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Opinion Editorials Remarkably, housing market is holding up
Remarkably, housing market is holding up
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For the moment, at least, there doesn’t appear to be any such thing as a real estate crisis in Union County. According to recent reports, prices are up, sales are brisk, inventory is adequate and foreclosures are few. It’s almost enough to make you disbelieve all the news reports about the nationwide housing crash, the plummeting prices, the glut of properties for which there are no buyers, the woeful lack of new housing starts — not to mention the wave of foreclosures sweeping like a tsunami over homeowners coast-to-coast. The average price of a home in Union County is around $153,000. That sounds like a lot of money to some, but everything’s relative. In Bend, for instance, the average price tops $215,000. In Portland, it’s about $340,000. To many people these days, $153,000 looks cheap. Yet local prices have been climbing since the turn of the century; in the past seven years they’ve gone up 55 percent. That’s a hefty increase, though brokers and agents appear to be having no trouble selling houses. Average time on the market for a property is about 47 days. It’s nice to be able to report such healthy numbers, especially in the midst of the national crisis. The optimism does require some tempering, however. Recent news stories indicate the mortgage crunch is deepening and spreading, with foreclosures on the rise in Oregon. Then too, the word recession is being noised around quite a bit. Consumer confidence is down, and overall, people are feeling nervous. Also on the down side, everyday Union County citizens are having an increasingly difficult time competing in the housing market. Their wages are not keeping pace with increases in home prices. In 2006 the average Union County worker earned about $29,000. That’s well below the statewide average of $38,000. Figure in taxes, cost of health insurance and medical care, car payments, credit card debt, food, clothing and other necessities, and there isn’t much left over for payments on houses that cost $150,000 and more. Most local real estate sales people agree that retirees and investors are the customers to target these days. They have more money than wage earners with families, and they are more eligible for financing. Whether those customer demographics can indefinitely support the local real estate trade remains to be seen. What’s really needed for the long term is attraction of industry, some well-managed population growth and an increase in the average wage. Those are the things that will truly stimulate sales of existing homes and the building of new ones. |
