The market as we enter 2024:

A top of mind topic for most everyone is the real estate market. Not only that, everyone has an opinion about where it’s going. The opinions seem to be mostly grouped in to two camps, either it’s going to crash or it’s going to be amazing. Who thinks it will be about right?

There’s no question the meeting of the Federal Reserve in mid-December helped things move in a positive direction. However, compared to the same time period of 2022, the market was actually starting to look a little better before that meeting, at least for the Portland metro area.

In the chart below, “week 50” is the week the Fed made the announcement that seemed to indicate a softening rate stance. Interestingly, compared to 2022, that week actually represented a slower week in terms of pending sales. Fortunately, the improving trend of 2023 resumed the following week.

Increases or decreases in pending sales is a typical way to measure home buyer demand. Another way is to look at the percentage of those sales that were “quick”. For these charts I decided a sale within the first 10 days qualifies as “quick”.

The chart below shows that since the end of November, 2023 has experienced more quick sales than 2022, and that difference seems to be widening. Since the week before Thanksgiving there have been an increasing number of quick sales with the exception of the week of the Fed announcement.

The next chart shows the actual percentage of quick sales in the Portland metro area at the end of 2023. Typical years show a big drop in quick sales towards the end of the year, this year shows more consistency.

This should bode well as we enter the 2024 market. After about 18 months of a lower volume market there should be an increasing number of people who have been holding off on making a move, and now improving rates could help them decide the right time for their move is now.

Given the timing of this post “week 52” just shows a partial week, and I used math to estimate the total number of pending sales for the week. It could turn out to be a different number.

Time will tell what’s in store for the real estate market in the Portland area, but right now things are looking positive. Follow my LinkedIn profile for updates!