Summer is settling in, and although we are seeing some aspects of the Bend market take on a familiar rhythm, there are others that are returning to levels we haven’t seen in some time. Inventory has continued its gradual climb, giving buyers a bit more breathing room, and with that pricing has receded back a bit after last month’s sharp increase. The result is a market that feels more balanced than it has in many years, but still highly sensitive to shifts in rates, economic news, and buyer confidence. As always, we’ll break down what the latest numbers mean for both buyers and sellers in the paragraphs that follow:
Mortgage Rates
For many months (if not years) interest rates have been the predominant driver of market sentiment. However, in the past few months, rates have not given buyers much in the way of relief. Despite ongoing calls for interest rate relief in the future, we have not seen that come to fruition. Rates remain near the 7% level, and with about 65% of the transactions in Bend being financed purchases, this has impacted a lot of buyers’ purchasing power. This often has buyers spending more than they expected for the home (both in purchase price and monthly payment) and with that, we are seeing them become more and more patient and selective.
Median Price
Last month we saw a big uptick in the median home price and in last month’s update we discussed why this was the case. Instinct tells us this was likely due to the fact that luxury homes made up a larger percentage of the sales (35%). This had the effect of pulling the median and averages higher. Normally when we see this, we see a down tick the following month, and this is precisely what we saw this past month. The median for non-acreage homes in Bend is now $775,000 and this is almost exactly where it was last year at this time. Also, if we look at the last few years, we can see that we are roughly at the same spot that we have been this time of year in 2022, 2023 and 2024.
New Listings
As expected we continue to see the number of new listings increase each month. This is a trend that we see each year and usually continues through July before tapering off in the second half of the year. As you can see from the chart, the Bend market is fairly consistent in how many new listings we see each year at this time and this past month we saw just shy of 400 new listings. For perspective this is about 5% more new listings than what we saw at this time last year and about 28% fewer than we saw this time in 2019.
Pending Sales and Inventory of Homes
Even though we aren’t seeing a huge number of new listings coming on the market, we are seeing inventory continue to rise. We now stand at 5 months of inventory for the first time in a decade. There are a couple of reasons for this. The first and most obvious one is that there aren’t as many new pending sales each month as we would expect. This past month we saw 205 new pending sales and this was roughly 5% higher than we saw last year at this time. However, when we compare how many pending sales there were in the years before the pandemic, we are about 33% lower. Buyers have been out, but with prices and interest rates remaining high, they have been very selective and patient and simply not willing to “overpay”. This has led to more homes staying on the market for longer before they go pending. The tricky part is that so far sellers have seemed reluctant to meet buyers where they are, and so this has led to homes sitting on the market for longer. What we have seen is that across the nation about 20% of listings are expiring without selling. This shows us that there is also great patience on the sell side. Often, if a seller isn’t able to get what they want for the house, they will just let it expire or pull it off the market. However, what we did see last month is that the number of listings with price changes ticked up by about 23% from the month prior. This also shows that some sellers can’t be as patient and are having to make adjustments to get their homes sold.
Days on Market (DOM)
The median days on market in Bend is now just shy of 3 weeks. Although it is pretty clear from the chart that outside of the pandemic years, the pattern for days on market is fairly consistent. We have seen this number tick up dramatically from this time last year when it was just 9 days. Also, looking back across a number of years, it is fairly common that we see the lowest days on market, sometime between April and June with then a steady rise through the following Jan/Feb. It would be wise for sellers to adjust their expectations for how long their home will take to sell or talk to their broker about adjusting their strategy so they can outperform the market. There are buyers out there who are willing to act and despite an uptick in Days on Market overall, if you look at the current pending sales, about 27% of them took place in less than a week.
Some other points to consider…
Negotiation: The average sale to original list price was 96.8% in May in Bend. The average sale to the last list price was 98.7%. The difference here is that the second number tells the story after any price reductions. Given this, the average home sells at a discount of 1.3% of list price after taking an average price reduction of about 1.9%.
Price Changes: Although we touched on this in the section on Pending Sales, what we didn’t touch on is what the average price change we are seeing is on homes. Although we have seen the number of price changes tick up, we are also seeing smaller price changes on average. This shows us that sellers are a lot like buyers, they are patient and trying to not overreact when it comes to getting their house sold.
Inflation: This is a big indicator for the Fed, and after ticking back up earlier this year, it seems to be heading back closer to their target, but also remains stubbornly higher than the Fed (and most consumers) would like. You can see a chart of inflation here.
We hope you find this information valuable and that it helps you towards your ultimate real estate goals. If you have any questions about this month’s content or would like to dive a little deeper into the data, please reach out to your Ladd Group broker. If you don’t have one, you can reach me at steve@bendpropertysource.com or on my cell at 541-280-2132.
There are also several ways to reach the team, so please let us know how we can help.
- facebook.com/bendpropertysource/
- Bendpropertysource.com
- info@bendpropertysource.com
- 541-633-4569
- Main office: 650 SW Bond St, Ste 100
- Tetherow Sales Office
- Assembly Office in Northwest Crossing
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