Real estate picture here better than elsewhere

By Sam Bennett

The Lake Oswego Review, Apr 10, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (2 Reader comments)

Sam Bennett / Lake Oswego Review

These First Addition homes, each selling for about $1.1 million, came on the market in early January. Realtors say houses are sitting on the market longer now than in recent years.

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Recent real estate reports show that Lake Oswego and West Linn are not immune to market pressures, but the story is not as grim as in many other regions around the country.

The Regional Multiple Listing Service, an organization based in Portland that tracks local and state-wide market action, reports that Lake Oswego and West Linn have seen a year-over-year jump in the number of active listings.

However, February 2008, compared with February 2007, shows an 8.5 percent increase in the average sales price for homes sold in Lake Oswego/West Linn.

Local Realtors and mortgage experts agree that the inventory of homes is high.

“The buyers are being very careful because of all of the negative news coming from Wall Street,” said John DeCosta, a Realtor with Hasson Company Realtors. “The (lending) environment now is very rigid and down payments are more in the 25 to 30 percent range.

He said the number of closed sales this quarter is almost half of that from the first quarter of 2007.

“Builders are being squeezed to sell their inventory before the construction loans expire,” said DeCosta. “Builders are leading the sellers in dropping prices and putting deals together.”

But, he said, some used home sellers are not priced at the market levels.

“They do not have to sell, and thus they feel unmotivated to get the price down to the current market level. This overpriced group of listings is just not selling at all at this time.”

The number of active listings in February 2008 was 893 compared to 641 in February 2007. In February 2006, the number was 354.

The average sales price for a Lake Oswego/West Linn home in February 2008 was $568,000, as opposed to $497,000 a year ago. In 2000, it was $325,000.

The average days a home was on the market in February was 80, compared with 67 a year earlier and 48 in 2006.

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