You would never know it from today’s weather with
temperatures in the mid sixty degree range. It is suppose to still be winter
snowy and cold just like our friends to the east of us. There have been plenty
of cyclist, runners, hikers and skiers out taking full advantage of this
beautiful weather. It is days like today make you feel blessed to be in Central
Oregon.
Both the Duke
Warner Market Trends and Bratton Reports are available either through the
link provided or you can go to my website shopbendhomes.com. The Bratton Report
is showing a drop in the median price of a home in Bend for the month. Looking
at this month’s Duke Warner Report we see a drop in the amount of sales in the
$225,000 - $325,000 price range, this is the culprit in for the drop in the
median price. I believe this to be a temporary drop as the number of pending
sales in this grouping has increase by approximately the same amount that sales
fell. Overall the numbers are very
similar to the month before and are very strong considering the time of year.
A problem for the next two to three months will be our lack
of inventory. To help in relieving this builders have been pulling new home permits
at a rate not seen until July of 2007. By early summer a good portion of these
homes will hit the market and provide some relief. While consumer confidence is
growing there are a good many homeowners that are not comfortable with the
price their home will bring. The distressed homeowner’s property, a component
that feed the market for so long, still remains on the sideline.
There are a good number of distressed homes that have either
been foreclosed on or are waiting to be processed as a foreclosed home. These
homes have been missing from our inventory since last summer. The main culprit in slowing down these homes from
being processed is Oregon Senate Bill 1552. SB1552 requires lien holders to arbitrate
with distressed homeowners to work out a solution/option to the foreclosure. The
loan servicers have moved to the much slower judicial foreclosure process to
evade the requirements of the bill.
The legislation is currently working on a revised version of
SB1552 that will encompass the judicial process as well. I believe this new
legislation will only continue to slow down the process. Our legislators are
well intended but they are too late. Had they left the process that had been in
place alone we would have a more stable inventory of homes and would be well on
our way to working through the distressed inventory.
It will be interesting to see what spring brings; there are
already rumblings of interest rates rising though out the summer. This might be
the catalyst for bringing more homes to the market, as homeowners move off of
the fence and make the decision to find that new place to call home with super
low interest rates.
