May ’22 Westside Market Update

Hello neighbors. It’s time for the May 2022 market update, looking at stats for West Portland and suburbs from April. I’m Julie Williams with Eleete Real Estate, and I would like to tell you exactly what’s happening in our real estate market with confidence, but honestly, that’s a little bit tricky. I can tell you with confidence that there’s a lot of uncertainty creeping into the market now. Interest rates at the beginning of 2022 were around three and a quarter, and now they’re at five and five eights, as of today. Now with interest rates going up in a market that has been seeing skyrocketing prices, it makes sense that something’s got to give, but we haven’t seen much impact yet. We are seeing multiple offers with homes selling for over full price.

So why is this still happening? Well, it’s all about supply or the lack thereof. The demand from the buying public is still really strong but there are fewer new construction starts locally mostly due to the lack of available land. And then of course, we continue to have those supply chain issues for homes that are being built. Then when it comes to resale homes, many existing homeowners with a lot of equity who are also buyers, they now have access to cash to secure their next home without listing or selling their existing homes. They can use their cash savings or a home equity line of credit for the down payment or some other creative financing. Essentially, homeowners are sitting on their current homes waiting for the ideal home to hit the market. This lack of fluidity in the market was never an issue prior to 2004 because homeowners were able to list their home for sale, get it under contract and secure their next home with a purchase contingent on their home closing.

So, I have been looking at this from all angles and there still are no indicators that we will have any type of crash event like we did in 2008 and nine. This is a totally different scenario, but you know what, as agents, I think so far this month we are seeing fewer multiple offers, maybe three offers instead of eight. And we have some buyers kind of giving up and we’re finding that homes are getting slightly fewer showings. And we have some homes maybe not selling the first weekend, but we also have sellers who are being very aggressive with their pricing, who may need to understand that we are starting to shift even if slightly. So they may only get the price that their neighbor did a couple of months ago and not 10% more. And I’m also seeing this slight shift more in lower priced properties than higher priced. And this makes sense because those buyers are more likely to need a loan to purchase.

So I’m always answering the question is it a good time to sell? And the answer is still yes. One thing is for certain though our market will begin to change soon but if you’re waiting for prices to go down that just may not happen in the foreseeable future.

Okay, let’s get to those April stats. Inventory is at eight tenths of a month. So up ever so slightly from last month. Here are the April month end averages. The overall Portland market is up again to $632,900, and that’s up 3.6% from the prior month with 21 days on market. Now I’d like to pause there for a moment. For reference, in 2019, we saw a 1.5% increase in sales prices for the entire year. Okay, on the west side, Hillsboro, Forest Grove, Cornelius is at 560,400 with 15 days on market. Beaverton, Aloha comes in at 571,500 with 12 days on market. Tigard-Tualatin, Wilsonville, Sherwood at 665,200 with 18 days on market. Northwest Washington County is at 804,400 with 15 days on market. West Portland comes in at 818,500 with 36 days on market. Lake Oswego, West Linn comes in at 998,600 with 21 days on market. So those are our April stats. Thanks for watching my May market update. If you have any specific questions, please contact me, and 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 interests at heart. You can also call me if you just need a little bit of advice. I’m looking forward to hearing from you.