Over the last couple years, The Real Estate Market, nationally and locally, has just had two things to worry about: Supply and Demand.
Demand has been low, despite interest rates being at a lifetime low. The causes are well known. In Lane County, Oregon, Demand has run at about half of the boom level.
The $8000 fully refundable tax credit for all buyers who have not owned a personal residence in the last three years has proven a great help. Sales in the "starter home" price range (below $200,000?) have been brisk. I recently searched for one couple's parameters in that price range and found more pending sales than active listings. What a great thing to see!
Supply has been the real killer...the price/deal killer, you might say. Inventory jumped skyward, putting prices into decline. Much of that supply was involuntary: foreclosures and short-sales.
Case-Shiller says Portland homes lost 15.3% in value during the year endiing in April. Eugene - Springfield and Lane County cannot be far behind that rate of decline.
Locally, The Good News is: the Supply is diving in 2009.
Throughout any year, the Supply of homes for sale (as measured by the number of RMLS Active Listings) varies greatly. The supply in summer is always higher.
Comparing, say, the Active Listings for May with those for April of the same year does not tell you much.
May will almost always have a higher number of Active Listings than April.
Therefore, the best way to get a handle on Supply of Homes for Sale is to compare May, 2009 with May of Prior years.
The chart below does that. It plainly shows that Supply has peaked and headed down.
That is more than half the battle of getting home prices to stablize.
Supply (and Demand) varies by neighborhood and RMLS market area.
County wide numbers do not tell you the full story for your part of the county.
The chart below shows how the Supply of Active Listings has played out since 2002 in each of central Lane County's RMLS areas.
(Florence and coastal Lane County do not show because RMLS data only goes back three years.)
The low year for each market area is marked in green. The high year is marked in blue.
For most RMLS areas, but not all, the inventory low occured in 2005 -- the peak year of the the boom.
For most RMLS areas, but not all, the inventory high occured in 2008.
(There were two exceptions: Hayden Bridge and Pleasant Hill/Oakridge. Hopefully, those will peak soon.)
Overall, this is GREAT NEWS!
Let's keep our fingers crossed. Declining inventories are even showing up in places hit hard by the Housing Bust like Arizona.
The information above has been researched from RMLS data by Jim Hale.
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Jim Hale
Principal Broker / Owner
Graduate, REALTOR Institute e-PRO
2012 Member, Million Dollar Club of Lane County
2012 Member, Real Estate Brokers Million Dollar Club
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All statistical market data is based on information from the RMLS of Oregon for the dates indicated.
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