Once again, I’ve culled the latest housing stats to see where Portland stands in relation to national trends. This time, I’ve gathered the latest data from the National Association of Realtors. They compile quarterly stats across all the metropolitan areas, and calculate averages for the various parts of the country. Their data came out recently for the first quarter of 2009, and I’ve charted it below:
What is most significant to me is that Portland’s median, single-family home value has now surpassed that of the West Coast’s average. Notice the difference back in 2006, prior to California’s bust. Now that markets like San Francisco, LA, and Vegas have taken a nose dive, Portland stacks up a bit neater – with a loss of values far more moderate than many of the markets illustrated here.
Portland’s market has been relatively stable, experiencing a loss of values of roughly 11% since 2006 compared with a national avarage loss of 24%, and and even beat Seattle’s value loss of 13%. And for a West Coast city, with a typical value loss of 32%, Portland looks really stellar.
Now, Portland’s Market Action report was just published as of April’s sales data. Everything improved from March data – inventory dropped by a month to 11 months total inventory, median price adjusted upward by 1.4%, and pending sales increased by a solid 13%. Portland’s affordability rating now stands at 141, which means that households who earn median area income can afford 141% of the mortgage payments on a median family home in Portland. Make sense? This is the highest it has been since December 2004. Very good news from from every angle.
