Portland Home Sales, Acquisition Statistics, First Half 2014

Okay, so the 2014 Portland real estate market is not quite half over yet, but we are close and I find the acquisition numbers fascinating so far. In the last six months, 3734 Portland homes have sold and 961 Portland townhomes and condos. Of the regular Portland home sales, 762 or 20% were cash sales. A whopping 2533, or 67%, were conventional loan sales. 344, or 9% were FHA loan sales, and finally 95 or 3% were VA loans. The remaining 1% of sales were “other” financed, either seller financed, lease option, trade, or a rehab loan.

In regards to townhomes and condos in Portland, 961 sold in the last six month. An amazing number of those sales were cash, 349, or 36% of the sales. The majority were still conventional loan sales, 553, or 58%. FHA loans came in at 39, or 4%, and VA loans at 10, or 1%. The remaining 1% of sales were also “other” financed.

What do we take away from this 2014 Portland Home Sales Report (first half)? Cash buyers are out in force for any type of property, but conventional loans are still the bread and butter of the Portland real estate market. Also, alternative methods of purchasing a home are still VERY alternative. I was absolutely amazed to discover that out of the nearly 5,000 real estate sales in Portland in the last six months a total of two, let me say that again, two sales were due to a rehab loan. This speaks volumes about the difficulty in obtaining a rehab loan and the fact that most sellers will pick cash offers over rehab loan offers any day of the week. Worst of all, lease options came in at zero. Now perhaps some lease options were not recorded in RMLS (our main database for the Portland real estate market), but they often are, so we can be sure VERY few if any Portland lease options occurred. Generally, it is never in the seller’s interest to take on a lease option, but sometimes in a bad real estate market they will, since we are in a good (appreciating and fast moving) real estate market, virtually no one is accepting lease option offers.

Have any other questions about the Portland real estate market? Let me know.