What happens when you have low home prices, coupled with low interest rates? Low inventory. That is the situation occurring in Independence Oregon’s real estate market right now. The inventory is at a nice healthy 4.5 months, which is nice to see. The reason? Low home prices.
The average and median home prices in Independence have always been almost exactly the same. Independence ended the year at an average home price of $162, 874 and a median home price of $162, 000. Compare that with some of the other metro towns and you can see that Independence is more affordable than some of the other Salem cities.
The average and median home prices did drop 7.4% from 2008 making Independence very affordable.
Couple the drop in home prices with a 12% decrease in homes listed AND a 16% increase in homes sold over 2008, and what you get is a supply and demand imbalance…corrected. At least for now. Right now, the data is indicating a nice healthy, normal, real estate market. Now remember normal doesn’t mean a sellers market or a buyer’s market. It means “let’s be reasonable” market. Both sides need to put their sharkish “blood in the water” ways aside for a while.
So Independence ended the year on a good note. There may be some ongoing mild price declines here, depending on unemployment woes, but I’m not anticipating any drastic changes to the Independence real estate market right now. I would expect it to stay relatively flat in the 2010 year. ‘
P.S. Data used in this report was calculated from information provided by the WVMLS.