Summer Sales Peak Over

799 homes were sold in Portland in July, down from 894 in June. This shows the sales peak for the metro area happened last month in June, which is a typical time frame. Based on the beginning of this year I expect sale volume to drop to roughly 500 sales per month as we head into winter and inventory to creep up to close to 6 months.

Wild cards: Interest rates are creeping up, Inventory is up slightly.

I’m predicting around 700 closed sales in Portland (RMLS areas 141, 142, 143 & 148) in September. Seasonally speaking, average prices generally start to drop after the summer peak, bottoming out in winter.

Sales volume is a leading indicator for price. To help predict where the market is going I publish this sales volume trend report. The wisdom is that price follows volume so when you see a market trending higher in sales, prices will soon follow up and when sales volume is low, prices will stay flat or fall.