Inquiring Lake Oswego minds want to know….

1. Should we consider offering seller financing to attract more buyers? With higher interest rates keeping many buyers on the sidelines today, some homeowners may think that offering to carry the loan may be the bargaining chip they need. I recently advised some homeowners against this. Why? Several reasons—there is risk involved. What if the buyer defaults on the loan? Is that a headache you are willing to take on? To make the offer attractive to buyers, you’d have to offer a loan at interest rates lower than the going rate right now when instead you could put your money in a high interest-bearing CD and earn more with less risk.

2. Should I take my house off the market? There is no denying the housing market, even in Lake Oswego, has slowed down. The median days on the market is 60. But you can’t sell your house if it’s off the market. Maybe with the holidays ahead, you don’t want to be bothered with showings. That’s where your Realtor comes in. He or she should be vetting requests for showings to ensure that lookers are serious buyers and not just “looky-loo’s.” It’s one of the services you should expect from the Realtor you are working with.

3. What’s the Lake Oswego housing market going to do? I’ve been a Realtor in Lake Oswego for over 35 years so I’ve seen hot markets come and go and lived through the housing market crash of 2008. Through it all, Lake Oswego has averaged 5% annual appreciation. Some years it has been as high as 10-15%; others as low as 2%. But when you average it out, Lake Oswego shows a stable appreciation rate of 5%. We are not like places like Austin, Texas where recent research suggests homes there are among the most overvalued in the United States –by as much as 51%! It’s worse for buyers in Boise, Idaho who are paying 81% more than what is expected for homes. Slow and steady is a much more sustainable strategy and that’s what we historically have seen in Lake Oswego.

4. What are interest rates going to do? No one has a crystal ball, but I think, and I’m in good company, that it is going to take a while for rates to significantly come down. The Fed is still laser-focused on bringing inflation down to that 2% level. While we did just see rates back down from the near 8% rates of last week, I’m thinking it may not be until summer of 2024 that we start seeing a noticeable enough drop to give more buyers the green light. Timed with the historically busiest real estate season, that could usher a lot more competition into the market on the buyer side.

5. Should I buy a house now? If you can afford to, now is a great time to buy because there is so much less competition than during the hot market of the pandemic. That caused prices to inflate and now they are being corrected, coming down from that 15% appreciation to something more realistic and as I said before, sustainable. If rates do drop next summer just when the traditional buying season kicks in, you could be competing with a lot more buyers who could drive up prices once again.