Ashland sales down 45%, but median price went up 12%
By Tony Boom for the Rogue Valley Times
Sales of single-family residences in Jackson County cities were off nearly 50% in the first quarter to 2023 compared to the same time last year. The metro areas saw 330 sales during January through March this year versus 657 in 2022, according to Rogue Valley Association of Realtors statistics.
Higher interest rates have slowed the market, said Colin Mullane, a spokesman for the association and principal broker with Full Circle Real Estate of Ashland. Over the past months, rates have been close to 7% for fixed 30-year mortgages.
“They are still up there. They still remain stubbornly high. One-hundred percent (of the slowdown) is directly related to the rates,” said Mullane. In 2022, rates averaged 4.67% and were near 3% in 2021.
“We have been following national trends pretty closely. We can tell that buyers want to come back,” said Mullane. Buyers who dropped out of the market due to higher rates still check listings and stay in touch, he said.
“We are still plugging along really nicely here. At a time when things are uncertain, we are still going into purchase offers,” said Cheryl Faria, a broker with Windermere/Van Vleet Associates of Medford and former association president.
Besides declining sales, median sales prices showed a drop of 2% from $399,000 last year to $390,000 during the first quarter this year for urban homes. Days on the market for a listing jumped from an average of 36 last year to 61 for the first quarter this year. Talent was an exception, with property on the market an average of 29 days.
“We have seen success with people that are purchasing with (Federal Housing Administration) loans as low as $230,000,” said Faria. “It just depends on how it is put together and how people can work their situation for buying property.”
In some situations, buyers can assume FHA or Veterans Administration loans at lower interest rates, said Mullane. That’s not the case with most conventional mortgages.
Some buyers are using 2-1-30 mortgages to get into homes. In those, the buyer takes a mortgage at a higher rate for two years with the hope of seeing lower rates later when they take on a 30-year loan.
Both Mullane and Faria are seeing a few instances where sellers are helping to bring down the initial interest rate by purchasing points to get a buyer into a home. The arrangement is not unlike an adjustable-rate mortgages, said Faria.
“It’s case-by-case. Some sellers would not do that at all,” said Mullane. “If it’s been on the market long, they may do it as a way to help the buyers.”
The 2-1-30 arrangements come with much lower costs to assume the lower rate than conventional refinances, where costs might run from $5,000 to $7,000 on a $400,000 home, said Mullane.
While median prices dropped in most residential areas, they increased in the southern end of the Rogue Valley during the quarter. Ashland saw a 12% increase to $590,000 on 61 sales compared to $526,450 on 110 sales a year ago.
In Talent, the median price went up to $476,000, a 22% increase, on 10 sales compared to $390,000 on 15 sales for the first quarter last year.
“I always do feel that Ashland is sustainable, and they do continue to grow since it such a desirable area,” said Faria. “Talent and Phoenix are both in rebuilding. They are coming out of a place where it was just lots. To see that Talent is up is not surprising at all. When you rebuild those homes, they are worth more than when they burned down” in the 2020 Almeda Fire.
With a 50% drop in sales, a 50% increase in inventory might have been expected, said Mullane. That hasn’t occurred because the housing supply is still tight, he said. The inventory of for-sale properties on March 31 was at 526 units compared to 447 on March 31 last year, an 18% increase. A lack of supply may be keeping price drops moderate.
“We are not seeing the increase in supply that would be reflected in the pricing. That drives some stability in the marketplace,” said Mullane. Buyers shouldn’t expect homes priced at $300,000 to go down to $250,000, although they might drop by up to $20,000, he said.
The median price for a rural home in Jackson County was $592,500, down 4.6% from last year’s $621,000 for the first quarter. A total of 80 rural homes sold during the period, with an average of 96 days on market, compared to 144 rural homes sold during same time period in 2022 and an average of 59 days on the market.
Reach Ashland freelance writer Tony Boom at [email protected]. This story first appeared in the Rogue Valley Times.
