Remember the good old days of 2012 when we thought that just four months of active market inventory was a whopper of a problem? Fast forward to 2018 and we get positively giddy every time inventory creeps anywhere above two months.
The Portland metro area has been toying with inventory below two months more often than above it since 2015. Even in those occasional months when inventory climbed above two months, it never felt like breathing room was truly opening up for buyers. It felt more like the market was allowing a tiny gasp of breath so as not to discourage buyers altogether, all the while knowing full well it intended to toy with buyers for the foreseeable future in this relentless game of market breath play.
The Regional Multiple Listing Service’s June 2018 Market Action Report had some interesting data, supported entirely by office anecdotes that preceded it. “The Portland metro area saw some cooler activity,” it noted. Closed sales slipped. New listings were cooler. Pending sales fared similarly. Many of us had anecdotal evidence supporting the chill. It was the topic of office round table discussions – complaints of listings with little to no activity and email inboxes filling up daily with “price improvement” flyers. What does it all mean?
Hopefully it means that buyers are demanding that sanity reenter the marketplace. Hopefully it means that sellers are finally becoming less afraid to enter the market as buyers themselves. A healthier market inventory benefits everyone. No one wants to shop in a market whose shelves are bare and the only way you can get anything worthwhile is to pay way too much money to the shopkeeper to take a peek at something hidden in the back room.
