Real Estate Resource

Are condos here to stay?  Of course!!!  The Pearl District of Portland, Oregon rose from the rubble of a former industrial area of downtown to the now interesting & glistening variety of towers that form the landscape of this NW section of town.  The urban lifestyle doesn’t suit everyone, but the Portland real estate market has definitely embraced the ease of condo living in a very big way.  In barely 10 years, the Pearl ‘hood emerged to compete with the other big west coast destinations offering great restaurants, a fun bar scene, an award-winning streetcar system and sophisticated art galleries!  So, as our local real estate market makes its correction, what exactly is happening in the Pearl at the moment?  There are currently 158 active condos being marketed in our Realtor’s Multiple Listing (RMLS) system.  Of course, this does not include some of the available product in under-construction projects such as the “Encore” and “Riverfront Pearl” which only input a few of their inventory at a time.  If you take away the one “Old Town” listing, the 3 that are actually in the “Northwest Alphabet District” and two in “Goose Hollow”, that leaves a 153 condos for sale on the Realtor’s site.  The “Pearl District” reaches south to north from Burnside to the Willamette River and from NW 16th (or I-405) to NW Broadway.  Then, I looked at actual sold & closed listings for the calendar year 2007, which was 216 sold!  Not so, so bad (I thought to myself).  That’s an average of 18 sales a month, which would take our present listing inventory around 6 months to exhaust.  RMLS says there was 8.3months of inventory in November 2007 (latest stats) for all property types in the greater Portland metro area!  But, that still does not factor in the 177 new units at the Encore and 196 new units at Waterfront Pearl (estimated date of completion is somewhere around Spring of 2008).  As always, when there is a market adjustment like we are currently experiencing, condos seem to take the hit first, and often, the hardest.  So I guess developers over-estimated the appetite for condo consumption??  Or is this just part of the cycle?  But, of course, development is way ahead of any cycle or it isn’t successful.  And, a building only breaks ground after hours/days/years of work, planning & permits!  I think we have to shift our thinking to include a slower pace of sales, no rampant appreciation and price adjustments.  I really believe that we have “lost a bit of ground” on the actual market value of condominiums in the Pearl (which is how much a buyer is willing to pay to own that property)!  I really have total confidence that Portland and the Pearl will remain vital and a desired destination for those that love the downtown, urban life.  Portland is maturing into a classy, cultured & refined “big, little city” and the Pearl District is just one of it’s “shiny pockets”!!

Similar Posts:

• What’s Up with the condo market (and, other stuff)???
• The “State of Real Estate” in the “State of Oregon”
• CHALLENGES & OPPORTUNITIES IN OUR PRESENT REAL ESTATE MARKET!
• What’s Going on in the Pearl???
• Timing the Market: with stocks or real estate, is this really possible???

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