Summer Has Finally Arrived on the High Desert…

While the rest of the nation has been sweltering for months Central Oregon is arriving to the party a little late but in grand style. After a false start right after the Fourth of July we have been enjoying days in the mid-eighties while cooling off in the evenings to the high 40’s or low 50’s. This has made attending our many outside events like our Farmer’s Markets, Chris Isaak or Counting Crows concerts and the low key “Alive After 5” concert series in the Old Mill district quite enjoyable.


Not late to the party is our local real estate market. We continue to see improvement across the board. Reviewing our Duke Warner Market Trends Report shows the market under $300,000 remains the hottest with almost 70% of the homes sold in July being in this category. Include in this category are homes under $225,000 which remain most sought after properties with first time homebuyers and investors squaring off against each other to compete for these properties.

To illustrate, the other day a client submitted an offer on home in the mid-one hundred thousand range only to find that they were one of thirteen offers. This was the third time within the month that they had missed out on a home. Not to worry this week they were successful in their bid to find a home, out bidding several other parties.

It is interesting to see the lag in perception to reality. Many folks who have been waiting to time the bottom of the market are now finding that they have missed the mark by several months. Most are surprised at how difficult it is to find a good property at the bargain pricing they have been hearing about for the last several years. Undaunted they continue to seek out their bargain property amongst a limited inventory.

Several are still waiting in the wings for the much vaunted shadow inventory. There is no doubt that there are number of distressed properties that lenders have not processed. Are their numbers significant enough to cause the market to shift once again? Probably not, lenders appear to process these properties as fast as they can, leaving a fairly stable number of homes on the market at any one time.

Complicating the picture is the recent enactment of Oregon Senate Bill 1552. This bill requires larger lenders to offer “foreclosure avoidance measures” including mediation between the lender and the borrower. The lender is required to provide a substantial amount of documentation as to the history of the loan, something that is not easily done in today’s world of tranching the loans into smaller parcels to be securitized for investors. The advent of this bill will most likely delay the inevitable for most distressed properties, eventually they will find their way to the market. The likelihood of this being a tidal wave of properties hitting the market is slim. Once they find their way to market the market conditions are likely to be more favorable for the seller.

The popular refrain of folks who missed the buying opportunities of the last downturn was “I wish I would have bought property when the market was down…” will once again be a popular refrain of those missing the opportunities of today’s market. Will you be one those who could of, would have or should have? Do not be one of those folks, contact me soon to discuss today’s market…