July Monthly Market Check In ~ Are you having the Summer Blues?
July 17, 2026
We hope you are having a wonderful Summer and enjoying the great weather in the region.
We are already half way through July! I keep telling Nina, Christmas is right around the corner. We don’t celebrate Christmas in July, but the real Christmas will soon be upon us. But in the meantime, are you enjoying the gifts of high interest rates, gas and grocery prices? The recent CPI publication showed significant relief in June because the Iran conflict paused briefly, but prices may rise again as tensions mount. We realized these fluctuations had little impact on mortgage interest rates. Many people are still holding onto their 3% rates, but life circumstances are starting to move people out of those. Currently, we are seeing that people still move despite needing a significant reason to do so.
Our first home, purchased in 2000, had an 8% mortgage interest rate. We thought that was pretty good! However, we didn’t have the fancy cars or the high credit card debt that so many people have today. Our desire and goal was to be homeowners at the age of 28. Nowadays the average first time home buyer has reached 40 years old. It is much more difficult for younger people to purchase their first home in our area. Unless you want to move to Arkansas, finding a decent home with a manageable mortgage payment requires much more purchasing power. We see many people blaming our capitalistic society for this, but let me challenge that view: The cause of inflation is the expansion of the money supply. Expanding the money supply results in increasing prices, but that is only an affect of the policy. Unfortunately the policies enacted by leaders in our cities, states and country have only made this worse. The new Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh testified on Capitol Hill that the Fed employs 24,000 people. One could argue that fewer people could manage the duties of the Federal Reserve which fall into 5 main categories:
- Managing the money supply
- Supervising Banks
- Maintaining Financial Stability
- Providing Financial Services for Communities
- Operating Payment Systems
One could argue that government has become way too large by this example alone. With the growth of AI, we hope that our systems can evolve into this new era of technology to maintain them. Our country continues to see volatility in politics, geopolitical tensions, livability and social relations. Our markets will not settle down and achieve real stability unless we unite. As Abraham Lincoln once said, “A house divided cannot stand,” but even before that Jesus spoke about this in the book of Matthew. Will we come together?
As we enter the middle of Summer we continue to see the market slug along as inventory rises above 5 months once again. The last time we saw this was in 2015!
In our market, inventory flattens between 5 and 6 months as it increases, becoming a more solid “buyer’s market”. As rates continue to challenge these statistics, we are not seeing more buyers jump off the fence. The YTD statistics for closed transactions are still lagging behind the last 4 years.
Here is a snapshot of our Real Estate trends in the valley…
| Current Active Listings (All Types) | 3381 | Up 5% from last month & up 1% from this time last year |
| Current Pending Listings | 1101 | Down 2.5% from last month & up .6% from this time last year |
| Sold Listings Last Month | 762 | Even from last month & up 3.6% from this time last year |
| New Listings Last Month | 1205 | Down 3.7% from last month & down 3% from this time last year |
| Months of Inventory | 5.05 | Up 5% from last month & up 3.5% from this time last year |
| % List to Sold Ratio | 98.60% | Even from last month & down .3% from this time last year |
| Absorption Rate *Based on current active listings vs sold listings for the past month | 23%* | Down 4% from last month & up 5% from this time last year |
| Average Sales Price in All Categories | $492,000 | Down .4% from last month & up 6% from this time last year |
| Median Residential Sales Price Average Residential Sales Price **Based on Willamette Valley Multiple Listing Statistics | $460,000** $519,009** | Up .5% from last month & even from this time last year. Up .4% from last month & up 1.4% from this time last year |
| Average Owner Occupied Interest Rates ***Based on Freddiemac.com Statistics of 30 year fixed mortgage | 6.49%*** | Even from last month & down 2.8% from this time last year |
| Consumer Price Index Average (CPI) **** FED’s Goal is 2% | 3.5%**** | Down 16.6%% from last month & up 30% from this time last year |
+Some numbers are rounded
As inventory increases and sales continue their sluggish trend, we see that upper end homes are moving at a higher rate than lower end homes, therefore adjusting the average and median sales prices upward. The higher interest rates have less effect on more affluent buyers as we see their activity hedge against the slower market.
If you would like more detailed information, we are always happy to elaborate!
Enjoy the rest of July!