Foreclosed properties used to be like double bogeys for professional golfers – they didn’t happen very often and, when they did, it wasn’t enough to seriously impact their round or the overall health of their game. That changed with the bursting of the real estate bubble and the collapse of the financial markets, when bank owned and short sale properties became as common as a double bogey for a weekend hacker.
From January 2009 to January 2012, distressed property sales have represented roughly 55% of all single family residential sales in Bend, OR. That’s an astonishing number. With each one of those homes representing a displaced family or a landlord with one less property to rent.
However, through time and the basic law of supply and demand, we are seeing improvement. As evidence of the continued market turn around we’ve highlighted throughout this year, distressed property numbers are shrinking. Currently, bank-owned and short-sale properties only represent 39% of total sales of single family homes in Bend through September of this year. More telling than that, however, is distressed properties now account for only 7% of all currently listed single family residential properties in our local MLS (one caveat to that low number, is most banks have switched to judicial foreclosures in Oregon which take much longer to process and is likely creating a lag time in these properties hitting the market).
While we expect distressed properties to continue to play a role in our community over the next year to two, their presence and power to influence the overall tide of the real estate recovery are diminishing. Here’s to fewer double bogeys.
Contact us today to learn more.