A good indicator of where the market is heading is by taking a look at “pending sales”.   There was good news in that pending sales for Portland from April 2008 to May 2008 did increase by 2.6% (our latest stats).  However, that’s only a one-month statistic and hopefully this trend will continue.

Year to date, from May 2007 to May 2008, the number of pending sales were down by 30.5%, the number of closed sales fell by 33.5%, the average home sale prices dropped by 4% and median home sale prices also dropped 3.2%.

The other good news is that inventory of homes dropped (meaning fewer houses to sell) from 10.3 months in April to 9.2 months in May.  However, one month is not a good indicator as to whether we are at or near the bottom.

Interest rates will start going up, so by waiting for prices to continue to fall, any gain in lower real estate home prices will be off-set by a rise in interest rates. Typically, in the past, when prices start going up interest rates fall and; likewise, when prices go down rates go up. However, that isn’t always the case.

I read an extremely interesting report by John Maudlin about Inflation and Interest Rates recently (CLICK HERE to read his full story).

ALL ABOUT…..Portland.Oregon.Real Estate by Betty Jung is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
Based on a Blog at WordPress.

(For more local and national real estate information, go to www.bettyjung.com).