A couple of months into the year, we can confidently say that the year is off to the start we expected. There has been an uptick in new listings and pending sales, showing that both buyers and sellers are stepping back into the market. With real estate ultimately boiling down to supply and demand, the balance between these two will be the primary focus as the year progresses. Let’s see what the data tells us about where we currently stand and where we might be headed.
Mortgage Rates
Over the past month, interest rates have given some buyers a small reprieve. Despite topping out at just over 7% in mid-February, rates have retreated about 0.5 points and now sit at roughly 6.6%. They have found some stability at this level and despite some daily fluctuations, they have spent the better part of a week at this level. As we discussed last week, the experts are calling for rates to be near 6.25% at the end of the year. Many buyers find themselves debating whether it makes sense to take advantage of the recent rate relief and buy now or continue to wait for some more relief in the future. So far, for buyers with some financial flexibility, it feels like buyers are back out searching in earnest, and when the home is right, making offers.
Median Price
The median price for single family homes in Bend has been something that has bounced around quite a bit over the past year. In any given month, with a small amount of transactions taking place, there have been times when the median home price has jumped 10% month to month. Often the following month there has been a move by almost the same amount in the opposite direction, showing that the big move was just an anomaly with a larger than normal number of transactions taking place on the extreme end of the price range. However, for the past 4 months, prices have remained incredibly stable in Bend, with the average (non-acreage) home in Bend hovering at a median of $700,000. The seasonal cycle has us expecting more luxury homes to come on the market and sell over the next few months, which usually causes the median to increase until mid-summer. We will be watching closely to see if this trend plays out again this year.
New Listings
This time of year can be very weather dependent. We can have periods of 60 degrees, followed just a couple of days later with snow and rain. With these changes, come changes in buyer activity, and so sellers with some flexibility try to time listing their home when the weather will allow for the best traffic. With a relatively mild start to the year, we have seen new listing activity increase earlier in the season than last year, and February had about 15% more new listings across Bend/Redmond than just a year earlier. Although part of this can be attributed to mild conditions, the likely larger reason for this is that people are tired of putting their lives on hold waiting for a more advantageous time to buy/sell. We do see many sellers trying to wait for things to green up before listing, so we would expect there to be many more homes on the way this Spring. However, often it is the ones who list early who have better success in meeting the buyer demand, so if you have had thoughts about timing your sale, give us a call.
Pending Sales and Homes for Sale
Pending home sales across Bend/Redmond ticked up slightly in February, as expected. Often the increase from January to February is slight, but the jump between February and March is much larger, so we will be watching the data again over the next month. In comparison to last year, we saw only a marginal increase in pending sales, with there being about 5% more pending sales in February 2025 than 2024. National estimates indicated that there would be 12-15% more sales in 2025, and so this early increase in pending sales is a good sign that we are seeing this locally as well.
With almost as many new listings as pending sales, we did not see a huge change in the number of homes for sale from last month to this month. If we look at the inventory levels for single family, non-acreage homes last month, we see that there is about 3 months worth of inventory. This means that if no new homes came on the market, given the pace of sales currently, it would take 3 months to sell through all the homes. This is still in the seller’s favor, as a more balanced market is closer to 5–6 months. One thing to point out here is that the 3-month inventory that is quoted here is for non-acreage, single family homes in Bend. This does not mean that every price point and property type is at the same level. We don’t have the time for it here, but we are happy to go through individual price points and areas/property types with you to see how it varies.
Days on Market (DOM)
This is always the time of year that we see a peak in the number of days on market. Homes that have been on the market for the winter are closing, and so the number remains higher than what we are feeling in the market. Despite days on market remaining near 90 across Bend/Redmond, it is worth noting that 27% of the current pending sales in Bend went pending in less than 1 week (this is up from 18% last month). These sales won’t affect the days on market until they close, which is likely to take place next month, so we should see a drop in the days on market when we look at this again in 30 days.
Some other points to consider…
Sale to Original List Price: Often people report sale to list price as opposed to sale to original list price. The difference here is that in the first scenario, if a home lowers their price significantly and then goes pending at the new price, it shows a sale to list price of 100%. That doesn’t seem very accurate. Given this, we will be focusing more on the average sale to original list price, which in February was 95.16% in Bend.
Inflation: This is a big indicator for the Fed, and recent reports have this ticking back up and away from the Fed’s target rate of 2%. This could mean that not only could the rate cuts be put on hold, some reports have indicated that rate increases could even be in the realm of possibility. 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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