Portland and most of the country have emerged from the housing bubble bursting, but some areas of Oregon continue to struggle.
BY JACOB PALMER | OB DIGITAL NEWS EDITOR
Portland and most of the country have emerged from the housing bubble bursting, but some areas of Oregon continue to struggle.
OregonLive.com‘s Mike Francis reports on rural Oregon’s continuing struggles with home foreclosures:
County-level data paints a bleaker picture outside the Portland metropolitan area, where the housing market started looking healthier last year. Foreclosure activity declined more than 35 percent in Multnomah County, more than 25 percent in Washington County and more than 44 percent in Clackamas County. …
But elsewhere in the state, a rising number of property owners are sending distress signals. In hard-hit Jefferson County, where 1 in 87 housing units is in some stage of the foreclosure process, filings rose more than 85 percent last year. Klamath County foreclosures rose 53 percent. Josephine County saw foreclosures almost double last year, to 1 in every 118 housing units.
The Associated Press and the Register Guard reported Wednesday that foreclosures are down nationwide, but Oregon bucks that trend.
“December’s filings reflect what we have believed for many months, that monthly foreclosure filings will continue to hover most months near the 600-plus mark, and may be even increase during the first quarter of 2015,” said John Helmick, CEO of [Eugene-based] Gorilla Capital.
“Oregon’s foreclosure process keeps many foreclosed homes at the front-end of the filing process for months, and sometimes years, inadvertently creating vacant or ‘zombie’ homes that drag down values in thriving neighborhoods,” he said.
In Portland, the supply of homes for sale is the lowest its been since 2008. Accordingly, the median home price is up 24 percent from last year.
Decembers tend to be slow months in the real estate business, anyway. But new listings and pending sales in the metro area declined last month, while the number of completed sales rose to 2,239, according to RMLS. Taken together, the trends mean an already tight inventory was squeezed even more.
In a report issued to members Wednesday, the listings service said the average sale price for houses in the metro area last month was $331,600, while the median was $290,000. Other services, such as Zillow and Trulia, report median prices ranging from $305,000 to about $320,000.
Read more at OregonLive.com.
