Portland Metro Area Home Prices

Three Monthly Newsletters to Track Portland Metro Area Home Prices

• Moving to Portland Newsletter Summary reporting of the Portland metro area housing market with mortgage data, weather summary, and more.
• Regional Market Listing Service Newsletter For those that want details about the five county (Oregon counties) Portland metro area home prices. PPublished by the Regional Market Listing Service (RMLS).
• RMLS Full Report of Oregon and Southwest Washington State Home Prices Detailed reporting about housing prices for all areas in Oregon and Southwest Washington (Clark County). Published by the Regional Market Listing Service (RMLS).

The above reports are usually posted by mid month. The RMLS reports are usually released and posted between the 13-15th of each month.

July 2014:  Portland metro area home prices keep rising

According to numbers from the Regional Multiple Listing Service, the Portland metro area saw more new listings this July than July of last year! The 3,954 new listings were 2.0% better than the 3,877 new listings posted last July, although a 3.0% drop from the 4,078 new listings posted in June. 

The average price the first seven months of the year was $331,400, up 7.9% from the same time frame in 2013 when the average was $307,100. In the same comparison, the median also rose 9.2% from $261,000 in the first seven months of 2013 to $284,900 in the same period of 2014. The median sale price in July 2014 was $299,000, up 6.8 percent from July 2013.

There are currently 7,727 active residential listings in the Portland metro area. Total market time decreased in July to 57 days. Inventory rose just barely this month to 2.9 months.

2013 Portland Metro Area Home Median Prices Up 12.9%

The Portland real estate market ended a remarkable year with mixed results in December 2013. Closed sales at 1,760 were higher than the previous December’s 1,612 by 9.2%, while pending sales were 4.1% under the 1,443 accepted offers in the same month of the prior year. New listings dried up, with only 1,286 entered, 24.4% under the 1,700 published in December 2011. The active inventory dropped to a new low of 6,352 homes on the market, resulting in the lowest inventory in months this year at 3.6.

There have been 27,065 accepted offers and 26,782 closed sales to date in 2013, up 12.7% from 24,010 pendings and 14.3% from 23,438 closed sales in the same period last year. The 35,858 new listings to date this year represent a 11.0% increase from the 32,300 entered through the end of last year.

2013 Summary

The average sales price through the end of the year was $310,600, up 12.9% from the same period in 2012, when the average was $275,000. In the same comparison, the median price increased 12.8% from $235,000 last year to $265,000 to end 2013.

The Average Sale Price Percent Change is based on a comparison of the rolling average sale price for the last 12 months (1/1/2013 – 12/31/2013) with 12 months before (1/1/2012 – 12/31/2012).

• Average Sale Price Percent Change: 12.9% ($310,600 v. $275,000)
• Median Sale Price Percent Change:  12.8% ($265,000 v. $235,000)

Prices for homes in the Portland metro area peaked in the summer of 2007. Here are the sales price percent change for the 2013 year-to-date prices from their peak prices in the summer of 2007:

• Average Sale Price Percent Change from peak in August 2007:  -16% ($308,700 v. $366,900).
• Median Sale Price Percent Change from peak in July 2007:  -11% ($267,300 v. $302,000).

The Portland metro area figures above encompasses these five counties in Oregon: Clackamas, Columbia, Multnomah, Washington, and Yamhill. The Regional Market Listing Service (RMLS) report includes separate data for Southwest Washington’s Clark and Cowlitz counties.

For details about the 2013 home prices in the Portland metro area you may want to view the December 2013 RMLS Market Action report.

City of Portland 2013 Year-to-Date Prices

In West Portland (Includes Southwest and Northwest Portland and parts of eastern Washington County), the average price was $444,300 in 2013. It was $412,300 in 2012 and $384,800 in 2011 and $410,200 in 2010. The average sales price change was 7.7%.

The three other areas in the city (North, Northeast, and Southeast) all showed increases in both average price and median price in 2012. Here are the numbers:

• North Portland - Average price of $266,800 and median price of $250,000 in 2013. In 2012 the average price was $229,000 and the median price $220,000. The average sales price percent change in 2013 was 16.2%, the third highest of any area.  
• Northeast Portland - Average price of $326,700 and median price of $282,000 in 2013. This represents a 13.5%  average sales price change. The average price of $288,000 and median price of $250,000 in 2012 — the average price increased 8.0% over 2011. Average price was $266,900 and the median price was $229,000 in 2011 and that was a decrease of -5.8% from 2010.
• Southeast Portland - Average price of $269,900 and median price of $235,000 in 2013 and the average sales price change was 16.9%. The average price was $230,800 and themedian price was $196,000 in 2012 — the average price increased 7.4% over 2011. The Average price was $214,700 and the median price was $181,500 in 2011 and that was a decrease of -9.7% from 2010.

Suburban Communities 2013 Prices

The home prices in most suburban community increased in 2013. In Lake Oswego and West Linn, the price of an average home went from $482,100 in 2013 from $428,500 and the average sales price change was 11.0%. All the communities showed double digit percentage increases from 2012. The largest average sales price change was 18.0% for Beaverton and Aloha. See the chart below for figures.

Portland Metro¹ Residential² Home Prices 2006-2013

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Communities Average Home Prices and Sales Price Change 2009-2013

In a paper published in Landscape and Urban Planning, Geoffrey Donovan of the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station found that, on average, street trees add $8,870 to a home’s sales price and reduce its time on the market by 1.7 days.

Donovan and his co-author, David Butry of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Maryland, reviewed data meticulously collected from 2,608 homes for sale in east Portland in the summer of 2007.

What they found was that if a house had street trees and tree canopy close by, that increased the sales price of a house and it sold faster. And that finding, they note, has some public policy implications. Calculating the increased property tax revenue to the city and comparing it to the expense the city bears maintaining street trees, the authors estimate street trees have a benefit to cost ratio of 2 to 1. “In Portland, the benefits of street trees significantly outweigh their maintenance costs,” they write.

Other Sources of Housing Information

Portland State University Quarterly Real Estate Report

The Portland State University (PSU) Center for Real Estate publishes the PSU Quarterly Real Estate Report each quarter. The first issue covered the last quarter of 2006. You can find copies of the report at: PSU Quarterly Real Estate Reports

The report is the product of a collaborative effort by the PSU Center for Real Estate and the Oregon Association of REALTORS® to provide service to the local community. The intention of the report is to provide useful information about trends in commercial and residential real estate to the real estate community in Oregon and Southwest Washington. It is very comprehensive and covers the local economy as well as housing.

The report is made possible thanks to a donation by the Oregon Association of Rrealtors® along with the participation of RMLS, Cushman & Wakefield, Norris Beggs & Simpson and Grubb & Ellis.

DataQuick

Since 1978, DataQuick has built a reputation as a provider of real estate information. Although much of DataQuick’s information is available only to its paid subscribers, some of the information at their Web site is accessible to all visitors. The site covers the California market extensively but it also releases quarterly information on the Portland housing market.

Urban Boundaries and Home Prices

The cost of housing is one of the most contentious issues related to Portland’s metro planning. With an median sales price of $237,500 in 2005, this is beyond the reach of many people.

Does the Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) cause Higher Home Prices? (see Portland Planning for a discussion of UGB). The NAHB desire more land on which to build homes. In their document called The Truth About Regulatory Barriers to Housing Affordabilit the NAHB identified 42 markets with barriers, Portland being one of these markets. They called the UGB the “Wall of Portland” and attack it accordingly. The Home Builders Association of Metropolitan Portland, has been among those critical of Metro for being too restrictive in its UGB.

2000 Census Bureau figures indicates that the density in downtown Portland has increased by 30 percent, which is what planners had in mind. Only a few cities in the USA have increased their core city population.

Applying Science to the Debate Sightline Institute, an environmental organization located in Seattle, used some science to compare urban sprawl in Clark County in Washington State and Portland. Clark County is just across the Columbia River and part of the Portland metro area. Sightline used satellite imagery of open space, farmland and pavement, along with digital mapping of US Census data to track patterns of growth during the 1990s. They found that if Portland had taken the same approach to land-use planning as Clark County in the 1990s, an additional 14 square miles would have been developed. Click here to read the full report.

For a review of Washington State’s Growth Management Act, visit the 1000 Friends of Washington Web site.

Rating Portland’s Density

A study released in August 2003, called “Measuring the Health Effects of Sprawl,” commissioned by Smart Growth America, a national advocacy group, and financed by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a health promotion group, found that U.S. adults who live in compact cities are more likely to walk or bike to work, school, stores and other everyday destinations than they are to drive. This translates to slightly lower weights and blood pressures.

As part of the study, researchers from Rutgers and Cornell universities used six variables, including housing density and block size, to create a “sprawl index” for 448 urban counties across the United States. The index was set with 100 as the average; more sprawling counties had lower scores.

New York’s boroughs had the least sprawl – especially Manhattan, with a score of 352. The most sprawling place was Geauga County, Ohio, near Cleveland, which scored 63.

Multnomah County (where the city of Portland is located), the Northwest’s most compact county, ranked 24th densest among the 448 urban counties, just missing the top 5 percent.

Groups with Different Positions on Housing Costs

Read the opinions of the Cascade Policy Institute, a Portland group that advocates a free-market approach.

1,000 Friends of Oregon feels that the Oregon regulations work well. 1000 Friends of Oregon is a nonprofit charitable organization, founded in 1975 by Governor Tom McCall and Henry Richmond as the citizens’ voice for land use planning that protects Oregon’s quality of life from the effects of growth.

Oregonians in Action (OIA) is a non-profit lobbying organization that leads the fight for land-use regulatory reform and protection for private property rights. OIA authored two ballot measures in 1998: one to require landowner notification and another to give citizens the right to petition for legislative review of “bad state regulations.” In 2004, OIA passed Measure 37, a constitutional amendment that requires compensation to landowners.

Compare Cost of Living Between Metro Areas

There are a number of free sites that allow you to compare living costs between metro areas but the numbers don’t always make sense. We recommend using the ACCRA Web site (the acronym means nothing it was created by a group of US Chamber of Commerce researchers years ago). Its a member organization whose mission is strictly research. For under $20 you can compare the cost of living with where you’re living to five other USA/Canadian metro areas.

Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO)

The Federal Housing Enterprises Financial Safety and Soundness Act of 1992 mandates that OFHEO publish a House Price Index (HPI), a measure designed to capture changes in the value of single-family homes in the USA. It also includes a HPI in various regions of the country, individual states, and the District of Columbia. You can view the HPI by the state of Oregon and by the MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area).

National Association of Realtors (NAR)

NAR is the “Voice for Real Estate.” It is America’s largest trade association, representing one million members, including NAR’s institutes, societies and councils, involved in all aspects of the residential and commercial real estate industries. Their “Existing Home Sales Data” measures the health of the residential real estate industry. Each month, statistics on sales of existing single family homes are reported for the national and four regional levels. Statistics on existing condo/co-ops are released quarterly, and figures on existing single-family home sales (detached and condo/co-ops) by state are released quarterly.

Resources

• The Community Development Network CDN is an association of nonprofit community development organizations in Multnomah County located in Portland, Oregon. Their Web site states that “CDN strives to strengthen nonprofit community development organizations and to provide a collective voice for healthy, diverse communities.”
• Home Ownership a Street at a Time (HOST) 3835 NE Hancock, Suite 101, Portland OR 97212. Phone 503-331-1752. Fax 503-961-9924. HOST is dedicated to providing affordable homeownership opportunities for low- to moderate-income families. HOST believes strong, healthy communities are created and sustained when homeowners have a stake in their neighborhoods.
• Housing Authority of Portland HAP is committed to providing safe, decent and affordable housing to individuals and families in Multnomah County, Oregon, who face income or other life challenges. HAP offers support through a wide variety of programs and services. HAP’s Web site is designed to educate citizens about these programs and services, and to share how HAP is working to build a stronger community.
• Oregon Housing and Community Services OHCS helps low and moderate-income families in Oregon buy their first home by providing below-market rate financing and cash assistance through its Residential Loan Program. The program’s below-market rate helps eligible families increase their home purchasing power and lowers their monthly house payments. Eligible borrowers will have two options to choose between - CashAdvantage Home Loan or RateAdvantage Home Loan.
• Portland Bureau of Housing & Community Development Their goal is “To make Portland a more livable city for all by bringing low-income people and community resources together.”
• Portland Housing Center The Portland Housing Center is certified by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as both a HUD Certified Counseling Agency and a HUD Certified Non-Profit Provider of Secondary Financing. It offers resources on how to buy a home.
• U.S. House and Urban Development – Oregon HUD’s mission is to increase homeownership, support community development and increase access to affordable housing free from discrimination.
• Washington County Department of Housing Services Extensive information for finding affordable homes in Washington County (west side of Portland).