January 2022 Market Update

Here’s your 2021 recap for the real estate market in Tigard, Beaverton, NW Portland, SW Portland, Sherwood, Tualatin, Hillsboro, Lake Oswego, and the Portland West suburban market!

Hello, everyone and happy new year. Well, it’s time for our January market update with year-end stats for 2021 for Portland’s westside suburbs. So I know that inventory has been a hot topic for a while now, but we officially hit our lowest inventory of record in December at 0.6 months, that’s just 18 days. So yes, in just two and a half weeks, we would run out of houses to sell if no additional homes were listed. Now December is always the lowest inventory month of the year. So, I kind of saw this coming, but no matter what, I expect inventory to inch up for January and continue to increase in the months to come. I’ve been tracking inventory for the past 22 years, and for reference, the median December inventory over that time period has been 3.6 months. This is basic math and the rules of supply and demand are in full effect, making it a great time to sell with so little competition. And as long as interest rates stay relatively low, demand is expected to stay high. So just to clarify, this is a sellers market. And on the topic of interest rates, the federal reserve will end their quantitative easing program in March of this year. And they’ve created an environment that will result in mortgage rates slowly increasing. Now rates are expected to stay low relative to historical rates, but buyers should have better opportunities to purchase this year in 2022 than next year. So high buyer demand should cause our sellers market to continue through 2022. Now for sellers who also need to buy, but are fearful that they just won’t be able to find a replacement home, there are several solutions to this dilemma, including the revival of bridge loans that can help you purchase your new home before selling your existing home. For more information on this and other solutions, please feel free to reach out to me. Now prices increased in the Portland Metro area, 15.8% over the course of 2021 and closed sales increased 9.8%. Here are average home prices for December and market times for Portland’s west side and suburbs. So let’s first start with the overall Portland average sales price of 582,900 with 32 days on market on average. Beaverton/Aloha comes in at 517,600 with 24 days on market. Hillsboro/Cornelius/Forest Grove comes in at 523,100 with 22 days on market. Tigard/Tualatin/Wilsonville/Sherwood at 605,900 with 24 days on market. And Northwest Washington county coming in at 710,900 with 21 days on market. Now west Portland’s average sales price is almost identical to that at 710,200, but with 55 days on market. So they have a much longer market time on average in west Portland. And west Portland also has the largest number of active listings. Lake Oswego/West Linn comes in at 1,024,400 with 29 days on the market. And because I’m a visual person and a data nerd, I created a line graph showing the year in review by area. So this gives you a good idea where homes are more affordable and you can see that here in Hillsboro and Beaverton areas. It also shows that prices tend to fluctuate more as we get into higher priced areas, such as Lake Oswego.

As always, reach out to me to find out what we can do to get your home sold for more money, for the best terms by professionals who live here, work here, and do this full-time, and have your best interest at heart. I’m looking forward to hearing from you and don’t forget whether upsizing or downsizing, my service will move you.