Sunday, April 15, 2007

Bend Inventory: A Brief History

For all my whaling on the Bulletin, they actually do some pretty good fact gathering. A recent graph of inventory in each Bend school district being a good example. So, while looking for other stories, I found a similar graph from way... back... when. August 2006 to be exact, right around when inventory was topping.

So, I'll just put up these graphs, abstain from whomping on the Bulletin, and let you bask in the data-rich goodness :-)

From the Aug 11, 2006 story, "More homes on market in region"
[I removed these images per Blogger request, but here are links to the stories & charts]

Aug 11, 2006 article & charts

Now from the more recent Apr 11, 2006 story, "Messages mixed in housing numbers"

Apr 11, 2007 article & charts

I've put a google spreadsheet here: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pWE_FqZMoakgi18Qt8jkpNw
(I sorted by most expensive to least expensive...)

I should note that last Augusts chart is wrong. If you look closely, there really is no way that that those "% below the median" figures are right. Ensworth goes from 51.5% below to 94.6% below? Don't think so. Also note the "color coding" is different, so you can't do real fast comparisons based on color. Don Imus would not be happy...


The big increases in inventory came from Pine Ridge (+28) and Elk Meadow (+14), while the largest decline was the East side in Buckingham (-54). That's 1/3rd of Buckingham inventory gone. High Lakes continues with the lions share of homes for sale (33%), but inventory levels have moved little there.

Also of interest, despite constant reassurance that we've moved on from the Bad Old Days of record-high inventory last Summer, the current inventory is 98% of where it was back then. Given the rate at which inventory comes online in the Spring, we can look forward to easily eclipsing the old mark soon.

8 comments:

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Timmy I did do a linear regression on "% over median" vs inventory change numbers. No really meaningful correlation there. Expected strong negative correlation; low % below median (expensive) correlates to big increase in inventory. Not the case...

Scatter plot showed that there seemed to be some sort of negative correlation on some data points, but there were 3 outliers that mucked up the works (High lakes, Buckingham, Ensworth). Taking these out yielded slightly more negative correlation, but still not significant. Plus at that point there are not enough data points to do anything "real"...

Anonymous said...

Damn dude! Sweet.

You can see on the spreadsheet that two of the top 3 most expensive areas had the largest percentage increases in inventory, and that the bottom 3 had the biggest percent declines.

Nice Job!

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

And last I checked, Clives count was at 93% of the previous record highs.

Anonymous said...

Where is Renaiassance Ridge & all that mega-SW development? Pine Ridge or Elk Meadow?

I'd expect that's why there's perma-inventory down in SW Bend. That'll never go away.

Anonymous said...

If you compare the charts and the spreadsheet, it seems clear the West & SW have added inventory, the East has sold inventory, and the North & South are pretty much unchanged.

Anonymous said...

I've been starting to think of the Bend market as a bifurcated one. I got the idea from the repeated observation that the High Lakes school area is visibly full of inventory.

People that live in that area (I've talked with dozens of them) are just amazed that the houses aren't selling. I think the psychology of that area is breaking down.

People in other parts of Bend are often the ones who don't think Bend has a problem.

I recently learned of a house that is about to go on sale that will make it four houses in a row ON THE SAME SIDE OF THE STREET! These are all resales, not the long streaks of new houses fresh from the builder that you can find all over town. I was planning on saving that tidbit for the Bend Economy Board when it actually happened, but this blog entry caught my eye.

I'd love to see days on market in High Lakes vs. the rest of the city. Anyone have that?

An alternative that I may try is median MLS number for each elementary school.

--TimmyToes

Anonymous said...

the blog is improving... less repetitive finger pointing, more objective analysis... these are good signs

Anonymous said...

I'm not a Robert Kiyosaki fan, but his piece (particularly the Empty Nesters) does point out why Bend ain't CLOSE to bottoming out yet.

See for yourself:



http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/richricher/29458