Market News

There is much speculation on the impact that the current government shutdown will have on home buyers hoping to secure a mortgage. In the case of mortgage lending, the impact will depend on many things including the length of the shutdown, the current status of the loan, the borrower profile, and the lender’s modified guidelines during the shutdown period.

I expect that the market will continue to recover, relative to price, but I also expect to see price growth start to moderate, especially if interest rates continue trending upward.

We have been looking for balance within the real estate market for several years now. During the crash, there were clearly far more sellers than buyers, but when we found the bottom of the market and prices started to rise, the tables were turned with considerably more buyers than sellers. In as much as we are still far from truly finding the market equilibrium that we have all been waiting for...

On an annualized basis, the Oregon counties covered in this report increased employment by 0.92 percent, or approximately 15,590 jobs, a further—albeit modest—improvement from the 0.8 percent annual growth that was discussed in our last report. On a year-over-year basis, 19 counties saw their employment base expand and five saw employment contract.