HOW DO I SAY THIS?

It seems as if everywhere you look, there's nothing but good news about the real estate market.  Even at the conference I attended most recently in Phoenix, all the buzz was about how the market is healed. 

Now that started to give me pause, because the attendees at this conference are the cream of the crop in real estate - the top 3% of agents in the nation.  And I know you all thought I was just a Negative Ninny four years ago when I said this downturn would last much longer than just a season.  So, NEVER wanting to be wrong, I had to come back and put this information into context, because this "feeling" everyone was having just didn't seem to square up with the numbers.

First of all, we've come off a year that included a Foreclosure Moratorium.  That moratorium has allowed about 49 months worth of inventory to stockpile.  It's commonly referred to in the press as the Shadow Inventory.  These are homes in some stage of foreclosure; everything from being 60 days late to being sold as a vacant house on your street.

Secondly, many of the Realtors I talked to in Phoenix were reporting they were having low inventory, multiple offers and sometimes offers over asking price.  How could that be, I wondered.  A closer look tells the story.

Many of these agents were from some of the hardest hit states in the nation; places like Florida, Arizona, California and Ohio.  In some cases, real estate has dropped up to 87% from it's high point in '05 and '06.  It's no surprise that investors are coming and grabbing up these deals.  That combined with that moratorium I spoke about - and you can see how it would "feel" like everything in just ducky!

What we've known for quite a while, though, is that this is going to be a see-saw recovery.  Up and then down and then up again.  And we all know that real estate is local.  So I thought it would be helpful if you could see exactly what's going on in our market.

Here's a map of the 6 major zip codes in the Mid-Willamette Valley.  As you can see, we've got some work to do here in the Valley before we start talking recovery. 

While this map is a little tough to take, the good news is our real estate market never fell like values did in the states of Arizona, California or Florida.  And besides - we're Oregonians....tough to the core!