Oregon Office of Economic Analysis

Our office recently got our hands on a current snapshot of Multnomah County property tax records. We will have much more on housing in Portland in the not too distant future, however this edition of the Graph of the Week looks at the pattern of recent sales versus the mid-2000s. During the boom, a lot of home sales and certainly new construction activity occurred on the outer edges of the metro region. Sales in the past year, along with infill developments, have tended to occur in Portland’s close-in neighborhoods. Two potential concerns are that homes sold during the boom are more likely to be underwater today in terms of their mortgages, making it more difficult to buy, sell or move and also damaging household balance sheets in the process. The second potential concern is affordability and availability in close-in Portland neighborhoods, which are in high demand today based on sales activity and new construction (both ownership and rental).

Overall, 5.1% of homes in Multnomah County sold in the past year — from April 2013 to March 2014 — which is a pretty average turnover rate overall. However this pace of sales was not the same across neighborhoods (actually zip codes). Likewise, the share of homes in each neighborhood that last sold during the housing boom is not the same. The graph below illustrates Multnomah County zip codes (labeled here by their neighborhood names) in terms of the pace of recent sales and the housing boom share. Blue dots in the lower right hand corner have both an above average pace of sales and a lower overall share of homes that were last sold during the boom. Those in the upper left hand corner have slower sales and a higher share of homes that are potentially trapped or underwater due to the housing bust. The neighborhood differences here are both illuminating and also, likely expected given the boom and bust pattern of the housing in the Portland area during the past decade. Click on the graph for a larger view.