In Portland, it's a seller's market alright

The Regional Multiple Listing Service released stats for February, showing more of the same. 

More rising prices; median price is up 8.5% to $238,500 in the last twelve months. 

We have more pending and closed sales and inventory remains low with 4.5 months of inventory city wide; pending sales increased 11.8% from January 2013.   Some desirable close-in neighborhoods are seeing inventory as low and 1.5 months.  At the current rate if sales it would only take 1.5 months to sell all the houses on the market.

And our average market time remains low at 116 days city wide.  This is an average, so imagine how quickly the good ones are actually selling.

The real estate conversation is all about inventory.  There are plenty of buyers in the marketplace right now hoping to get in before prices and interest rates rise too much more.  But...there aren't so many houses to choose from, making multiple offers and bidding wars commonplace.    We are even seeing multiple cash offers; in some cases buyers needing to buy using financing  need not even submit offers.

So if you've been thinking of selling, now is a pretty good time.  Interest rates remain reasonably low such that more buyers can afford to buy at a certain price range.  As both interest rates and prices rise, the pool of buyers for any given price range will decrease.

See the full report.