Home Price for 2008 Market

Housing values still up from ’05
Thursday, July 31, 2008
By JULIA ANDERSON, Columbian staff writer
If you own a home in the Vancouver-Portland metropolitan area, do you have a profit or a loss on
the purchase? According to a Portland economist, if you bought before May 2006, you probably
still have a profit.
That’s because average home values in the Vancouver-Portland market have risen 75.5 percent
since June 1999. So, despite the more recent housing market downturn, your net equity is ahead.
But, according to Bill Conerly in his most recent Businomics blog item, if you bought after May
2006, you are most likely looking at a loss on the purchase. But even there, you have good news:
Your loss is probably less than homeowners’ in most U.S. metropolitan areas.
This conclusion, Conerly says, is based on analysis of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices
released this week, reflecting a three-month moving average of regional housing data through
May.
Case-Shiller’s index tracks the nation’s 20 largest metropolitan areas.
In the Vancouver-Portland area, Case-Shiller shows home values were down 5.2 percent in May
from May 2007. While lower than a year ago, the local index appears to have bottomed in
February and slightly improved since then.
Seattle-area home values, meanwhile, continued to decline in May, falling 0.5 percent from April.
They were 6.3 percent lower then than in May 2007, according to Case-Shiller. The nation’s
weakest housing markets are in Las Vegas, Miami and Detroit.
Vancouver-Portland has generally fared better than most other major metropolitan areas.
Local median price
In Clark County, the median price of homes sold in June was $249,900, down 4 percent from
June 2007, as reported by benchmarks, a service of Riley & Marks appraisers in Vancouver. But
housing sales remain weak, off 38.2 percent in the second quarter from last year as mortgage
credit has tightened and buyers hold out for bargains. Economist Conerly said that people seem
to be feeling worse about the region’s economy than the numbers actually suggest.
“I don’t see it as quite as bad as the talk I’m hearing,” he said recently of the local second-quarter
economic indicators.
To that point, while the dividing line between profit and loss on a home purchased in this market is
May 2006, nationally in the 20 largest metropolitan areas, that point came in July 2004, he said.
That’s because prices zoomed higher in other markets and have fallen back more dramatically.