Portland Oregon Metro Area Housing Prices

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The 19,682 Portland-area homes sold in 2011 represent a 4 percent increase compared with 2010, according to the Regional Multiple Listing Service. But the median price for the year fell 7.9 percent, to $221,000.

The increase in transactions couldn't outpace the price declines. RMLS reported $5.2 billion in Portland-area home sales in 2011, an 11-year low.

Distressed properties continue to weigh on prices. Of the homes sold in 2011, 22 percent were bank-owned. Those had an average sale price of $170,000, a 36 percent less compared with market-rate properties. Another 11 percent sold as short sales at a 17 percent discount.

The region's median home price fell 7.9% in 2011 from 2010 and finished the year at $221,000 in December. The average sale price dropped 6.7% compared to 2009. The December 2010 average price was $263,300.

Percent Change is based on a comparison of the rolling average sale price for the last 12 months (1/1/11-12/31/11) with 12 months before (1/1/10-12/31/10). Here are the numbers for Percent Change:

Prices for homes in the Portland metro area peaked in the summer of 2007. Here are the sales price percent change for the 2011 year-to-date prices from their peak prices in 2007:

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 2011 home prices in the Portland metro area you may want to view the December 2011 RMLS Market Action report.

In West Portland (Includes Southwest and Northwest Portland and parts of eastern Washington County), the average price was $384,800 (it was $410,200 in 2010). The median price was $324,200.

The three other areas in the city (North, Northeast, and Southeast) all showed decreases in both average price and median price in 2011. Here are the numbers:

The home prices in every suburban community decreased in 2009. In Lake Oswego and West Linn, the price of an average home went from $467,500 to $428,500. All the communities showed single digit percentage decreases from 2010 except for the two outlying counties of Columbia and Yamhill. See the chart below for figures.

The RMLS report also included separate data for Southwest Washington's Clark and Cowlitz counties. Comparing 2011 sales activity with that of 2010, closed sales went up 4.6%. Pending sales rose 7.9% and new listings decreased by 11.0%. Total sales volume for 2011 was almost $1.1 billion, near the total of $1.2 billion in 2010.

For the year, the average and median sale prices fell 10.2% and 10.8%, respectively, when compared to 2010. The median price in 2011 was $185,500 v. $208,000 in 2010. The average price in 2011 was $212,100 v. $236,200 in 2010. The average sale price percent change: -10.2% ($212,100 v. $236,200).

Item	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011
Average Sales Price	$246,000	$282,900	$332,600	$342,000	$330,300	$289,900	$282,100	$260,800
Median Sales Price	$204,500	$237,500	$270,500	$290,000	$278,000	$247,000	$239,900	$221,000
12-Month Average Sales Price Change³	10.6%	15.0%	14.1%	6.3%	-3.7%	-12.2%	-2.7%	-6.7%
12-Month Median Sales Price Change⁴	10.2%	16.1%	13.9%	7.2%	-4.0%	-11.2%	-2.9%	-7.9%
¹The metro area includes the following Oregon counties: Clackamas, Columbia, Multnomah, Washington, and Yamhill. It does not include Clark County in Washington state.²Residential includes detached single-family homes, condos, townhomes, manufactured homes, and multi-family units when one of the units is sold. ³12-Month Average Sales Price Change based on a comparison of the rolling average price for the last 12 months with the 12 months before. For example in 2011: (1/1/11-12/31/11) with 12 months before (1/1/10-12/31/10). ⁴12-Month Median Sales Price Change based on a comparison of the rolling median price for the last 12 months with the 12 months before. For example in 2010: (1/1/10-12/31/10) with 12 months before (1/1/09-12/31/09).
Source: Regional Market Listing Service (RMLS™)

Area	2007 Average Price	2007 Sales Price Change³	2008 Average Price	2008 Sales Price Change³	2009 Average Price	2009 Sales Price Change³	2010 Average Price	2010 Sales Price Change³	2011 Average Price	2011 Sales Price Change³
*Metro Area*
Portland Metro¹	$342,000	6.3%	$330,300	-3.7%	$289,900	-12.2%	$282,100	-2.7%	$260,800	-6.7%
City of Portland
North	$266,600	8.4%	$266,100	-0.1%	$236,000	-11.3%	$230,300	-2.5%	$212,000	-3.6%
Northeast	$321,600	6.4%	$320,000	-0.4%	$287,100	-10.2%	$283,500	-1.4%	$229,000	-5.8%
Southeast	$285,500	7.1%	$276,100	-3.3%	$240,900	-12.7%	$237,500	-1.4%	$181,500	-9.7%
West (Includes SW and NW Portland and NE Washington County)	$468,100	3.6%	$478,500	1.9%	$420,500	-12.0%	$410,200	-2.3%	$324,200	-6.2%
*Suburban Communities*
Corbett, Gresham, Sandy, Troutdale	$281,900	6.3%	$245,000	-8.2%	$222,100	-14.1%	$213,000	-4.1%	$178,000	-8.4%
Clackamas, Milwaukie, Gladstone, Sunnyside	$334,200	-5.4%	$284,900	-4.6%	$288,000	-9.5%	$259,900	-9.7%	220,000	-7.8%
Canby, Beavercreek, Molalla, Mulino, Oregon City	$329,600	1.2%	$280,000	-5.0%	$279,500	-10.7%	$252,900	-9.4%	$211,100	-8.0%
Lake Oswego and West Linn	$567,900	7.8%	$541,300	-4.5%	$486,300	-9.8%	$435,400	-10.4%	$370,000	-1.4%
Northwest Washington County or Sauvie Island	$419,400	5.4%	$404,800	-3.4%	$369,300	-8.7%	$364,300	-1.1%	$325,000	-1.7%
Beaverton and Aloha	$286,500	3.4%	$273,800	-4.4%	$241,100	-11.9%	$235,600	-2.3%	$195,000	-9.7%
Tigard, Tualatin, Sherwood, Wilsonville	$374,700	5.3%	$352,600	-5.9%	$316,000	-10.3%	$304,400	-3.6%	$254,000	-8.7%
Hillsboro and Forest Grove	$297,900	5.5%	$277,800	-6.7%	$243,200	-12.3%	$226,200	-6.9%	$189,500	-9.2%
Mt.Hood: Brightwood, Government Camp, Rhododendron, Welches, Wemme, ZigZag	$283,600	2.0%	$253,700	-10.5%	$254,300	0.2	$208,500	-18.0%	$168,000	-7.2%
Outlying Counties
Columbia County	$254,000	11.6%	$230,700	-9.0%	$193,300	-16.1%	$181,000	-6.3%	$145,500	-11.9%
Yamhill County	$281,600	6.1%	$266,800	-5.2%	$227,300	-14.8%	$219,400	-3.4%	$173,100	-10.1%
*Southwest Washington State (Clark and Cowlitz Counties)*
Includes Vancouver, WA	$305,500	1.7%	$278,300	-8.9%	$237,800	-14.6%	$236,200	-0.7%	$185,500	-10..2%
¹The Portland metro area includes these Oregon counties: Clackamas, Columbia, Multnomah, Washington, & Yamhill. Note that it does not include Clark County (i.e., Vancouver, WA) in Washington state. ²Residential includes detached single-family homes, condos, townhomes, manufactured homes, and multi-family units when one of the units is sold. ³12-Month Average Sales Price Change based on a comparison of the rolling average price for the last 12 months with the 12 months before. For example in 2011: (1/1/11-12/31/11) with 12 months before (1/1/10-12/31/10).
Source: Regional Market Listing Service (RMLS™)

Portland Housing Market 2012: Clear Capital Forecasts Up - Forecast-Chart.com Forecasts Down

Some analysts have said prices could reverse their trend this year after 4 years of sliding lower. Clear Capital, a real estate research firm, said it expects Portland-area prices to increase by 1.9 percent in 2012.

The House Price Index (HPI) (above chart) shows changes in Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, Oregon-Washington single family home prices in logarithmic scale. The March, 1995 index value equals 100. The chart was updated September 30, 2011.

Forecast-Chart.com publishes forecasts for the trend in home prices in 380 Metropolitan Statistical Areas. The House Price Trend will be either UP or DOWN. The forecast for the trend in the Portland housing market for the 12 months ending with the 3rd Quarter of 2012 is DOWN. The Accuracy of the Trend Forecast for Portland is 84%. In other words, when tested against historical data, the forecasting methodology was correct 84% of the time. Accordingly, Forecast-Chart.com estimates that the probability for falling house prices in Portland is 84% during this period. If this Housing Market Forecast is correct, home prices will be lower in the 3rd Quarter of 2012 than they were in the 3rd Quarter of 2011.

Street Trees Increase Home Prices in Portland

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

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.

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.

Northwest Pilot Project tracks the number of downtown affordable housing units and for 2007, it is about 3,400 units.

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 Affordability 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.

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.

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.

Case Shiller Weiss

To learn more about housing cost, visit the Web site of Case Shiller Weiss, Inc. CSW is a home price research company, founded in 1991, that serves a client base principally comprised of leading mortgage lenders, insurers, and Wall Street firms.

Portland Metro Area Home Prices