FHA Loans Make Up 28% of Sales in Portland Metro Area

FHA Loans Make Up 28% of Sales in Portland Metro Area

Will new restrictions slow the increase in FHA popularity?

We all know that FHA Loans have increased in the past few years with the changing market, but how much? I recently ran some numbers on financial terms, a required field in RMLSweb, that may shed some light. These numbers are for the Portland metro area (Clackamas, Columbia, Multnomah, Washington and Yamhill counties).

As you can see, sold listings with the financial terms “FHA” have increased in the RMLS Portland market area from just 1.2% in 2007 to 28.1% of sales through October 2009. These numbers are closely in line with national levels; a recent report stated that FHA loans are up to 30% this year from 3% in 2006.

Do you think we’ll continue to see FHA loans grow in popularity, or will it change if plans to make some FHA loans require a down payment higher than 3.5% go through? Realtors, let us know what you’re seeing out in the field – leave a comment below.

Thank You.

Thank You.

It’s our favorite time of year, a time for family, succulent turkey, delicious pies, stuffing… well, we could get carried away about the food… more importantly, though, it’s a time to give thanks.

To our subscribers, we want to thank you for:

Cooperation. The network of more than 12,000 real estate professionals that subscribe to RMLS™ have assisted 31,122 people in Oregon and Washington with a real estate transaction in 2009.

Your feedback. You’ve provided lots of feedback about our services this year. We received more than 2,100 responses alone in our first ever customer satisfaction survey. While we evaluate the survey results, we encourage you to continue to provide feedback and suggestions on RMLSweb – just scroll over Toolkit and click on Questions/Comments. We serve a diverse group of customers, each with unique business needs. While it might not always be possible to meet each need, we’re doing our best to listen to all of your ideas and work toward making them a reality.

Your patience. We’re proud to say that, aside from planned outages, RMLSweb has officially been available 99.9% of the time this year. But sometimes we have to close up shop to make changes or additions and, on rare occasions, something goes wrong. Thanks for understanding when we aren’t available for you.

Our subscribers who serve. RMLS™ Realtor®-subscribers comprise our Board of Directors, Service Advisory Committee, Technology Committee, Forms Committee and Rules & Regulations Committee and also serve on other task forces as needed. Thank you to all who generously contribute their time and efforts to helping guide our decisions.

Reading this blog. We’ve had over 10,000 visits since we launched this blog in June and we’re starting to have some great conversation about RMLS™, market trends and other industry news. Thanks also to the hundreds of followers and fans of our Twitter & Facebook accounts. We hope you’ll continue to make these a part of your online activities and that you’ll join in the conversation.

Attending our classes and events. Approximately 4,000 of you have chosen to take an RMLS™ class or have attended an RMLS™ Trade Fair this year. We hope that you’ll continue to take advantage of these free educational opportunities.

We’re thankful for being able to work with such a great community of Realtors® and real estate professionals and we wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving and holiday season!

Photo courtesy of Jennifer Dickert, available under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Portland Metro & Clark County: Top 5 Areas – Inventory

Top 5 Areas with the Lowest Housing Inventory in September, Portland & Clark County

Below are the five MLS areas with the lowest supply of housing inventory for September 2009 for the Clark County and Portland metro areas. Inventory measures how long, in theory, it would take to exhaust the current supply of housing. We arrive at this number by dividing the number active listings by the number of sales for the month.

Clark County

Area Area # Actives Sales Inventory
Lincoln/Hazel Dell 14 34 10 3.4
Five Corners 25 89 18 4.9
East Orchards 26 90 18 5.0
Cascade Park 24 105 20 5.3
Evergreen 22 276 51 5.4

Portland Metro

Area Area # Actives Sales Inventory
Beaverton/Aloha 150 1,007 204 4.9
NE Portland 142 1,016 185 5.5
North Portland 141 455 75 6.1
Southeast Portland 143 1,396 228 6.1
Hillsboro/Forest Grove 152 880 142 6.2

RMLS Market Action Recap – September 2009

Residential real estate sales tick up in several areas, inventory down

This month’s RMLS™ Market Action report showed a trend of increasing real estate sales & subsequently lower housing inventory in many areas of Oregon & Southwest Washington.

Sales Activity:

Closed sales rose in the following areas this month, compared to the same month in 2008:

Area Closed Sales
Curry County, Oregon 100%
Columbia Basin, Oregon 36.6%
Lane  County, Oregon 23.2%
Clark County, Washington 20.2%
Portland Metro, Oregon 9.8%

Third Quarter Sales Up:

September marked the end of the third quarter and compared to Q3 in 2008, Coos County, Curry County, Douglas County, Lane County, Portland and Clark County all saw sales outpace Q3 in 2008. Clark County led the pack at a clip of 18.7%.

Inventory:

Ten of eleven areas that we cover in the Market Action report saw housing inventory drop from August.  This can be attributed to rising sales in several areas and as we head into the slower fall & winter seasons, fewer homes are being listed as well.

Both the Portland and Clark County areas saw inventory drop to 7.6 months. Lane County has the lowest inventory of the areas we cover at 6.8 months.