You might hear on the news that ‘Portland is burning.’ There is one area of Portland that has seen depreciation: the Pearl District. We’ve had 30% fewer sales there and a 13% depreciation. However, that’s the only market in all of Oregon and Southwest Washington that has been affected. The number of closed sales in Oregon is up by 1.6% despite the wildfires, COVID, and civil unrest. In Southwest Washington, listing inventory is down by 14% and close sales are down by 3.6%.

Our listing inventory is down 10% from the beginning of the year. If you’re a buyer, that means you’ll have fewer homes to choose from. If you’re a seller, that means you might have less competition, which could be one of the reasons that we’ve seen a 5.8% appreciation over the year. Year to date, the market is very strong for sellers, though it’s a bit tougher for buyers.

“I think we’ll be on par with last year unless we see even more sales than Q4 of 2019.”

Now let’s look at the stats for September, which will give us a good idea of what we can expect for the fourth quarter.

The listing inventory for the Portland metro in September is down 8.9%. On the other hand, pending sales are up by 24%, which means that demand is very high right now. In Southwest Washington, listing inventory is down by 8.9%, but pending sales are up by 44%!

Why is there so much demand? Well, the primary reason is that interest rates are very low. Homes are more affordable now than we’ve ever seen them in terms of purchasing power via interest rates. 

Traditionally in the fourth quarter, the market slows down a bit since kids are back in school and there are multiple holidays. For this year, however, you can go ahead and throw ‘normal’ out the window. Many people haven’t been able to find a house yet, so I predict that the fourth quarter of 2020 is going to be extremely solid. You’d typically see a 10% decrease in activity during an election year as compared to a non-election year, but I don’t see that happening for our market. I think we’ll be on par with last year if we don’t see even more sales than Q4 of 2019.

Hopefully, this gave you some good information about what’s going on in our market. If you have any further questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I’d be happy to help you.