The Hillhurst subdivision in Ridgefield, Washington was placed in the county records in November 2003. There are 117 platted lots, including some with older houses on them. Roughly 24 of the lots, or 21% of the development appears to have been existing housing (according to on line county records). I was not able to tell from the county records how many of the lots have been built on. However, the MLS reports that since 01/01/2004 there have been 32 sales of new houses.

I went into the development yesterday to look at a house in foreclosure. I saw lots of for sale signs along the street. The MLS shows 19 active listings in the subdivision with an additional three pending sales.

Of the 19 listings there were nine noted in the listings or county records as being foreclosures or bank owned. There were five notations of “price reductions.”

Hillhurst has a lot of product on the market with little demand at this time.

Ralph Olsen, Appraiser

Pacific West Appraisal Services, Inc.

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Several days ago I did an appraisal of a house in the Woodlawn district of northeast Portland.  It is a house that is about five years old amongst a lot of houses that are 50 to 100 years old.  There are many of these newer infill houses in that part of town. (Appraisal Portland, OR)

The owner of this house paid $259,000 in the fall of 2006.  I completed the appraisal and concluded the current value is $225,000.  The average days on market for houses like this one, in that area of town was 85.  Not bad.  The high days on market for that data search was 230.

There is a lot of mixed indicators out there.  However, several recent experiences are suggesting some market areas are falling back, even if the larger district shows positive statistics.  We will keep watching.

Ralph Olsen, Appraiser

Pacific West Appraisal Services, Inc.

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Area 41 of the MLS is from Vancouver Lake to I-5 and from 78th Street to 119th Street. Much of the housing stock in this area was built in the range of 1960 to 1985 on single family lots ranging from 3,000 to 10,000 square feet in area. I chose this range of detached single family houses because in this geographic area there is pretty good uniformity in the houses. I looked at the statistics from the MLS for half year intervals starting in January of 2006 and ending with current listings. (Felida to Lake Shore Graph)

As you can see the blue line is sales prices and the red line is days on the market. After rising in the fist half of 2007, riding the market momentum, average prices dropped significantly (almost 7%). In that same time frame the average days on market statistics rose 20% from 45 days to 54 days. Still, this exposure time is not long and considered healthy. In the second half of 2007 the average days on market rose just over 7%, not a lot. But, look at the currently listed properties. They are not yet sold and have been on the market for an average of 92 days. This is still not an awfully long time. Marketing times of 90 days or less are considered generally healthy. But, by comparison, this 92 days is an increase of over 58%. Of course, as the marketing time continues to increase there will be downward pressure on prices. Unless the days on the market shorten up we can expect prices to fall. The recent list price to sales price ratio has been about 98%. Applying that to the average list price suggests an average sales price of the listing of about $235,000. If that ends up being so, the averaged trend line for sales prices over the last two years for this product category will have been quite flat. Not bad in the face of the recent changes in the national residential real estate market.

Ralph Olsen, Appraiser

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The way the law is structured it goes without saying that all that is published here is copyrighted. I have always wanted to begin the closing paragraph of an appraisal with “As any fool can plainly see………” How could anyone contest my conclusion with an intro like that???

Anyway, you have my permission to use anything you find here for you own use. And, if you use what you see here in any kind of publication, like an appraisal report, give credit to pwas.net. That is where you found it. That is its source. And, please hyper link it. Easy.

As time goes by more in depth analysis of local real estate markets will appear here. You are welcome to the info presented and encouraged to let me know what else you’d like to see examined (i.e. different market segments or product types). As our nervous markets continue to shake, rattle and roll there will be lots to talk about.

As a matter of fact, I was visiting a local appraisal office the other day. As you might expect, the topic of the condition of today’s residential real estate market came up. One of the appraisers said she had so little confidence in the market that she would not consider buying a US Treasury Note with a maturity of more than 12 months. Hearing this, another appraiser in the conversation said he had even less confidence than her and would not consider a Treasury Note with a maturity of more than six months. It was then the office manager spoke up and said that both of them had more confidence than she had. And, in fact she wouldn’t buy green bananas!

We all have our own crystal ball. The question is “how clear is it?”

My next posting will be a study of the high end, downtown Vancouver condominium market.

Ralph Olsen, appraiser

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