Reading the headlines about the current Lake Oswego housing market can make your head spin. Is it slowing down? Continuing to heat up? Is it a good time to buy or should you wait it out? Should a homeowner cash in now on what seem like historic profits? Or should you stay put because where will you go?

I work with buyers and sellers everyday moving to and around Lake Oswego and so am in the trenches seeing things firsthand. Here are a few of my insights.

1. Inventory is still tight. In September the Month of Inventory (MOI) index was only one month meaning it would only take one month for the current inventory of homes on the market in Lake Oswego to sell given the current sales pace. Five to six months of inventory is considered to be a normal or balanced market with anything over that a buyer’s market and anything under, a seller’s.
2. Open houses seem to be returning and in a couple cases, I’ve seen them cancelled the day before scheduled because the sellers have accepted an offer. I wonder if the open house triggers potential homebuyers to get in there with an offer before the house is seen by more people. If so, open houses may become a good marketing tactic for sellers.
3. Another thing I am seeing is that with all the hysteria about the tight market, some buyers are assuming homes are going to sell way over asking price and as a result, don’t even bother writing an offer. They aren’t entering the ring, so to speak, in anticipation of being priced out of the market. As a result, it can take a home longer to sell than it has been and some folks may be missing out on an opportunity.
4. Another thing I ran across just this past week was a home whose sale price was based on an outdated comparative market analysis. And by “outdated” I mean by using prices of homes that sold just a couple months ago when the market was overheating. And it wasn’t just that. The agent who priced the home was using homes as comparison that sold for several hundred thousand more than the asking price, for example comparing a house that was originally listed for $925,000 and sold for $1,125,000 to a house with the same characteristics in the current market. With the overheating cooling down, one should look at the initial sales price as the better comp which is what I advised my buyers to do. Looking at the house through that lens, the house did not look like a good buy.
5. I am also seeing some price drops which could be a combination of overzealous sellers and bidding war weary buyers.

So as you can see, even in the trenches, trends are still hard to nail down. There are cases of bidding wars and there are cases of price drops. But I think there is one overall trend we can be sure of. If you are a buyer waiting for housing prices to go way down, I think you may be waiting a long time. In fact, Goldman Sachs is forecasting U.S. home prices will soar another 16% in 2022.

While things may be mellowing a bit, I think the appreciation we have seen in the Lake Oswego housing market is here for the long run. Lake Oswego has been “discovered” so the best time to jump in is NOW.

If you’d like to make sense of the current housing market in Lake Oswego and try to decide whether you should buy or sell at this time, please give me a call at 503.939.9801, email me at costellok@hasson.com and/or check out my website. I’d love to put my 30+ years of experience as a top-producing Realtor in Lake Oswego to work for you.