I live in the Portland, OR market. Many parts of the country have had it pretty rough the past year. We have been pretty protected on housing prices, here, over the past year, when a lot of other areas were getting hammered. Well ...

This just came out today. You may know that the local RMLS groups put out a Market Report every month showing what the prior month had to say for itself.

Latest Market Report out this week shows:

Housing inventory (the time it takes to sell all the houses currently listed - if you do not add any more)

Portland - 12.8 months up from 8.5 for December and

Vancouver, WA - 17 months!!! up from 12.7 for December.

Ouch!

Now, we have a house in Eagle, ID, outside Boise. And there is a 3 1/2 YEAR inventory in houses about $600,000. So that's a big Ouch!

We have seen slow sales in Portland and especially Vancouver and this confirms why. They are also having another huge auction in 2 weeks.

Back in December, there was a builder auction. Builder ran out of money and auctioned 250 new homes. Only sold 141 and lost money on all of them. One subdivision about 2 hours out of town had NO bids and No sales. Pretty tough. And the realtors weren't very happy. No one looking at existing houses. Let's buy a new house instead, right?

The new one has some interesting advertising. They put a full page ad in the paper that looks like a rock concert. Very good marketing. Grabs the attention.

Anyway, it's been a big tough out there. We are getting better traction with the banks lately. Got 5 Short Sales accepted and 3 sold in the past 3 weeks. Hang in there and we should see some better Short Sale results in the near future.

Thanks for the ear and Have a Great Day!

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