Sales Volume Report | January 2013

PORTLAND SALES VOLUME REPORT | January 10, 2013 

Sales Volume Above Spring 2012 Numbers

672 homes were sold in Portland in December, down from 732 in November. This shows the sales peak for the metro area happened in August at close to 1,000 sales, which is later in the season than I would expect. Based on the continued low inventory of homes I expect sales to drop off slightly but pricing to hold or increase into the winter months.

Wild cards: Fiscal Cliff is not over with Debt Ceiling talks in the next 4 weeks, continued low inventory.

I’m predicting around 600 closed sales in Portland (RMLS areas 141, 142, 143 & 148) in January. 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.