Oregon Mortgage Applicants Faced with Rising Inventory, Selection

Portland housing market buyers are finding more inventory to choose from as the market starts to cool and sellers start to lower asking prices.

The overall number of houses for sale jumped by 80 percent - to 9,901 on March 1 - from 5,503 a year ago, according to figures from the Regional Multiple Listing Service.

The increase reflects the backlog of houses for sale for several months, as well as a 44 percent rise in new listings - 4,155 houses in February, compared with 3,397 a year ago. The number of closed sales fell 6.8 percent in February, compared with a year ago, consistent with falling demand since last fall.

Though Oregon mortgage demand is falling, prices have yet to drop as they have in other parts of the country. The median price was $279,000 in February, 5.9 percent higher than in February 2006.

That’s the lowest appreciation rate since April 2004, when the median increased 5.4 percent.

“Nonetheless, it is still doing better than the rest of the country — nationwide there is still a price decline,” said Lawrence Yun, senior economist with the National Association of Realtors.

The RMLS data cover sales of new and existing houses and some condominiums in Clackamas, Columbia, Multnomah, Washington and Yamhill counties. Many condo sales are handled in-house by agents who don’t list them with RMLS.

Economists don’t expect Portland to experience a sharp drop in Oregon house prices in the months to come. Job growth in the area beat that of the national economy for more than a year, while local growth constraints keep supply from overwhelming demand, said Jerry Johnson, of the Johnson Gardner economic consulting firm.

“It stops developers from doing what they do best, which is overbuilding a market and inadvertently providing affordable housing,” Johnson said of the local home mortgage market.