Not much clarity for now: Waiting for that "inflection point"

         As Q3 2025 has wrapped, is there anything in the statistical tea leaves of Central Oregon real estate to predict year end and the future in 2026.
        A short answer: not much clarity there but many murky issues swirling.
        For all the uncertainty emerging from the first three quarters of the Trump administration the regional housing market appears to be performing slightly better than many parts of the country. This continues a trend of the past few years.
        The question, then, for Bend and Central Oregon is whether it can continue to outperform national trends. That’s far less certain.
        As usual the interest rate bogeyman is still stalking. Despite a modest decline this year and the talk of a more accommodating Federal Reserve, rates are still at 6.30% as of October 9, according to the Federal National Mortgage Association (Freddie Mac) database. That’s nearly a point and half below the high of 7.76% reached on November 2, 2023.
        But it’s still a whopping rise from the low of 2.67% recorded on the last day of 2020, before rising to first cross 7.0% on October 27, 2022, followed by ups and downs, yet remaining above 6.0% since then.
        On its website, Freddie Mac notes on October 9 that: “Over the last few weeks, mortgage rates have settled in at their lowest level in about a year. There is growing evidence that homebuyers are digesting these lower rates and gradually are willing to move forward with buying a home…”

        Although any downward move in interest rates could be welcome, there are substantial other factors at play in the economy – and by association, the real estate market across the country.
        On the positive side, the securities markets are apparently ignoring the headwinds of interest rate uncertainty, contraction in hiring and lower GDP growth. There’s also the ever-present specter of how much, or how little, Trump’s tariff wars will impact longterm inflation of many goods, including building products that affect new housing costs.
        Lower interest rates could help the housing market. But the positive influence could be mitigated by rising construction costs, lower employment and wage stagnation.
        And there’s rising concern that the lengthy bull market run on Wall Street is bound to moderate, even implode, resulting in a rush to gold and even once-derided cryptocurrency as hedges. Part of the gold rush is attributed to the potential decline of the dollar as the bulwark of world currencies.
        Moreover, much of the equities runup has been accelerated by a buying frenzy wishfully tethered to the as yet unknown contribution of AI.  Advanced chip development and data centers have mushroomed on the back of debt and even government investment rather than financed with booked revenue.
         As Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorganChase, expressed recently, there are many imponderables facing markets:
     "All these things cause a lot of issues that we don’t know how to answer,” he said. “So I say the level of uncertainty should be higher in most people’s minds than what I would call normal.”
        What all this means for real estate – local, regional and national—is (drum roll) for now unpredictable.
    So back to the basics as noted in new statistics as recorded at the end of September as gleaned from the Beacon Report of Beacon Appraisal Group using data from the regional Multiple Listing Service.
        The median price of a single family home on less than an acre in Bend for the rolling 12 months was $741,000, a rise of 14,000 or 1.92%, more than for the comparable period that concluded at the end of September of 2024.

        During that period there were 1,693 sales closed and 560 homes listed at the end of the month. That translates to an inventory of four months of available homes, based on the average of sales for the previous 12 months. It’s a half-month more available for sale than in late 2024, but only slightly in the range of 4-6 months usually considered to be a market in balance between sellers and buyers.
        By comparison, for the previous 12-month period ending September 30, 2025, Bend single family inventory was 3.5 months with 1,537 sales for that span and 451 units listed.
        Of the sales, more than 25% closed at a price of more than $1 million, continuing a trend that has run for at least a year. Also, of the total sales at all price points, more than 30% were cash transactions rather than financed with conventional loans.
        Up the road only 15 miles north to Redmond, statistics show some differences in the single family market.
        The median price of a single family home there rose slightly less, only 8,500 or 1.65% from $515,000 to $524,000 for comparable 12-month periods ending September 30. But Redmond inventory was only two months, based on 666 sales the recent period and 121 homes listed.
        In the “luxury” market, there was only a single sale that closed above $1 million, a scant .01%. And Redmond recorded more than 10% fewer cash transactions, at 20.57% than the 31% in Bend.
        Elsewhere in the region, Sunriver, which includes the Crosswater and Sunriver golf resorts, recorded a median single family sale price of $950,000 with only 115 sales and 49 listed at the end of September.
        Sisters had 117 sales at a median of $743,000 with 54 listed; Lapine, 130 at $375,000 and 75 listed; Jefferson County (Madras and Crooked River Ranch, 168 at $350,000 and 75 listed; and Crook County (including Prineville), 264 at $426,000 and 120 listed.

2024 down; 2025 Ahead - Major changes or more of the same? Too many unkowns

             Now that 2024 is in the rear view mirror, along with the presidential election, are there any emerging clues to the 2025 real estate market direction?
            To hear newly-installed Trump tell it he’s going to take care of one critical variable – interest rates.
            “I’ll demand that interest rates drop immediately,” Trump said. “And likewise, they should be dropping all over the world. Interest rates should follow us all over.” Trump blustered in a virtual appearance before the the World Economic Forum, often jusst shortened to “Davos,” for the cognoscenti of the financial world.
            Well now, that taken care of, everything should be hunky dory in real estate. He’s president and  never lies, dissembles or breaks a promise. Let’s keep an eye on eggs, which Trump touted before the election would be less costly along with prices of other consumer goods. 
            As  Elon Musk, often called Trump’s “First Buddy,”shakes things up in the federal sphere, one of the more curious new presidential edicts, euphemistically known as executive orders, is to force federal remote workers back to the office. This could mesh with another strategy to sell much of federal office space. Fewer employees left after firings and resignations would mean less needed office space, and what is left would be made unattractive to returnees.
            Maybe interest rates will fall along with the price of eggs as the bird flu abates. Maybe the idea of a “sovereign wealth fund” Trump has floated will be a reality, funded by all that surplus oil revenue from ramped up “drill baby drill.”  But how does that work to reduce the the country’s current budget deficit? One possibility mentioned is to issue more debt to “fund the fund” so to speak.
            Hmmm. Reduce the deficit by borrowing to invest and build sovereign wealth? What could go wrong?
           Let's pivot from Trumpisms, albeit realizing that  the chaos created thus far by the new administration will nevertheless hang over the economy in some way at least in these early days and weeks, and likely much longer.  

The Year Past 

            Looking back at 2024 in Bend real estate maybe the most salient observation could be the lack of any well-defined trend. Inventory of single family homes for sale remained tight, prices remained high relative to local median incomes and total sales stayed about the same as the previous 12 months.

            All this, according to the Market Action Index of First American Title Co., translated to “stasis” and a “slight sellers market,” thanks to continued low numbers of homes for sale as reported in early January.
            That assessment could easily be translated to “nothing new to see here,” in that virtually the same language had been used in nearly all of the title company’s weekly reports for 2024.
            The final Q4 2024 Beacon Report by Beacon Appraisal Group shows the the rolling 12- month median price of Bend single family homes on less than an acre was $710,000, a 3.0% drop from the $732,500 for the previous 12 months of 2023.
            The median monthly price hit a hgh of $800,000 in October and the low point in February, at $682,000.
            There were at total of 1,582 sales during the 12 months, a slight uptick of 17 closings compared to 2023, with an inventory of 2.5 months as calculated using the 319 active listings at the end of December and dividing inventory by the average monthly sales in 2024.
            In Redmond, Central Oregon’s second largest market segment, median prices for the 12 months rose by $23,000 to $509,000 from $486,000 at the end of 2023, a slight bump of 4.73%.
            Redmond sales also rose by 16%, or by 114 additional sales in 2024 from the 598 in 2023. Inventory there was also tighter than in Bend, at only a 2.0 months supply.

Affordability Remains an Issue

            Moving into the new year, the quest continues to find  strategies that will that will enable families with the Bend median household income of slightly under $89,000 to obtain affordable housing. At the median income level, with an optimistic 6% interest rate, a healthy 30% down payment, and modest $550 monthly debts a family could afford a home priced at $447,000.

            According to the Beacon Report, only 78 homes out of the total 1,582 homes sold in Bend during 2024 were priced from $400,000 to $500,000 – and only five listed in that range at the end of December.
            There is a disconnect between the availability of “affordable” homes for those with median incomes, and the high end of Bend sales  Last year 393 homes, or 24.8%, sold for more than $1 million, and 73 above $1.8 million.
            As has been reported throughout the country, among factors that likely drive higher sales prices are owners with low interest rates, or even no mortgage, who have been in their homes for a considerable time, and others who bought during the early 2000 decade recession. These may be able to roll generous cash margins into other properties – without the onus of having large mortgages at currently elevated interest rates.
            Also part of the affordable equation for the local workforce is the availability of rental inventory.

The Rental Market

In the past few yeas Bend has experienced a substantial increase in multi-family investment and new construction- to the extent that for Q3 2024 one of the region’s oldest, leading commercial brokerages concluded: “Looking ahead the wave of new apartment development will hit the brakes.”

Also in the third quarter of 2024, Compass Commercial’s Navigator market report noted that the region’s slowing population growth had reduced demand, resulting in “stagnated” rental rate growh with increased length of vacancies leading to more landlord concessions.

“Rent rates will likely remain flat, at best, for the next couple years. For property values to rise again, we will need to see both increasing rents and declining interest rates,” the Q3 report for 2024 noted.

That assessment was validated later in 2024 when a Los Angeles based owner delayed planned construction of a massive 1,600 unit mixed use project on former industrial land near the Old Mill District, citing interest rates as a reason.
            Another factor is the city’s pause and reconsideration of offering tax deductions to developers in that area, after two builders had received them and started construction of apartments.
            Now, seemingly a whiplash about face in barely three months, Compass Commercial’s new multi-family report for the final quarter of 2024 cites an assessment of the national real estate site CoStar which paints a much rosier picture.
             “Among apartment markets with inventories under 10,000 units, Bend landed among the top 10 performing markets, a cohort that spanned the Pacific Northwest, Midwest, and Sun Belt regions,” Compass quotes from CoStar.
            If the more recent analysis and predictions for 2025 come to pass, compared to the report only a few months agin, the Bend multi-family market would indeed be a turnaround star.

 

Tourism and Real Estate

        Finally, a look at the Central Oregon tourism sector, which contributes substantially to the local economy in terms of employment in lodging and other service businesses, by some estimates  as well as real estate in the form of vacation home puchases.
             In a presentation to city officials in early January the senior budget and financial analysit for the Community Economic Develoopment Department noted that development fee revenue since 2022 showed, “development is slowing down…the type of development is changing.”
            Reasons, he noted, could be due to, “everything that happened with Covid and the macroeconomic picture with interest rates? Or is that just….a result of Bend hitting a certain size.”
            And every city that hits that certain size then slows down or the development type changes,” according to Roger Serat.
            Amond the dramatic shifts Serat noted were fees for  short term rental permits, which in 2024 according to his research showed a decline from $301,119 in fiscal year 2022 to only $42,561 in 2024.
            One report said that all of Central Oregon, including resorts such as Sunriver,  Black Butte Ranch and Eagle Crest brought in $1.5 billion in related tourism revenue for 2023.
            However, statistics from Visit Bend, the city’s tourism promotion group, have shown lodging room occupancy dropping by 6.5% in July and August of 2024, likely due to wildfire smoke in the region but possibly also the tailing off of post-pandemic travel.
            What’s the bottom line?
            With the background of a chaotic first few weeks of the Trump administration best not to count on anything in real estate – especially as to lower interest rates suddenly creating a boom in sales.
            If tariffs on Canadian building products continue to be an on and off and on again roller coaster expect new construction and housing affordability to be problematic.
            Moreover, if the stock market – a favorite performance metric of Trump– can’t digest economic uncertainty maybe look for real estate sectors to tread water in the near term.

           

Bend housing sticker shock: Manic level multiple offers for some homes

             A longtime friend from our river guide days in Jackson Hole recently wrote that his wife was ready to leave the far northern California town that has been their home for decades.
            Seeking a new location, she turned to cruising Zillow for listings in Bend and Central Oregon, trusting that a new home could be on the horizon.
            “She was aghast at the real estate prices,” the friend wrote. “She was fantasizing about a small amount of acreage within shouting distance of Bend...," he added
            “She asked me to ask you (to)... deliver the bad news and revel in the fact you were smart enough to find Bend before the world found Bend.”
            Unfortunately, I could only reply to the friends--she a professional social services director and he an attorney--that many of us who have been in Central Oregon for some time are also perplexed at the “sticker shock” facing potential newcomers.
            “Expatriate Californians, Portlanders and Seattleites are driving prices to new levels. Many are able to work remotely, or they are taking advantage of good stock portfolio performances to retire. Or a combination of both,” I offered.
|            The friends are only one snapshot of a growing album of Bend wannabes. They soon  realize that an outdoor-friendly lifestyle, generally temperate weather, and other attractions that are magnets for newcomers have a companion effect—a pricey real estate market. Some soon realize that yet another “last best place,” as various locations around the country have also been called, is more out of reach.
            A casual look at housing reports from other locations confirms the trend. Bozeman, Livingston and Whitefish in Montana, and Prescott, AZ; Sandpoint, ID; Walla Walla, WA; and Austin, TX are just a few places where “discovery” has long passed the cachet of finding a hidden gem.

A Significant Jump in Million Dollar Sales

            One measure of Bend housing cost escalation, albeit a narrow one, is the past three years of in-city sales that closed above $1 million. In 2018 there were 100 sales above $1 million and none above $1.8 million. The figures come from the Beacon Report of Beacon Appraisal Group, based on the Central Oregon MLS database.
            In 2020 the number had leapfrogged to 231, with 35 sales crossing the $1.8 million mark, as framed in Beacon’s graph of sales by segmented price ranges. And, already in 2021 there were 15 closing in January, double the six during the same month of 2020.
            Another broader look at price ranges below the “million dollar club” also shows the upwardly migrating price points in Bend.
            In 2018 most single family homes in Bend sold in the range of $300,000 to $350,000, with the second highest category from  $350,000 to $400,000. In 2020 the largest price range was $350,000 to $400,000, and in second, $400,000 to $450,000.
            An illustration of the sizzling Bend housing market is captured in the history and recent sales in the  popular, mater planned Northwest Crossing neighborhood.
            The developer is Brooks Resources, a highly-respected company that evolved from the timber industry that once led the region’s economy. Brooks launched Northwest Crossing in the late 1990s with a mix of smaller city lots and craftsman-style homes and townhomes.
            An elementary school and pocket parks around a grid of legacy Ponderosa pines meshed with new landscaping make it one of the most attractive urban neighborhoods, with a feeling of suburbia.
            Initial sales of new homes were brisk, with prices generally in the higher $300,000s to upper $400,000s, with a few in the $500,000 and greater range. But, as throughout Bend and the rest of the country, the “Great Recession” fueled by easy lending standards followed by an economic crisis with mortgage defaults hit hard.
            Bend, center of a larger three county statistical area, went from the top of home price appreciation tracked by a federal housing monitor to nearly last on a list of 300.
            At one point, in the depth of the housing downturn, more than two dozen developer controlled lots in Northwest Crossing were put on the open market in the $50,000s. Prices edged higher as the recession faded with a recovery noticeable by 2013 and later. Builders returned to absorb lot inventory and begin new construction.

Multiple Offers Before Buyers Visit

            A recent pending sale in the neighborhood is a watermark for the current market trajectory beginning with a local builder seeing the opportunity as lots were available. He bought the lot for $84,000 in January of 2010, then built a 2,100 square foot, 3 bedroom, 3 bath home, selling it for $434,782 six months later.
            In late February 2021, after 11 years the owner listed the home for $969,000. A person familiar with the transaction noted the home was on the market for barely a week, before going into a sales contract. There were 20 showings, many of them local agents videoing the home for out of state buyers, seven offers over the listing price and three of more than $1 million, all but one of them cash with no financing contingency.
            The prospective buyers are both medical professionals, one a doctor the other a Phd in nursing, who lost two homes to fires in California within the past four years. They had not visited the home until after their offer was accepted by the seller.

            And, as a snapshot of the neighborhood, the current owners of homes on either side of this one also own residences in Seattle.
            As of the first week of March there were seven other pending sales in Northwest Crossing, at the lowest listed price of $725,000 for an attached townhome to $1.3 million for a 3 bedroom, 3 bath home of nearly 3,000 square feet.
            Although Northwest Crossing is hardly the most expensive neighborhood of Bend, pricing in other less pricey and formerly “more affordable” sections of the city have also experienced dramatic price increases—driven by a chronic lack of inventory for sale that has hovered under a two-month supply for the past few years. In January of this year was a scant 0.30 months based on the average of the previous 12 months sales.
            With a median household income of $65,662, according to US Census figures for 2015-2019. Many jobs have been slashed during the pandemic and days or hours reduced for others, moving the cost for entry level home buyers further out of reach.
            The squeeze of fewer homes and rising prices has resulted in the city and community groups pushing for more mixed use development within the current city limits. One target area is immediately east of the downtown core extending to the main north-south arterial of old US Highway 97/3^rd Street with its mostly commercial businesses including auto dealerships, motels and shopping centers.

A Trend to Density Over Traditional Larger Lots

            This movement is contradictory to what many residents – and some builders – maintain is what made Bend attractive in past decades. From a traditional residential core of older stately homes and smaller cottages, residential development had extended outward with larger homes on larger lots, some a half to one acre in neighborhoods such as Awbrey Butte on the city’s west side.
            Brooks Resources also developed Awbrey Butte before downsizing the lots year later at Northwest Crossing. And perhaps a sign of the future, the company is also eyeing construction of a mixed use retail and condo or apartment project on a former commercial site east of downtown.
            The trend to mixed use projects and considerable new apartment construction is partially the result of Bend’s urban growth plan as approved by the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development, which implements the state’s 1970s era growth management statute, SB 100. The law requires municipalities to project land needed for development 20 years into the future to identify land for an urban area reserve that could be brought within the urban growth boundary, or UGB.
            With the approval of its growth plan in 2016, after several unsuccessful plans were rejected by the state over a decade, Bend agreed to focus on “infill” development of existing land within city limits. Further development extending outward within the UGB footprint is for communities that include higher density, such as multi-family housing, along with single family residences, and land for business to create jobs.

            Altogether the state approval allows Bend to expand its urban growth boundary by approximately 2,400 acres. There could be more than 17,000 homes on half the acreage, with 800 acres for development related to employment facilities.
            But the future of Bend growth is vastly more complicated now as substantial population growth has already compressed the time needed for another look at potential expansion.
            In the nine years since 2010 the city has grown nearly 25% from about 85,000 in 2010 to 106,000 as estimated by the Bureau of Census. The Population Research Center of Portland State University estimates the 2020 population of Deschutes County at 197,000.
            One of the largest tracts of land in decades to be brought within the city would be what has been called the Stevens tract on Bend’s southeast boundary. The formerly state-owned land of 382 acres south of Reed Market Road and east of 27^th Street was bought in 2020 for $22 million by Lands Bend Corp., whose officials include former California Republican Rep. Gary Miller.
            The purchase has initiated discussion of how the property, now called Stevens Ranch, will be developed and the process to bring 370 of the acres into the city through annexation in compliance with the urban growth plan. Another 12 acres already lie within city limits.
            The number of residences including single family homes, affordable housing and multi-family residences, business sites and parks will be initially defined in a master plan submitted by the development group for public comment and city review.
            A bill proposed in the 2021 state legislature would facilitate the city's effort to include the Stevens tract within current boundaries. Some city councilors are pushing for a significant part of the development to include affordable housing.
            Miller and other investors have in recent years been involved in new Bend subdivisions, mostly in east and southeast areas of the city.

What's going on here? A pandemic boom - or bubble

            What’s going on here?

            The nation leads the world in a dismal percentage of coronavirus cases and deaths. The economy is in the tank, far away from the “V” shaped recovery and great success in controlling the pandemic that Donald Trump touts. GDP is negative, unemployment above 10%. Some airlines might as well be grounded. And national retailers teeter in bankruptcy, several essentially on the verge of collapse.

            Yet the stock market seems disconnected from reality. Forget earnings. Keep the foot on the buying pedal. From a 12-month low of 3,386.15 on Feb 19 as the virus infected Wall Street, the S&P 500 index plummeted 33.92% March 23, then rebounded to 3,360.47, or up 50.20%,  on Aug. 10.

            And real estate, if anything, seems to be feeding on the negative energy and fear of Covid 19 to reach new highs in many areas, including Bend and Central Oregon.

            A report by Beacon Appraisal for July, 2020 confirmed regional housing demand with news that the median price of a Bend single family home hit an alltime high of $529,000, explaining the statistics were run several times to confirm the number.

            Driving the trend is what local brokers say is a wave of buyers originating from urban areas. Many of these are weary of unrest arising from protests that have been co-opted by violent groups and dense living conditions making social distancing more difficult.

            One top broker in Sisters noted:

            “I am very busy, and yes, a lot of the business is coming from people wanting to get out of the big cities because of Covid and because of riots and crowds. They are coming from Los Angeles, San francisco, Seattle, Portland, etc., etc.”   

            Deschutes County’s (Bend the county seat) development department reported that the 351 new single family home permit applications in July were 7.7% over the same month of 2019, noting: “We continue to experience stable permitting and continue to hear of ongoing plans for construction throughout the county.”

             From the July statistics the easy conclusion could be that Covid 19 has stimulated, rather than dragged down the market. The question is how long the bump will last but with Bend inventory hovering at only a month plus/minus it’s doubtful it will collapse soon or suddenly.

            With interest rates in the 3.0 to 3.5% range, and even lower with some lenders, financing will continue to sustain a good percentage of sales. And in the Bend area, expatriates from urban areas often arrive with cash--no financing contingency needed--by dint of much higher prices and accumulated equity from their homes in other cities and states.

            One factor in the constricted inventory could be homeowners deciding to stay put and refinance with favorable rates several points under their current mortgages. Why sell now? Wait out the political, economic and Covid 19  turmoil given that the market appears stable enough to sustain momentum.

            Consider that in the Seattle-King County area of Washington the median price of a single family home also hit a historic high of $727,500, topping the previous record of $726,275 more than two years earlier May of 2018. In many cases inside the Seattle city limits, with a median price of $805,000, nearly 100-year-old cottages of less than 1,500 square feet are selling at nearly the median. Compare that to a newer Bend home of 2,500 to 3,000 square feet at the same or lower price.         

            Looking back and including the July price jump into a 12-month rolling median, Bend single family homes have sold for $460,000 from August 2019 through July 2020. That’s still a respectable rise over the same dozen periods of the previous year, August 2018 thorugh July 2019, when the median was $439,000.

            Another view is to put the first seven months of 2020 side by side with 2019. By that metric Bend median sales prices are up 2.22% over 2019, while the number of sales rose significantly to 1,295 – a 26.34% leap as July led the way at 318 sales.

Grab the reins and hang on-2019 is around the corner

          Yee haw cowpokes!! Only rodeo bull or bronc riders might appreciate the volatility and machinations of the current stock and real estate markets going into what promises to be an uncertain 2019.

          Rising interest rates. Bulls fighting Bears. Trade wars. Cohen and Pecker flip. Mattis resigns. More to come...Impeachment? Mueller’s poker hand revealed? House investigations?

          Will Trump”s erratic, diversionary and mostly inaccurate tweeting continue? Probably. Or will the House’s incoming political counterbalance coupled with beginning of the 2020 presidential campaign provide some sanity? Not likely.

          The milieu of domestic and international challenges is daunting, with much concern for the potential fallout on what has been a decade long economic recovery.

           As for stocks, the recent dramatic swings up and down are enough to bring shivers to any investor portolio. The Dow Jones average, S&P 500 and other tracking indexes are essentially back at the January starting line for the year.

          But a New York Times report noted that as of Dec. 10 the S&P 500 remained 16% above its level at Trump’s inauguration (remember that biggest crowd ever?).

December 21, 2018

          Yet,  the market was already on an upward climb through the Obama administration. In its first two years starting Jan. 1, 2009 the S&P climbed 51%, and more than 60% from a 800.14 trough brought on by the near economic collapse resulting in large part from failed mortgage backed securities driven by “irrational exuberance.” (and no small measure of greed).

          The current stock malaise dovetails with a softening of the housing market after years of the current upward arc since the “Great Recession.”

          One telling indicator is the Seattle-King County housing market, the Northwest's largest, which for much of recent years was leading the appreciation pack of major metro areas.

          New statistics from the Northwest Multiple Listing Service show the November median price of a single family home in King County was $644,000 compared with $726,000 in May, a drop of 11.3%. That’s edging toward the 14% drop that occurred in the housing collapse beginning at the end of the previous decade.

          At its peak of the past two years the Seattle area market was a frenzy of multiple offers for properties, often with all cash and no inspection or financing contingencies.

          The Seattle Times reports that, even with still-pricey closings, days on the market have extended, inventory is up and sales are slumping as buyers enjoy the luxury of caution to do more research and wait out developing trendlines.

          Narrowing the focus to Bend, Beacon Appraisal’s December report covering October through November 2018 notes a November median single family home price at $433,000, the same as October but up from $425,000 in September.

          The highest monthly median for the past 12 months was $449,000 in June, which topped June of 2017 by $40,000.

          Perhaps a more meaningful gauge of market direction is the 12- month rolling median which at the end of November was $424,000, 7.47% above the $395,000 for the same period of 2017.

          Total sales for the 12 months ending in November were 2,484 with currently active listings of 435, which translates to inventory of two months, the same as for the period through Ocober.