Danny Lee Shepard

Cougar continues his acclimation to our family.  He is a 4 year old blue gray cat that we adopted from the Oregon Humane Society over three months ago.  Last month, I stated that we purchased his first collar and are now letting him have some nice weather romps instead of him dashing outdoors on the wettest of days.  Turns out, he has a strong fear/dislike of collars and from the moment it is on he will act only to take it off.  Since he has a microchip for identification and does not leave our yard, we have had to make to make a collar exception for him.  Our other cat Gracie Joy immediately “lost” her collar and tag after Cougar was exempted.  She had never done that with her safety breakaway collar in 9 years.  I found it under one of our fence gates and she is happily wearing it again, for now.

On to real estate market conditions…  With the extended and expanded home buyer’s tax credit expired, except for some active duty military personnel in which the credit will continue to be available for one year, real estate market trends were fairly predictable.  There was a final push of buyers taking advantage of the credit and successful closes following the increase in March 2010 pending sales.  Portland-Metro real estate market activity remained improved last month over the same period a year ago.  Closed sales were up 49.1% versus April 2009 and pending sales increased by 60.8%!  In addition, new listings increased by 23.8%.

Comparing last month to March 2010, closed sales increased by 7.9% and pending sells continued to improve by 24.5%.  I was surprised to see that new listings dropped by 5.5%.  The pace of home sales and decrease in new listings was seen in active inventory, which is calculated by dividing the total number of active listings for a month and dividing it by the number of closed sales, that has fallen to 7.3 months.  Still, 6 months is commonly stated as a healthy balance for active inventory indicating that it is still a buyer’s market.

Sales prices comparing 2010 to 2009 are following the same trends, which were still down by 3.1% while the median sales price was also lower by 4%.  Month to month had a second month of improvement with April 2010 sale prices up when compared with March 2010 with a meager 0.6% increase, along with a rise of the median price by 0.5%.  Last month’s commentary remains the same; the tax credit may have increased real estate transactions, but the amount of sales activity may have finally pushed home prices up from their bottom values of this market.  Hopefully, real estate activity will continue in this direction, signaling an overall improvement in our economy and the values of homes for their owners.

If you are in the market to purchase a home, now is a good time to buy.  There are plenty of properties available (14,182 as of April 30^th), sale prices are still relatively low and continuing to go up (although I predict a small decrease in sales prices with the expiration of the tax credit), and interest rates are still low.

Would you like to receive more detailed information about?

• Realtor services?

• Short Sales or Foreclosures?

• Your neighborhood or others that you are interested about?

Please contact me at:

dannyshepard@oregonfirst.com

www.dannyleeshepard.com

503-267-8370

I am a real estate agent with Oregon First, licensed in the state of Oregon.

All statistics listed are quoted from the April 2010 issue of RMLS Market Action. The Regional Multiple Listing Service releases the previous month’s statistics near the 15^th of the current month.

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