If you’ve been watching the Bend market, you’ve probably heard that home prices are climbing. And you’re right. April saw the biggest spike in median price we’ve had in years, jumping to $832,000. At the same time, inventory crept up to four months. These kinds of mixed signals are exactly why we always say, “It depends.” There’s a story behind the numbers, and it’s not always obvious at first glance. Our goal with these updates is to give you a clear, grounded take on what’s really happening by breaking things down into pricing, supply, and demand. And as always, the best way to get answers that apply to your situation is to schedule a time to talk.
Mortgage Rates
Over the past month, we saw some big moves in the stock market and some mild ones for mortgage rates. While the stock market took a large turn to the downside, mortgage rates ended up ticking about .25-.5 points. This was a double whammy for sales activity, since it seemed to cause both cash and financed buyers to sit on their hands and wait for better times. In this edition, we won’t include the chart for interest rates, but instead include a chart of the percentage of cash buyers in the market. As you can see, although many cash buyers sat on the sidelines last month, it appears that more financed buyers did. The percentage of cash buyers is now 36.8% and on the upper end of the range that we have seen for a few years.
Median Price
The median took quite a big jump this past month and had many people scratching their heads. Bend’s median home price hit $832,000 in April, a noticeable jump from $748,000 in March. How could it be that in a time of growing inventory and increasing price changes (we will get to that in a second) could the median increase so much? This represents the highest monthly median price Bend has seen, signaling a seasonal shift and a surge in higher-end activity. It was noted that approximately 35% of the sales last month were above $1M and in looking even higher, we saw that there were 17 homes over $2M and 9 homes over $3M that closed in April. For comparison, March had 10 above $2M and 2 above $3M. With so many more homes trading hands at these loft levels, it is no wonder that the median jumped so much. As of this writing in Mid-May, there are currently 3 sales above $2M and 1 above $3M so far this month. If this continues, we would expect to see this median price drop next month.
New Listings
Despite people saying how many new signs they are seeing in front of homes, the number of new listings is following a relatively stable pattern. In April, Bend had 347 new listings last month, which was up from 283 in March. This represents a 22% increase month to month. If we look at the jump from March to April in 2024, we saw a 13% increase from March to April. This tells us that the growth in new listings this year is real, but also expected. Barring any major economic changes, we would expect that new listings will continue to rise for a couple more months before tapering back down starting mid-summer.
Pending Sales and Inventory of Homes
Pending home sales ticked up again in April and went from 182 in March to 189 in April. However, given a 22% rise in new listings, seeing only a marginal increase in pending sales is not what we would expect. This means that more new homes are coming on the market than are getting sold, so this would create a larger balance of homes available for sale (inventory/ supply). Assuming homes are not being pulled from the market, this will shift the equilibrium a bit and should keep prices in check. Given the challenges with the stock market and mortgage rates in April, it is not a real surprise that pending sales ticked down. We will be watching the numbers for pending sales to see if May continues upward or remains relatively flat.
Given that more new homes are coming on than are going Pending, and knowing that this is not the time of year, one would expect homes to be pulled from the market if not sold. We have seen the amount of inventory grow in the last 30 days. At the end of April, we had 764 homes for sale in Bend and looking at the chart below, you can see that this has risen from the lows of the pandemic. However, what is also clear from this chart is that we are currently right in the middle of the range that we were quite accustomed to in the late 2010s. This is why when you hear people talking about the market, they say that it is normalizing. The artificially low interest rates of the pandemic era helped fuel activity that simply is not sustainable. What we were hoping to see (and have) is a slow move back to the expected norms.
Days on Market (DOM)
Days on Market is also following the expected patterns for this time of year. Despite more homes coming on the market and fewer homes going pending, the days on market for Closed homes dropped to 15 in April. The days on market for Pending homes is currently at 19, so it does appear that homes that are priced fairly and marketed well are still selling relatively quickly. In fact, of the current pending sales that went under contract since May 1, 22% of them went pending in less than a week. For a little perspective, there were almost the same number that took more than 3 months to get an accepted offer. This should tell you that it is not a slam dunk that your home will sell in a couple of weeks. It takes the right approach to help keep you in the first group.
Some other points to consider…
Negotiation: The average sale to original list price was 96.2% in April in Bend. The average sale to the last list price was 98.6%, 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 1.4% of list price after taking an average price reduction of about 2.4%.
Price Changes: In April, we saw 318 price changes on homes and this is up from 226 in March. This potentially shows that either the listing agent or seller had an inflated view of value to start or that sellers are simply having to get more aggressive to get their homes sold and remain competitive with the growing inventory.
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
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