A calendar-year high in active listings in June helped produce the most home sales in nine months and a median sales price that was within an eyelash of the highest on record for the Bend, Oregon, real estate market.
June had 312 active listings and finished with 180 sales, the most in any month since September 2022. The listings by price tier were essentially constant from May to June except for the highest one, which encompasses homes prices at $925,100 or more.
The number of listings in the $925,100-and-above tier rose 9.9 percent from May to June. Homes in this tier represented 33 percent of sales in June – the highest for any one month in at least the last three years.
With that many homes at that price tier sold, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that June’s median sales price was close to a record high. June’s median of $770,194 trails the record of $773,000 from February 2022 by less than one-half of one percent.
June’s median was 3.04 percent more than the same data point in May. Year over year, the median price was 6.97 percent higher.
The year-over-year median price can be a more accurate representation of the direction of sales prices than month-to-month comparisons. Comparing one month to the same month in previous years helps account for potential seasonal variations.
In the last three years, the change in the year-over-year median price in the Bend, Oregon, real estate market seems to have experienced a full cycle of extreme highs and (for Bend) extreme lows.
During the worst of the pandemic, Bend’s market had year-over-year median price increases of as much as 41 percent. Beginning with March 2022, the rate of the change in the median price began to slow. This data point was still going up, but it wasn’t rising as fast as it did during the most feverish times.
Then, in January 2023, the year-over-year median price declined (barely – by 0.15 percent), which was the first negative year-over-year movement since May 2020 – right after Oregon’s stay-at-home orders were issued but before pandemic-era buying kicked in.
The January 2023 decline was the first of four consecutive months of a decline in the year-over-year median sales price – something we hadn’t experienced since early 2011, when we were still in the shadow of the Great Recession. Since that recent four-month run of declines, however, we’ve seen two months of increases in the year-over-year price.
Two months doesn’t necessarily make for a trend, but it could be a sign that the Bend, Oregon, real estate market has turned a corner and returned to what one might call a “normal” market.
Other data points from June show some signs of pre-pandemic normality (“normal” being relative, of course, with Bend continuing to have such a robust market). The average sales price to list price in June was 99 percent – off the highs of 104 and 105 percent seen in 2021 and 2022 and more representative of the Bend, Oregon, real estate market in 2017 through 2019.
Even as average days on market in June dropped from 40 days in May to 13 (Bend’s record low is seven days), inventory held virtually steady at 1.7 months, compared to 1.8 months in May 2023 and June 2022.
The aggregate value of price decreases in all homes sold in June was 3.39 percent. That’s less of an aggregate reduction than in May 2023 and in June 2022. Contributing to that figure might be that homes in the $525,100-to-$725,000 range (representing 37 percent of homes sold) had an average sales to list price of more than 100 percent.
Looking ahead, we’ll note that June ended with 71 pending sales of homes in the $925,100-and-above price tier. That’s the most end-of-month pending sales in that tier since May 2022. Another healthy figure for July’s median sales price would seem to be in store.
We are in what is traditionally the busiest season for the Bend, Oregon, real estate market. June’s data points reinforce what a healthy, desirable market this is. I have helped buyers and sellers in all market conditions, leveraging my ethics, my experience and my knowledge of the Bend market on their behalf. If you’re in the market for a home, or are considering selling, I invite you to contact me by calling (541) 362-1031 or by visiting Bend Property Search to connect through my website.