Selling a house? It's a seller's market right now in Portland

The new lower price equals sellers market in the "new economy". Marketing shills at it again. Wait until you can no longer take the interest as a tax deduction. This will really heat up the sellers market! I see more empty houses now than in anytime in the last 50 years. Please explain.

Well, in Clark County a broker will find a place, hype it up with a very low selling price and then sit back and wait for all fools that get caught-up in a bidding war and end up paying way more than the place is worth. You don;t think that is going on over in the PDX Area do you??

"New Price" per the sign certainly doesn't mean the price has gone up.  Sellers normally don't need to reduce prices in a "sellers" market.

Wow, a broker trying to manipulate the market? Say it ain't so!

Don't forget where the info is coming from.  A real estate broker.  They will tell you anything to sell a home.  Heck, just before home sales plummeted in 2008, they were telling everyone that the drops in prices had bottomed out and we all should be buying.  A short time after that, the bottom completely fell out and hasn't recovered.

Of course, the sellers are taking a big hit.   This is a good time to buy because the prices are at a all time low.  Just be careful about short sales.  They can be a good way to go sometimes, but more than likely, it will bring nothing but frustration unless you are very very patient and lucky.  If you can, get a real estate company and sales person that won't screw you over.  They are so desperate now that they will tell you anything you want to hear and many times it will be nothing but lies. 

there are so many brand new and nice apartments in the area with vacancies but the rents are just plain ridiculous.

Something is going on. Property values don't seem to be rising with demand yet, but, we're in the market right now and a house that we found which had been up for 90 days without any interest suddenly has a bunch of people bidding on it.

 

 

I just bought a house and I can testify to the truth of this article. I looked for 3 months and in that time I saw prices rise and inventory drop dramatically. I checked new listings twice a day and I can tell you some houses were selling before I could even get out to look at them. I think I bought at exactly the right time.

It's a seller's market in certain parts of Portland. Overall, the cost of housing in Portland has not dropped like it has in other parts of the country. It's still overpriced. Way back in the old days, they use to tell you that you could afford a house that was 2.5 times your income. So, if you were making 7,500 in 1972 (a decent wage for one person but not an extraordinary wage at the time) you could afford a house for 18,750. And, the thing is, you could find a decent house in a decent neighborhood for that cost - maybe not new but still in good condition. Nowadays, using the same criteria (house cost 2.5 times salary), even if you were lucky to find a decent house in a decent neighborhood for as low as $150,000, you would have to make $60,000 per year as a single person. So, already, the house isn't affordable to many single people because they aren't making that much money. What happened over time seems that instead of houses being kept at reasonable prices, the banks lowered standards for borrowing so that people could buy houses they really couldn't afford. That drove the costs of houses higher as there was an artificial demand to purchase houses. Now, look at where you can get a less expensive house in Portland (and to me, less expensive means under $100,000) and you will usually find it is either located in a bad area like "felony flats" or that the house is extremely small or not in good shape. Also, Portland seems to have this quirky thing going on where they count all the square feet they possibly can to make it seem like the house has more space than it does. In other states, the square feet of the house is the actual footprint of the main floor - not the attic, not the basement, not the enclosed back porch like they seem to include here.

I think its a sellers market if you have a home in those highly desired areas; I think the threshold would be anything below the 1.5 months shown (these homes would sell easily).  After that you are comparing something like Beaverton to St. Johns and both are unreasonable places to live due to a variety of factors.

 

I still walk by this foreclosed home in my neighborhood every day on the way to the bus and it is unoccupied, not on the market, and is owned by the bank.  It looks like crud and no one is taking care of it and its appearance.  This house is surely for sale if anyone wants it but its not in any kind of shape to inhabit.

its another way to start another housing bubble .The banks have not released the 1.5 million foreclosures on the market causing the prices to rise . In california there are 25 to 50 offers on homes this is what got us in trouble and it looks like its taking hold again 

Anyone willing to live a little further south can take their pick from hundreds of houses at discounts of 25-40% below the peaks. It's like that whiny article a few moths ago about how there weren't any apartments in the Pearl that the average barista could afford. Apartment complexes around here are giving people a month free.

More hype from the Realtors.  There are tons of EMPTY houses that are not on the market.  Once those hit prices will drop again.  It may be a sellers market today but it is artificial.

Bologna.

 

There are three empty houses ON MY STREET. One has been trying to sell for two years and once again lowered he price (now $105,000 LESS than she paid and that is what I BOUGHT my house for next door).

 

I noticed they put Powell, Foster and Brentwood together. That's from the 6000 block (Powell) to the 9000 block (Johnson's Creek). From 60th (6000 block), out to the cit limits (120000 block). Those are Powell-Foster, Lents, Glenwood, Brentwood, Darlington, Scott, Woodstock, Creston, Arleta, Kern, Bloomington, West MT Scott, Gilbert and Southgate neighborhoods all in one.1800 Square blocks or nearly half of the SE side.

 

From working class (Foster-Powell Mt Scott and Arleta), to poorer areas (Brentwood-Darlington and Lents) and even out SE (Bloomington and Gilbert).

 

And I go back to my opening statement. People on my street can't sell their homes. So if it's a seller's market, it is CERTAINLY not a seller's market on my street.

 

I would expect a glut once housing prices recover. I know of 2 houses on my street (there's only 10 houses) that are rentals because the prices dropped too low to sell.