The query in the title of this article is a wiggly mess of answers depending on who you ask. Overall I would say we are in a slide in several key sub-markets. I mentioned that Portland's glut of city condos, particularly in the South Waterfront are pushing prices down on Vancouver's entry level and mid-tier condos Downtown.
The entry level has been plagued with a lack of qualified buyers in the market. Up till recently, perhaps the last 12 months, inventory was tight enough that the lack of buyers was not causing any real downward pressure on prices int he entry level. But alas, now we have more than 3 months inventory, which is by no means considered allot of inventory, but it is way more than we have had and now the lack of buyers is noticeable.
The other weird aspect of our current market is in the process of correcting itself, but we have been in a slightly declining market but the median home price has continued to rise. I alluded to this in previous posts, the entry level has been slow but the mid-tier has been busy. Prices have been falling on home in the sub $600k market due mostly to that lack of qualified buyers. Meanwhile houses in the middle tier from $700k-$1.2m have been selling well and that has pushed the median price up rather than down. Prices have been coming down across the board but we are simply selling more of the expensive houses relative to the entry level and that creates a literal mirage that prices are rising. They are not.
This market has been fairly flat with prices in a slight decline. Sellers have to be careful here. If a house has been on the market for 90 days with no offers, the first offer could be the best offer. I would say it is more likely the best offer than not.
Clark County has been the Portland-Vancouver metro area's only strong growth county for several years now. We have been riding a wave of Portland migration that is now starting to slow a bit. We are also seeing more out-migration than has been typical. Some are fleeing our expensive home market, others are leaving the State of Washington for political reasons. Washington has always been a blue state but it has seen a drastic change in the recent ten years seemingly mimicking California. Washington has become a wet version of California, that may be pushing some of the moderate and conservative people out. This could explain the increase in inventory running against the trend of sitting on those 3% mortgages.
Our current Governor seems to be determined to destroy the Washington tech economy as well as the broad economy. This is not a blue-state vs red-state issue. It is a California issue. Emulating a failed state is a bad idea whether that state is red or blue. We seem hell-bent on chasing the "golden" state over the edge and into the abyss. I am not here to advocate for any one political world view, quite the contrary actually, but politics has been a driver of real estate as voters sometimes vote with their feet, we have seen it in California and now it could be happening here.
Hopefully the legislators in Olympia will see the cliff, and steer us back to the good ole Washington we all know and love. If our state starts to see an exodus like California and Oregon have seen, we could be headed for a market correction.
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