Jgnet Real Estate Blog

The Medford real estate market, a subset of the larger Jackson County and Southern Oregon real estate markets, has recently been facing mixed signals – with inventory declining while the average sale price declines and the jobless rate rises. According to an April 6, 2010 article in the Mail Tribune, “In what could be a good sign for the local real estate market, the number of houses for sale in Jackson County on April 1 declined 8.3 percent from a year ago.  ‘There was a fear that foreclosures and distressed properties – which remain a large part of the market – were coming on at a pace buyers couldn’t keep up with,’ said Colin Mullane, an agent with Full Circle Real Estate in Ashland. ‘It’s nice to see that happening so that conventional sellers are making up about 50 percent of the houses for sale.’” The piece, composed by Greg Stiles, also stated that “The pace of sales picked up for the 14^th-straight month in Jackson County with transactions during the first quarter of the year surpassing those in early 2009 by 12.4 percent, according to statistics compiled by the Southern Oregon Multiple Listing Service.”

The average sales price of Medford homes for sale, however, drastically decreased in recent months, according to an April 16, 2010 article in Oregon Business. This piece found that “More than 90 homes in Medford are on the market for less than $90,000 – a price that would have been unheard of several years ago. And while many of the cheaper homes need remodeling work, an $8,000 tax break and other incentives are making them even more affordable for bargain seekers and investors.” The article, which was originally published in the Mail Tribune, also noted that “Home prices in Medford have dropped to prices not seen in nearly two decades, deflated by a sluggish economy and a high rate of foreclosures.”

An April 21, 2010 article in the Mail Tribune detailed one of the economic difficulties causing problems for Medford real estate, saying that “Jackson County job growth has stagnated in the past year, unable to keep pace even with a declining work force. As a result, jobless figures are mired in the same double-digit strata as a year ago, even when so-called discouraged workers see their unemployment benefits end and drop out of the work force.”