Tina's April COVID Update

Dear Friends and Family:

As so with the rest of the country, cautious optimism combined with economic anxiety over a prolonged shutdown has moved the real estate market to a soft reopening--of sorts.   Most significant with a reopening is that we are not ‘business as usual.’  Most brokerages have adopted policies and procedures for both listing and selling property to include:  3D and virtual tour access, no public open houses, appointment only viewings of homes with only a few people in attendance at a time.  It is commonplace to use masks, booties, gloves, hand sanitizers and wipes.  Inspections, appraisals, and signings are all being moved to as remote and virtual an experience as possible.   

Weekly, I look over Portland Metro real estate data to analyze the ratios between new listings versus pending sales.  The most recent figures show the weekly period ending Sunday night, April 19th.   It wasn’t a surprise to see an increase in the number of new listings emerge last week.  However, I had expected a larger gap between the number of new listings versus the amount of pending sales.  On the Eastside of Portland, and in many of the suburbs, buyers are almost keeping up with the supply, despite lay-offs and uncertain times.  Sectors and cities that have a higher median and average price point, such as Westside Portland or Lake Oswego, had a larger disparity, showing more new listings, but with a lesser amount of pending sales in the last week.  This makes sense, as these areas rely heavily on jumbo loans.  Jumbo loans allow a borrower to finance over $510,400 and are deemed too risky by many lending institutions for now.   

As real estate moves toward a soft reopening, I’ll be trying to ‘read the tea leaves’ with my clients as factors such as the financial impacts of forbearances, unemployment numbers, stimulus and SBA packages, the rental market, oil prices, the re-emergence of COVID…even the uncertainty of North Korea’s leadership…all could change real estate’s trajectory.  I am literally taking it one day at a time. 

Health and wellness to you all. 

- Tina Schafer