The sales pace in February for single family homes on less than an acre would seem to indicate that sellers are now calling the shots in the Bend housing market.
There were 109 houses sold in February in Bend and 414 finished homes are currently listed for sale, resulting in less than 3.8 months of available inventory. A market has typically been considered "balanced," favoring neither buyers nor sellers, when there are about 6 months of inventory available. But with so many distressed properties and a double digit unemployment rate, how can this be true in Bend today?
One explanation I have is that banks are being very careful in controlling the number of foreclosed homes they list for sale in an effort to avoid flooding the market and driving prices even lower. And a quick analysis seems to bear that out.
As I write this, only 46 of the 414 currently active single family home listings in Bend are shown to be foreclosures. That's 11.1% of the market. But similar bank-owned properties accounted for 43% of homes sold last month!
So while only about 1 in 10 houses for sale in Bend are foreclosures, more than 4 of every 10 sold are bank-owned. Can and will this trend continue? Let me know your thoughts by replying in the comments section below.
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