Bend homes took longer to sell last month – the longest since the pandemic hit in early 2020, appraiser says
Barney Lerten
REDMOND, Ore. (KTVZ) — One chart jumps off the page in October’s Central Oregon home sales report from Beacon Appraisal Group – a noteworthy spike in how long it took to sell a Bend home.
“I was kind of shocked by that,” appraiser Donnie Montagner told KTVZ News when asked about the 66-day median days on market for sold Bend homes.
That’s up three weeks in a single month – and the longest time to sell a house in the Bend market since the pandemic hit in March of 2020, Montagner said.
By contrast, the number of Bend home sales in October declined, but in far less dramatic fashion, down 16 homes to 162 – a not-unusual start to the slower fall real estate season.
Bend’s median home sales price continued its zig-zag in a relatively narrow range, for Bend anyway — up $63,000 last month, to $778,000.
Bend’s home building permits tally actually rose by 11 to 56 last month and the inventory of homes up for sale dipped by a half-month, to 3 1/2 months.
A much different picture emerges in Redmond, where the days on market for sold properties dropped by a similar 23 days, from 47 to 24 days, while the median home sale price was pretty stable, slipping $15,000 to $515,000.
A little of Bend’s slower market could be seasonal, but looking at Redmond, “we’ve had some drawdown in interest rates,” Montagner pointed out.
“It’s pretty hard to decipher” why two nearby cities would see such a contrast in their numbers, Montagner said. But the resorts and higher-end neighborhoods within Bend’s city limits also make for a different home sales picture, segment-wise, than in Redmond. Montagner pointed out that 29% of Bend’s home sales last month were over $1 million.
And going even farther back, before the pandemic, Bend’s median days on market for sold homes in 2019 was 103 days. And back in 2009, coming out of what was called the Great Recession, Bend’s median days on market was even longer, at 153 days, Montagner said.
“The median home price (in Bend) back then was $200,000,” the appraiser said – a different time, indeed.