The latest market data for Portland was released by RMLS today. Remember that history lesson from last month's stats. In June of 2010, the home buyer tax incentive transactions had just closed, July of 2010 being the first month with no home buyer tax program for 18 months. So now, looking to July of 2010, we see the first backward look at a normal market. Or kind of a normal market, as there was probably a slight dearth of closed sales since so many closed in June of 2010.
In any case, now, when we look back, we see that from July 2010 to July 2011, both closed and pending sales are up. Closed sales grew 21% in July 2011 compared to July 2010 and pending sales grew 18.4%. That is good. Prices though, are still down from July 2010 to July 2011, with the average price declining by 7.4% from $297,000 to $275,100.
Month to month though, June 2011 to July 2011 we saw a slight increase of 3% in the average prices from $267,100 to $275,100. Sales activity from June 2011 to July 2011 is down a bit, with closed sales decreasing by 12.7% and pending sales decreasing down 3.7%. I'm not surprised by this decrease as we expect seasonal slowing in the summer. I guess we'll see similar slowing in sales activity from July 2011 to August 2011, with an uptick from August to September once folks get back from vacation and start shopping again.
We won't know we've reached the bottom of the market until we can look backwards and see improvement. Consistently. So for now I'll ask the question. Does increased activity year over year and increased prices month over month constitute a hint that we bottomed out?
Check here for the full Portland area report.
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