The 2024 Portland Region Single-Family Housing Market in Review

2024 has come and gone in a flash! The housing market has been digesting high interest rates for a couple of years now. While interest rates have been a net drag on the market, 2024 did have some bright spots—especially compared to 2023. Let’s take a look at how the Portland Region housing market performed as a whole and by individual county. We’ll be examining only single-family detached homes in this post. We’ll take a look at condominiums and other types of housing stock in future posts.

Let’s define the Portland Region as the following six counties: Columbia, Clackamas, Hood River, Multnomah, Washington, and Yamhill—essentially all counties contiguous with Portland’s home county of Multnomah, plus Yamhill.

DATA HOUSEKEEPING

The information in this post will be based on properties that sold on the open market, defined as listed in RMLS, the primary multiple listing service for the Portland Region. The data was parsed with tools created by the blog author to weed out/correct, among other things, listing errors and misclassifications (e.g. land or condominium sales in the single-family category). RMLS has a listing category, SNL, Sold Not Listed (not Saturday Night Live), that allows agents to put properties that were sold off market into the database. Those properties have been excluded from the following analyses.

Portland Region 2024 Overview

2024 beat 2023 in most important metrics, but that came at the expense of longer marketing times for homes. The following table compares 2024 with 2023:

Total sales volume topped $11 billion in 2024, representing a nearly 6% increase over the previous year. Some of that increase was due to more homes selling in 2024 compared to the previous year, but average prices (as well as average price per square foot) had modest bumps as well. The average home size and lot size were about the same for 2023 and 2024 so we know the increase in average prices wasn’t due to larger homes selling.

Despite the increase in home prices, the typical seller was a bit optimistic with their list price and had to cut about 2% before closing the deal.

While bank owned and short sales increased in 2024 as compared to the previous year, they represented less than 1% of the entire market.

Let’s dive into the rest of the data with some visuals.

SALES VOLUME

The following is a treemap of sales volume in the Portland Region for the year 2024:

Unsurprisingly, Multnomah County had the most sales (~37% of the entire market), with 84% of all Multnomah sales being in the City of Portland. Clackamas, Multnomah, and Washington counties comprised 90% of the sales volume.

Sales peaked in May of 2024 and then began to gradually decline, with September being the odd duck; likely due to kids heading back to school and parents being distracted.

As the following graph shows, 2023 had a stronger start than 2024 and 2024 had a better finish:

SALES PRICE

Prices plateaued April-September and then declined in the fall/winter months.

2024 was ahead of 2023 every single month except December:

NEW CONSTRUCTION

New construction was steady in 2024 and averaged between 11-16% of monthly sales:

Washington County had the biggest share of new homes and also the biggest year-over-year increase:

CUMULATIVE DAYS ON MARKET

The average cumulative days on market edged towards two months for the entire year of 2024. Marketing time varied seasonally, with the slowest month being February:

Marketing time was up sharply (28%) for nearly the entirety of 2024 compared to 2023:

HOUSING SUPPLY

Housing supply tracks how long would it take the market to exhaust all available inventory at the current rate of absorption. For most of 2024 the months of housing supply was less than 3, with the year averaging 2.7 months.

From February to September the year 2024 had more months of supply compared to 2023; however, 2024 ended strong with a sharp decline in supply compared to the previous year. This is an encouraging trend for home sellers as it may indicate higher prices in 2025. For frustrated first-time buyers, this may indicate getting into the housing market in 2025 will be even more difficult. The following line graph compares the housing supply of 2023 against 2024:

MISC STATS

Before concluding our overview of the Portland Region as a whole, let’s look at some miscellaneous stats:

The most expensive home that sold on the open market in the Portland Region was a lakefront property on Oswego Lake. The home sold for $10,500,000, has five bedrooms, six bathrooms, and is 6,147 sq. ft. Photos of the house are currently available online and may be viewed here.

The least expensive home was a literal fire sale. The home sold for $60,000 in Willamina, which is in Yamhill County, and the structure was likely a teardown due to a fire. The lot size was 5,480 sq. ft.

The most expensive ZIP code for 2024 was 97034. This area takes in most of the waterfront area of Oswego Lake:

The ZIP code with the highest volume of sales was 97229:

This ZIP code is large, covering 20.6 square miles and has parts of Multnomah and Washington counties. 729 single-family homes sold in this area in 2024.

Let’s wrap up this post with a quick look at the six individual counties comprising the Portland Region. We will examine them in the order of largest number of sales to the smallest.

Multnomah County 2024 Stats

Multnomah County contains most of the City of Portland. Very tiny portions of the City of Portland are located in Clackamas and Washington counties. The following table summarizes important metrics for Multnomah County:

Multnomah County saw little change in the sales volume dollar amount. Total sales dropped 2.6% but average prices increased by 2.7%. Average marketing time modestly increased by less than 3 days. New construction comprised 5% of the total market and increased 15.2% year over year. Distressed sales are less than 1% of the total market.

Washington County 2024 Stats

Washington County contains many properties with a Portland address that are outside official city limits and are under county control. The biggest city in Washington County, Beaverton, saw 1,353 sales in 2024. The following table summarizes important metrics for Washington County:

The total sales volume dollar amount grew at a healthy 9.2%, in part due to the substantial number of new construction homes entering the market. New construction rose nearly 32% compared to the previous year and comprised 21% of the total 2024 Washington County single-family market. Most of the new construction homes are located in Beaverton, Hillsboro, county-controlled areas of Portland, and Tigard.

Clackamas County 2024 Stats

Clackamas County, while comprised of some urban cities, has many rural portions and houses on acreage lots. Commercial and hobby farming is common throughout the county. The following table summarizes important metrics for Clackamas County:

The sales volume dollar amount is up 8.8%, but that nearly tracts with the overall increase in the number of sales. The average annual price only moved about 1.3%. New construction was about 13% of the 2024 market.

14% of the overall market were properties that had at least one acre of land. The largest acreage sale (that had a single-family home on it) was 222 acres and was comprised of two tax lots. The property had a tree farm.

Yamhill County 2024 Stats

Yamhill County is known for its wineries and other agricultural products. The following table summarizes important metrics for Yamhill County:

The total sales volume dollar amount, the average sales price, and the number of sales were all flat year over year. New construction dropped by nearly 23% and marketing time increased by 25%.

Columbia County 2024 Stats

While this county is 688 square miles it only has a population of approximately 54,000 people. The county is known for timer and wood products. The following table summarizes important metrics for Columbia County:

The total sales volume dollar amount was up nearly 1% against an almost 2% drop in the number of home sold. Very few new construction homes came online in 2024. Marketing time increased by 13.4%.

Hood River County 2024 Stats

Hood River is the second smallest county in Oregon by area at 533 square miles. The population is estimated to be about 24,000 people. This county is known for its fruit products and outdoor recreational activities.

The sales volume dollar amount was up nearly 11%, which tracks the increase in the total number of homes sold. The average price was flat year over year, while the composition of sales saw a decrease in home size and a significant decrease in average lot size. With so few sales, swings in average property metrics from year to year are more common.

That wraps up our look at the Portland Region 2024 single-family market!

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Question: Do you think 2025 will be a strong year for regional prices?

CODA

Are you an agent and wonder why appraisers always do “x”? Are you a homeowner that got a report and have a question or two about appraisal terminology or methodology? If so, please feel free to contact me. I enjoy interacting with various market participants and am always happy to help out where I can! And if you are in need of any appraisal services, feel free to reach out to us!