Portland Real Estate Market Update: Lake Oswego 2009 vs. 2010

Since September 2010, I somewhat neglected posting stats here on my Portland real estate blog. Due to the transfer to a new blog site – ALL ABOUT….Portland.Oregon.Real Estate it has taken me until now to get finished with it. There’s still more to do but at least it is at a level I am comfortable with. Starting today I will be posting stats once again.

Our Portland real estate December stats won’t be published until around the 14th of January along with 2010 stats. However, in doing a preliminary analysis at year end, Lake Oswego has approximately 543 active properties for sale (see listings at the bottom of this post) compared to November’s tally of 679. This includes condos, attached, townhouses and single-family houses, a drop in inventory which is typical for the end of the year and around the holidays.

The number of sales for all of Lake Oswego (97034, and 97035) in November 2010 was only 68 sales for the entire month which meant Lake Oswego had 9.9 months of inventory at the end of November 2010. Lake Oswego is still a buyer’s market.

In doing a preliminary check, I found that there were only a fraction of November’s sales made in December. However, there could be more sales reported before the RMLS™ Market Action report is published, so I will hold off reporting the number of sales for December as it does appear dismal to say the least.

Throughout much of 2009 and all of 2010, Lake Oswego has been struggling with a lot of properties listed that remained unsold. You can see from the chart below the number of listed properties for 2009 through 2010 vs. the sold properties for the same period. There has been a huge amount of inventory unsold for the past two years. Overall, the number of sales were higher in 2010 but on the other side of the coin, the number of listings also increased. The average sold price in 2009 for Lake Oswego was $506,742 and by 2010 the average sale price dropped to $488,500. According to these preliminary stats, prices dropped in Lake Oswego -27.68% in December 2010. At year’s end, Lake Oswego had a 10.9 months of inventory for sale. The final tally, however, won’t be available until mid-January.

<CLICK ON IMAGE FOR LARGER VIEW>

There once was a time when Lake Oswego was the much-desired area in which to live. Many people would dream of living here but, for the most part, couldn’t afford the high prices. Supported by the best schools, people wanted to move here regardless if they had children or not, because they knew this area would always retain its value. I built in Lake Oswego for those exact reasons myself. I didn’t think I could go wrong purchasing a home in this area and even advised my clients of that. My how that has all changed, and for that matter, changed quickly.

Below are the stats for the past two years. October 2009 and June and July 2010 were the highest volume of sales which coincided with the Home Buyers Tax Credits. At year’s end, Lake Oswego had a 10.9 months of inventory for sale. The final tally, however, won’t be available until mid-January.

<CLICK ON IMAGE FOR LARGER VIEW>

There are many houses in Lake Oswego that are now at a price point that makes living in Lake Oswego today more affordable than ever before. However, our property taxes here in town are still high. Further, Lake Oswego City officials have “big” dreams of building facilities and services we don’t need or in reality, can’t afford which will only further increase our taxes. There has also been a shift of demographics in Lake Oswego, the town becoming grayer and older. If our taxes increase, even though values are low and will continue to drop due to the large inventory, it will still prohibit families from moving into Lake Oswego and there will continue to be a decline in school enrollment.

<CLICK ON IMAGE FOR LARGER VIEW>

The Lake Oswego area still has its high-rated schools but now some are closing. Frankly, I never thought I’d see the day when Lake Oswego schools would have to close. It used to be that people who purchased in the Portland Public School District couldn’t count on their school being there, that children might live at one end of the district and be driven to the opposite end of town to attend school. That wouldn’t, couldn’t happen in Lake Oswego. But now it has.

After all that’s gone on in our economy since the peak of our housing market, I still love the quality of life here in Lake Oswego, I love the small town feel, the surrounding areas of trees, parks, the lake and river. Our events and community can’t be beat not to mention my love of all the art around town. There still isn’t a place I’d rather live in Portland than Lake Oswego. If you’d like to find out more about Lake Oswego, give me a call at 503-495-5220 because it is a great place to live.

Below are properties currently for sale in Lake Oswego or you can use this Interactive map to search properties for Lake Oswego or any area in metro Portland.

In the next several days I will report on the 2009 vs 2010 stats for West Linn, West Portland and Tigard. Also new construction stats, condo stats and multi-family stats are on their way as well.

Source: RMLS®

[listingsearch type="layers" layerid="15" hqid="1008" orderby="price" order="ASC"]

© Copyright 2008-2011. Betty Jung. All Rights Reserved. ALL ABOUT…..Portland.Oregon.Real Estate. Use of this article, photos and images without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws. Based on a Blog at WordPress.

(For more local and national real estate information, go to my website).
Portland