Sales Prices halt their rise; while the Number of Sales Closed remains Incredibly Low.The Federal Reserve and Wall Street have continued to keep financing rates very high for home sales; which is the largest driver we know of that is keeping the number of homes sold at about 30%+ lower than we've seen in the past 5 years. The relatively high rates are putting a huge pinch on the buyers wanting to enter the market; and putting the pinch on owners that would like to sell their current home and need a new loan to buy their next home. The combined result has been an imbalanced environment with slightly more buyers than homes to buy; keeping prices up.The first chart we have shows the August-only changes, 2023 vs. 2022: In 2022 at this time the "Great Slowdown" was about 4 months old thus, t... 09/14/2023

New Sales Price High Attained, while number of properties Sold is still Greatly Reduced!As we continue to see ever increasing interest rates for the main types of home loans, the number of Resale homes sold has remained much lower than anything we've seen in many years. (Sales of New Homes are not included in this report).Our first chart shows the July-only comparison - 2022 vs 2023:For this chart please remember that the slowdown we are in had begun prior to July 2022, and was still declining at a strong rate.The graph coming up next shows how the Pending Sales started their decline in 2022; and the 2023 line is showing a somewhat seasonal "shape" although at a greatly lower level of activity:Continuing on, the graph we show with a longer history (more years in the data) for Closed Sal... 08/31/2023

The Reduced Number of Home Sales is Still Seeing Rising Prices!We've been told that the US Federal Reserve's actions raised interest rates last year in general, with specific actions targeted to Mortgage / Home Loan Rates (via changing their purchase-actions related to Mortgage-Backed-Securities aka "MBS"); with the intent to Slow Inflation and bring it back down to a target of 2% per year. The initial "Shock" to the local market has seen a greatly reduced number of homes sold; with an initial tread of reduced sales prices.With about a year now gone by from the Fed's initial change in direction, we are still seeing a greatly reduced number of homes sold when compared to prior periods; yet, Home Sales Prices have shot back up and have essentially recovered their prior Peak level!!!The fi... 07/11/2023

Slight Decrease in Activity observed as the market approaches the July 4th Holiday.From our previous posting of a couple of weeks ago, we continue to see a decrease in New Listings; and the Average Sales Price is off about $20k. We also see that Pending Sales are off slightly as well.The decline in New Listings is something we traditionally start to see at this time of the season thus, nothing unusual with this trend. The same can be said for Pending Sales, as the big holiday tends to be a time-segment many buyers don't want to have in the middle of a home transaction or, they'd just rather be on Vacation!Closed Sales are up very slightly - which is also typical what we see near the peak of the year, sales activity-wise.To be sure, Prices have recovered for the most part from where they... 07/06/2023

We are Still in the Brisk Season of the Year, according to these Real Estate StatisticsRMLS - our local MLS is the predominate provider in the Vancouver WA / Portland OR metro area, which is the bulk of the data in the graphic below:We can see that Home Sales Prices are still rising at a strong pace; with the Pace of the market being rather brisk. The decline in New Listings is something we'll want to check in on again next week, as our market has way too few listings on the market.Closed Sales are also up nicely, which is a trend we expect to see for this time of the year. With New Listings lagging for the past twelve (12) months, we expect Closed Sales to remain at a much lower level than what we've experienced for the past five (5) years or so.Thank you for checking in on our brief r... 06/24/2023

What a difference Higher Home Loan Rates make to Real Estate Sales in Vancouver WA!To be sure, in 2022 there was nothing subtle about the US Federal Reserve's change in policy that caused home loan rates to rapidly more than double. In the Fall of 2021 the rates were in the low 3.0%+- range; while in May of 2023 Freddie Mac says the nation-wide average was about 6.6%!!!For this report, please note that in May of 2022 (last year) we were starting to see the strong headwinds hitting the sales results for Vancouver Washington. Another way to say it: one year ago was when we were just starting the journey to the "New Normal" for this real estate market.Our first graphic is a new one for us, and is not a rolling average of 3 or 12 months of results but rather, the simple this month's tally c... 06/14/2023

Real Estate sales activity continues to show improved activity for Clark County Washington in May 2023For the Spring season months we've continued to see improvement in the key metrics (elements we measure and track) for the local real estate market I serve. The graphic below is produced by RMLS to help us provide this snapshot:Although most of these key metrics are stronger than last month, we do note that Pending Sales are actually a few units lower than last month (601 in May vs 607 in April); while New Listings increased substantially, which allows the Active Inventory to increase modestly.A larger number of Active Listings, in my opinion, is something our market truly needs. When home buyers have more choices, they have the opportunity to make better decisions. We also expect more ... 06/12/2023

The Real Estate Market in the Vancouver WA / Portland OR region has been heating up!The graphic below is a weekly snapshot provided by our primary MLS - RMLS, and is heavily weighted by the activity in the largest communities in the Portland and Vancouver areas for the time period 5/26/2023 to 6/1/2023:This week's key elements are all showing a Rising Real Estate Market; and is what we typically see this time of year.However, in our opinion this is still not a "Normal" market, as we have home loan / mortgage rates in the low 7% range that is making it much harder for first-time buyers to enter the market; and it also makes it harder for existing home owners (that currently have lower-rate home loans) to move within this market. To be sure the effect is more than 1/3rd fewer home sales t... 06/08/2023

The Clark County Washington Market continues to heat up, although at a lower, Recovering Level, that what has been seen in recently for this time of year.RMLS produces the graphic below that highlights most of the key metrics driving our local market:From this information, we see that except for Total Market Time and Inventory in Months; all the numbers are Higher than in the past few months.Market time has dropped quite a bit; and Inventory is lower as well.When we exclude New Construction; only looking at Existing / Resale Homes; we find Total Market Time below 40 days, with Median days coming in at 8 to 9 Days!Active Inventory is also lower for Resale homes at 1.1 months. Thus, if you are a current home owner in Clark County thinking of selling, the buyer interest is strong, and ther... 05/31/2023

In our updates we like to show brief graphics that help us understand the trends; where we've been, and the direction we are currently going. The first graph shows the 3-month rolling average of Pending Sales for existing homes in Vancouver WA:When reviewing the above year-by-year trend-lines, remember that most of 2020, all of 2021 and part of 2022 received an Overly amount of financial stimulation from the Federal Reserve. Clearly the first four months of 2023 are far below the sales activity we've seen in each of the previous five years.Our next chart goes back to the year 2009, and shows both the 3-month and 12-month rolling average trend for CLOSED Unit Sales:This longer-term chart is showing what has actually Closed (not all Pending sales actually close). We see that the seasonal ... 05/30/2023

The Local Real Estate Market is showing signs of warming up, with a small bump in sales, but with lagging new listings.The RMLS (for SW Washington) Snapshot Graphic for this month highlights for us many of the key measures we look at for our local real estate market:(If you would like to pull up last month's graphic as well, please open: Vancouver & Clark County WA Real Estate Snapshot for January 2023 in another tab)Quickly we see that the Average Sales price slipped only $2k; while the Median Sales Price went up $6k. Through the last half of 2022 the price decline was rather steep. So far we don't see the same declining trend in 2023.Pending Sales were down 10, which is not significant as we have a month that is short a few days. However, New Listings fell by 78 and Active Listings fe... 03/20/2023

With this being such a tumultuous time in the Vancouver Washington (and national) real estate / home sales market, I know we have readers that would like to have a good idea how February 2023 turned out. For most months the data "firms up" about 10 to 14 days into the month (for various reasons) thus, we'll call this report a "sneak peek. "The first chart we have is for the 3-month rolling average for Pending Sales, going back to 2018:With February being short by 2 to 3 days, in most years we see this month as a low spot in the year. However, currently with such a strong shock to the market still being digested, we actually see a move upwards by two units. That said, we are still down 35% year to date (ytd) (-198 units) compared to 2022 ytd.Here are the 3 data points that make up Februa... 03/07/2023

From the January 2023 data for Existing Home Sales in Clark County Washington we see mixed results, in that the overall trend is still down; however, Camas and Battle Ground show a slight upward rebound.With the largest city in the County, Vancouver WA, still trending downward, Camas and Battle Ground did not have enough energy to move the overall County trend upward.Here's our custom chart showing the 3-month rolling average:In the past couple of years both Camas and Battle Ground prices shot up faster than than the County average and in turn, they fell faster than the County average. Thus, to see the prices rebound slightly for those small communities may not be that unusual.Vancouver WA, the largest city in the County, did see improved prices that nearly halted the declining trend in... 02/28/2023

Across the USA the number of Home Sales tallied has declined to a much lower level than we had come to expect in recent years. For Vancouver WA and Clark County, our local RMLS has prepared the graph below that shows the Pending Sales by month for 2021, 2022 and January 2023:The above data points are by-month, and include Existing Home Sales plus New Construction Home Sales. One of the challenges or, short-comings of this chart is that not all New Construction sales are listing in RMLS and thus, those non-RMLS New Home Sales aren't reflected in the above chart.Another short-coming is that the years 2021 and 2022 were unusually high sales years, probably owing to the extremely low financing interest rates for those years.In any event, in the above chart you can see Pending Sales starting... 02/27/2023

January's Snapshot numbers suggest the local market is firming up, if not turning around.This month's snapshot-graphic by RMLS for Southwest Washington highlights key-item measurements for our local real estate market:Last month's graphic (see: December 2022's Clark County Real Estate Snapshot) suggested we still have a Seller's Market, and this month's numbers suggest greater movement in that direction.Prices for the Average and Median have moved up. We know one month does not necessarily indicate a trend, it certainly suggests however that a "free-fall" drop in prices is not currently happening.Although the "Inventory in Months" went up to 2.5 months, when we remove the New Construction element (which often contains a large number of "Proposed" homes, that are clearly not move-in-read... 02/22/2023

In this brief post we want to share a chart we've made showing the real estate price trends for pre-existing / resale homes sold in Clark County Washington. The underlying data employed comes from the Regional Multiple Listing Service (RMLS); and goes back to 2009; charting the 3-month rolling average for prices in the County, and for the larger cities of Camas, Battle Ground and Vancouver.To "highlight" the "bubble" we've manually created two straight black-lines (each with an arrow). The starting point for the base-line (longer, lesser-slope) is January 2012, which is approximately the bottom for the 2008 - 2009 crash; and beginning of the latest up-trend in home sales prices. We next add in a shorter black line that reasonably captures the price-increase-slope of the 2020 to 2022 str... 01/31/2023

Nationwide we are seeing reports that the number of Existing Home Sales have Declined for 11th Straight Months; and want to show our readers what we are seeing in the local Vancouver Washington market, and to provide a couple of additional reasons, beyond the massive rise in home loan rates, why we are seeing fewer home sales of late.We have prepared the attached graph that shows the rolling-averages (3-month and 12-month) tracking the existing home sales in Vancouver WA:We can see from the chart the existing sales losing their annual upward momentum around Spring 2022. This is also clearly a strong move to the downside such that the 3-month average never rose above the 12-month line; and ended the year at a point we haven't seen this low in 8 or 9 years!Nationwide the annual decline wa... 01/23/2023

The December 2022 Real Estate Sales Action Still Suggest a Seller's Market in Vancouver Washington!The Snapshot graphic below is provided by RMLS to show us many of the key home sales metrics for Vancouver, Clark County and Southwest Washington:Even though the real estate market is "slower" than it was in early 2022; these statistics for one of the slowest months of the year show rather strong activity.For example, a total market time of 52 days is relatively brisk (it is several days lower than December 2019) for this time of year. We also see Pending Sales exceeding New Listings; which tells us the Available Inventory is declining!Also, the statistic shown at 1.9 months includes New Construction. When looking at only Pre-Owned Inventory, the number shrinks to 0.8 months worth!!! This ... 01/18/2023

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As a first time home buyer some people are anxious to get a jump in real estate and think they would like to buy their first home but also would like to buy a rental property.  How about buying both?  I know what you are thinking, you only qualify for one loan.  Exactly! Did you know you can buy a single family residence, a duplex, a triplex or a four-plex as a primary residence most times?  Meaning you can live in one unit and rent out the other one, two or three.  This is a great option to people that may make enough money to qualify for a loan but may not want to be married to their mortgage payment. Or, people that live in an area where house prices are a bit ridiculous and they can’t afford what they want because their payment would be too high on their own. Or, people that simply ... 01/08/2023