Clark County Housing

Is there a Single-Family housing shortage in Clark County?   New single Family Home prices are rising and homes are selling about as fast as they can be built.   This apparent demand is driving up lot prices and land costs.   We have been through this before.   Single Family home construction peaked in 2005 and the development and construction frenzy continued until 2007, when the bottom fell out and we discovered that the market was over-built and over-priced. Is that the case now?   Or are prices going up in response to classical supply and demand economics?   What is driving the rapid price increase?   In this post, we will attempt to determine if there is a significant under-supply of single-family homes. As I charted in the last post, the population is growing rapidly.   According to the State OFM and the US Census, the number of homes is also increasing.   Here you see that single-family home construction accelerated in 2013 and 20

Is there a housing shortage in Clark County?   Anybody looking for a place to live will tell you that there are not enough options.   Rental prices are increasing rapidly.    The local average monthly rents have gone up by 20-30% over the past few years. Home sale prices in the lower to medium price range have surpassed the 2007 Bubble prices and have reached new record highs. Why? According to the Us Census and Washington State Office of Financial Management, the population is increasing rapidly again.  For some reason, people are moving here in droves.  Population increased by 9000 people from April 2014 to April 2015. New homes are being constructed.  And the rate of construction ticked up in 2014. However, it does not appear that home construction is keeping up with the population increase. According to the Census, there are fewer homes per person in 2015 than during any census year since at least 1990.   So how many homes do we need

New home sales have spiked recently.  They have a long way to go to get to pre-bubble levels. 1151 new homes sold in 2015 - 154% higher than the 2011 trough. 2015 new home sales were 38% of the 3054 sold in 2005 Next post will look at new home supply verses demand.

RMLS average home sale prices in Clark County are near the 2007 peak.  Home Sales were extraordinarily high.  Only 2004 and 2005 saw more home sales. RMLS reports 8,391 homes were sold in Clark County in 2015.  2015 Sales recorded were 3rd highest on record 88% increase from 2008 bottom. 17% Lower than 2005 Peak

Full Recovery Portland home prices have recovered completely for homes in the low to middle segments of the market. Homes selling for <$266,000 (Low Tier) have appreciated 66% since they bottomed in 2012. Low Tier Home sale prices are now 6% higher than the peak of the 2007 bubble Mid Tier ($266,000-$377,000) sale prices are 5% above the bubble peak. High Tier (>$377,000) prices are within 2% of full recovery.