price.

This chart displays the year-over-year change in sales pace by price point. This chart allows us to measure which cohorts of the market are seeing the biggest slowdown. The 56% decrease in homes below $150,000, and to a certain extent $200,000 to $300,000 is an indication of marginal or first time buyers either waiting it out or failing to get financing.

A summary of market activity by product type. (Note from Chris: Note that RMLS issued a section on condo appreciation that listed an average condo sales price of $336,500 for March 2008. I am fairly certain this is a miscalculation). Not how the average sales price in the market is no longer increasing. In my opinion this would suggest that tightening in terms of pricing is starting to occur.

This data differs from the data reported in the RMLS Market Action. The RMLS likes to report the last 12 months vs the previous 12 months, and based on this methodology it appears that the average price is still increasing. I believe our method here is more accurate, and more clearly shows changes in growth, both up or down.

It shows inventory in terms of months (using the Realtors calculation) by price point. Good luck selling your $600,000+ home.

This chart shows median sales price and sales pace by subregion. Next month we'll get to year over year changes.

Again a big thanks to Chris for all this analysis.

Portland Median House Prices Finally Drop as Sales Plunge 42%

A friend of the blog recently sent some preliminary February data:

1) Feb 2008 saw only 1,208 sales, down 42% from 2,087 in Feb 2007, but up from 1,084 in Jan 2008.

2) I would expect median prices to stay roughly the same in Feb 2008. My preliminary number is $276,600, slightly down from $280,000 in Jan 2008. However, looking back to Feb 2007, this would be the first period of Portland's downturn demonstrating negative year-over-year appreciation (Median $278,000 in Feb 07)

3) Given a conservative final sale pace range for Feb of 1,250 to 1,350 sales, look for inventory to fall slightly, A range of 10.6 months to 11.4 months"

A 42% drop would easily trump last months 32% drop, but given that the few last sales have yet to be recorded we'll probably end up closer to a 35% drop.

It also looks like we're headed into negative territory, finally. I'm tired of explaining to people that no, the Portland market is not still appreciating. We might finally have the data to show it on a year over year basis.

Again this is preliminary data, but it doesn't look like the spring bounce has started to materialize just yet, even with the fantastic weather we had in February.

Portland Market Melts Down

My first reaction after seeing the January RMLS statistic was something along the lines of “Holy cr@p, the market has imploded!” But after analyzing the data a bit more I realized that the past few Januarys have seen significant jumps month to month. So even though months of inventory jumped another 50% this month, that's not unusual for January. Given the historical trends, I expect the months of inventory will drop in February, so don’t be fooled with the realtors all crow about how months of inventory has peaked and is now dropping.

The trend to keep an eye on is inventory growth. While the total inventory is shocking, the fact that the growth rate has also increased over the past few months shows that the market continues to get worse.

So what’s driving this? If you combine the inventory data with the recent sales data that show average prices increasing while the median price is flat (over on Clint’s blog), I think what we’re seeing is that entry-level buyers, those with less than 20% for a down payment, or those with lower incomes are finding it harder and harder to buy. This will have a ripple effect on seller’s trying to trade up to larger homes.

I’ll post more comments once I’ve analyzed the data a bit more closely.

Relisting the same old property

Here's a question for the realtors out there:

Is it legal to pull a house and relist it immediately? Is there a waiting period required?

Here's an example. This triplex in the SE was just re-listed as MLS #8007641. It has been on the market for over a year listed as #6019453, and obviously didn't sell.

I've seen this happen with a number of the properties I have looked at, and besides being dishonest, I just wonder if it's also illegal.

Anyone care to comment?