April Monthly Market Check In – Not Everyone Loves Roller Coasters

April 10, 2025

We thought there was fear in the air last month, but apparently records are made to be broken. The Fear Index currently sits at 8 at the time of this writing.  How low can it go?  A little history for you, if you will… The story of the index begins in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent European debt crisis.  Lex Haris, former executive editor of CNNMoney, says…

“So, March 2009, the market bottoms, and there’s some sense of recovery, but we were all trying to figure out how to measure where we were, beyond just the daily ups and downs” said Haris, who is now the managing editor at Skift, a news site for the travel industry. “And I was just very drawn to this concept of these two emotions driving the market.”

Haris and his team, including markets reporter Paul R. La Monica, called investors to figure out what data should go into the index. There was already a popular “fear gauge” on Wall Street known as the VIX, or CBOE Volatility Index, which launched in 1990.

“Lex and I had the idea to try and come up with a barometer for market sentiment that went beyond the VIX,” La Monica, now a senior markets analysis writer at Barron’s, said in an email. “Volatility is part of index but not the only thing.”

They ended up with seven key indicators, including the VIX, market momentum, options contracts and demand for safe haven assets like Treasury bonds. (The data-curious can read through each of those inputs online.)

As we survey the Real Estate Market, it appears that activity closely corresponds to the most recent data being published.  As volatile as the news cycles have been, we also see buyers and sellers thrown from one spectrum to the other depending on the information being provided.  The last 10 days have shown to headline great fear, anxiety and anger in our republic and throughout the world; however some people are going to take advantage of this current economic climate.  Warren Buffett is quoted as saying, “Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful.” We don’t believe he is encouraging greed, but what he is saying is that an investor should make moves contrary to what the masses are doing. Usually this strategy pans out. It is reported that Mr. Buffett had sold Billions of dollars worth of stocks last Fall in preparation for a downturn. It turns out he was right.

In some positive economic news, the jobs report that came out last Friday showed many more jobs created than expected.  Even in the midst of the government slashing many government jobs, 228,000 jobs were created in March.  We often see revisions to the numbers, and in some cases, vast changes; so we will wait to see if these numbers hold up.  The CPI Report came out Thursday and shows that inflation grew slower than expected at 2.4% and the core was 2.8%. This of course is prior to the tariff wars that have been highlighting the news cycles over the past 2 weeks. Next month will be interesting to see where those numbers fall.

In the Mid Valley, we are seeing a similar story unfold as many markets throughout the country.  Below are our market trends to review. Although the warmer weather always increases activity, sales prices are relatively flat, months of inventory is only creeping up and interest rates are keeping most people on the sidelines at the moment.  We have seen glimpses of good news as they have dipped into the mid 6% range, but then the next week they have bumped back up into the higher 6’s.  As of this writing Mortgage News Daily is showing the average 30 year fixed mortgage at 7%!  The treasury bond yields increased dramatically over the last couple of days, which signifies a low confidence meter for investors in the US Government able to pay those bond yields.

Our Market continues to be resilient as inventory creeps up a little and prices are staying relatively flat…

Current Active Listings (All Types)	2600	Up 3% from last month & up 16% from this time last year
Current Pending Listings	1025	Up 5% from last month & down 5% from this time last year
Sold Listings Last Month	664	Up 42% from last month & up 7% from this time last year
New Listings Last Month	1092	Up 24% from last month & down 3% from this time last year
Months of Inventory	3.88	Up 2% from last month & up 12% from this time last year
% List to Sold Ratio	99.20%	Up .8% from last month & up 1% from this time last year
Absorption Rate *Based on current active listings vs sold listings for the past month	25%*	Up 39% from last month & down 7% from this time last year
Average Sales Price in All Categories	$459,000	Up 2% from last month & up .7% from this time last year
Median Residential Sales Price Average Residential Sales Price **Based on Willamette Valley Multiple Listing Statistics	$450,000** $495,738**	Even from last month & up 1.6% from this time last year. Up .6% from last month & up 1.8% from this time last year
Average Owner Occupied Interest Rates ***Based on Freddiemac.com Statistics of 30 year fixed mortgage	6.64%***	Up .15% from last month & down 2.6% from this time last year
Consumer Price Index (CPI) **** Core items-FED’s Goal is 2%	2.8%****	Down 9.7% from last month & down 20% from this time last year

+Some numbers are rounded

Have a wonderful March and we encourage you to keep up on your home maintenance.  These tasks can be tedious, however letting your properties go in the Mid Valley can be detrimental to the pocket book.  Once water gets inside the outer envelope, the costs get extravagant!

If you are not receiving our quarterly maintenance checklists, please let us know.  Ultimately we want to save you time, money, marital stress and counseling fees as a result of deteriorating properties.