The market in Bend continues to show signs of stability, but it is mixed with an abundance of caution. It feels like both buyers and sellers are afraid of making a mistake, and both appear to have a different feeling of where the market currently stands.
The market in Bend continues to show signs of stability, but it is mixed with an abundance of caution. It feels like both buyers and sellers are afraid of making a mistake, and both appear to have a different feeling of where the market currently stands. Buyers, as a whole, are expecting big price drops and concessions while at the same time, the cost to replace what a seller has is keeping many from adjusting their expectations. The result is a market where neither side holds overwhelming leverage, yet both feel the pulse of economic shifts, interest rate movements, and ongoing buyer confidence. As before, we’ll unpack these trends and explore what they mean for strategic buyers and sellers in the sections that follow.
Mortgage Rates
When we started the year, interest rate expectations seemed to have tapered and projections for rates at the end of the year were only about .5 pts lower than the levels that existed at that time. This seemed to get some buyers off the sidelines as they realized that continuing to put their lives on hold for .5% didn’t make sense. Most buyers are buying for a fundamental reason (they need more space, less space, closer to family, etc.) and to put this on hold indefinitely can be a challenge. We bring this all up since the projections for rates looking forward are now even less optimistic, showing a drop of less than .5% lower than where they are now. Given this, it could again cause buyers to adjust their patience levels and perhaps this leads them to take advantage of the increased inventory levels.
Median Price
As expected, the uptick in the median in prior months was not necessarily a sign that prices were rising exceptionally fast, but rather that there was a large percentage of the sales happening in the upper price points. In the past month, we saw the opposite and saw the median stumble for the second month in a row. In fact, it is off 17% from its highs in May. Does this mean that the housing market is faltering and dropping quickly? We would argue that this is very misleading and would be a faulty assumption from the data. The reality is that the median price has fallen due to a shift in buyer patterns more than a lack of buyers. Two months ago, when the median made a new all-time high, approximately 35% of the sales were above $1M. With so many sales happening on the upper end of the market, it naturally would pull the median higher. The converse is true this past month, with only 17% of the sales taking place above $1M and thus pulling the median down. If we look at the market over the past few years, we are right where we were for a good portion of 2024, early 2023 and late 2022. Despite having big jumps in the median month-to-month, we have been in a relatively flat range overall for some time. Here is a chart of the past 3.5 years.
New Listings
The number of new listings usually peaks every year in either May or June and given that we saw fewer new listings in June than we did in May, we may have recorded our peak for the year. In June, there were 308 new listings in Bend and this was a decline of about 21% from May but almost identical to what we saw in June 2024 (314). One phenomenon we have seen is that when inventory is rising, it can sometimes cause buyers to take a “wait and see” approach, anticipating more options to come. However, when buyers see the signs that the increase in listings is coming to close for the year, they start to act on the available options. Why would this be? Because in Bend, Winter inventory levels can drop by as much as 80% compared to Spring and Summer. Therefore, a buyer who is waiting and has some options may not want to roll the dice on missing something good when they know there are fewer options in store as the seasons change.
Pending Sales
Pending sales, although lower than what we were accustomed to in the pre-pandemic years, continue to show signs that buyers are out there and that the buyer activity over the past few years has been very consistent. In June in Bend, we saw 214 new pending sales and this was within 4 of the numbers we saw at this time in 2024 and 2023. You have heard us say it before, but please be careful when you read the headlines. It is not really newsworthy to have a headline that says “Pending Sales are statistically Identical to each of the last two years.” A much more clickable headline would say “Pending Sales are down 50% from their highs”. Both are entirely accurate, but one is basing it on a pattern seen over the last two years and the other is basing it on an anomaly from the frenzy of 2020. In summary, the market for new sales is slower than it has been, but it is stable and consistent. See the final bullet point at the end of this piece for one more note on Pending Sales.
Days on Market (DOM)
The median days on market in Bend for sold and pending properties is now 24 days. This has been consistent over the past few months and similar to where it was in the later half of the summer in 2024. Normally this is the time of year when we see the lowest number of Days on Market, so we would expect the Days on Market to continue to rise throughout the remaining months of the year. This will give buyers more time to compare, shop and decide, but we would also caution buyers here. As with all the numbers we quote, these are simply market generalizations and not representative of all homes. In fact, even though the median time to go Pending is 24 days, 21% of the homes currently Pending had accepted offers in less than a week.
Some other points to consider…
Negotiation: The average sale to original list price was 96.3% in May in Bend. The average sale to the last list price was 98.2%, 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 1.8% of list price after taking an average price reduction of about 1.9%.
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.
Canceled Sales: To start the year, Redfin released a study that showed that 14% of the Pending Sales in January failed to close. A study from NAR shows that this is closer to 6% now.
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 [email protected] 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
- [email protected]
- 541-633-4569
- Main office: 650 SW Bond St, Ste 100
- Tetherow Sales Office
- Assembly Office in Northwest Crossing
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