East County Homes in Oregon: It’s a Buyer’s Market

A year ago, mortgage broker Cheri Axt had very few listings for previously owned homes. It was a classic seller’s market, as frenzied buyers snatched up houses.

“There’d be three, four and five offers on one piece of property,” she recalled. “One even had 11 offers.”

Now, the big change in sales of homes in outer East Portland is its boost in inventory.

“I have twice the amount of listings this year as last,” Axt said.

In addition, buyers are taking more time to decide to purchase a house in this Oregon housing market.

According to the National Association of Realtors, at the end of 2006, the median home price in Portland was $278,000. That was up significantly from a year earlier, when Portland’s median home price was $252,500.

“Last year was the best year for home sales of all time,” said Ron Hackenberg, a broker with John L Scott Real Estate in Southeast Portland.

How much home price appreciation goes on depends a lot on where in Portland they are located, Hackenberg added.

“West of 82nd is still hot,” he said. “The closer you get to the city, the hotter the market.”

In outer East, while the market is still good, prices are coming down, said Axt, who works out of RE/MAX Equity Group, Inc.’s office at Northeast 122nd Avenue and Halsey.

“We have the lowest-priced homes,” she said. Axt lives in East County, and sells houses here. For all of Southeast Portland, the median home price in November was $239,950, and for Northeast the median was $250,000.

“We’re a little bit less,” she said of outer East’s prices compared to the rest of Portland. For that reason, the area attracts a lot of young, first-time home buyers. “Many of them are from out of state, especially from Southern California,” Axt said.

As young people become homeowners in suburban neighborhoods — such as outer Northeast’s Argay neighborhood of sprawling ranch houses and split levels on oversized lots built in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s — older homeowners are downsizing.

Another type of Oregon mortgage applicant driving outer East’s housing market is out-of-state investors, Axt said. They tend to purchase (often sight unseen) outer East’s newly constructed, skinny houses on narrow lots, and then use them for rental income.

Outer East Portland’s housing market has adjusted from a period of double-digit appreciation, but that doesn’t mean prices of houses won’t go up again.

“We’re self-correcting,” Axt said. “Our home sales here are great. We’re still going to see appreciation.”

SOURCE: The East County News