Are Distressed Properties Important?

March 12, 2011 09:21

How important is the Distressed Property market?

Everywhere you turn these days in real estate, you see terms like Bank Owned, Short Sale, Auction or Distressed Property. Are distressed properties driving Portland Real Estate? Well not exactly.  Distressed properties are playing an important role, but they are not the leading source of sold of homes in Portland.  In the past 30 days, 63% of the properties sold were traditional sales. That is one property owner selling his or her property to another without bank intervention.

Bank Owned properties came in 2nd place in terms of units sold, and they captured 28% of the market, and Short Sales when the seller owes more than the property is worth, was only 9% of the sold units. The combined Bank Owned and Short Sales categories accounted for 37% of sales, so a little over a third of the sales in the past 30 days were Distressed.

Bank owned properties were the cheapest at $110/sf and the average sale price was $167,000. The average price of a short sale home was $235,000 at $135/sf. Traditional sales averaged $159/sf and $316,000.

Some observations: the average sale price of traditional sales came in at almost double that of bank owned properties. This is largely due to the fact that it is the lower priced neighborhoods that have been hardest hit by the real estate crisis. The close-in and established high-end neighborhoods have not seen large numbers of short sales and bank owned sales. In general the closer the property is to downtown, the lower importance and influence of distressed properties.