The Portland real estate market didn’t do what people predicted in 2025. 🔮
👉 A few thoughts as the year wraps up.
At the start of 2025, it felt like everyone was waiting for the housing market to do something dramatic, whether that was a crash, surge, freeze, pick your headline.
Predictions were all over the place, as they always are. Surprise, no one has a crystal ball, and the market can change rapidly. But rates remained steady for most of the year, hovering around 6%, which helped stabilize and shift leverage.
What we actually saw was a quieter shift: 👀
Buyers slowed down and became more selective, calculated, and were able to negotiate more credits and repairs than in the previous years.
Sellers lost the margin for error. Not only does pricing have to be on target, and even slightly lower than those sitting on the market, but your home needs to be dialed in, meaning maintenance items buttoned up, staged, landscaped, and have a fabulous online presence.
Photos, staging, and well-prepped homes still sold quickly, while others who wanted to “test the market” often faced many price adjustments and struggled to get showings and interested buyers.
Preparation mattered more than timing. This was so true: it felt as if timing didn’t really matter if the property was priced well and ready for market. Buyers were paying more attention to the details, upgrades, and items they would not have to fix after purchase.
For Sellers, prices didn’t fall off a cliff, but they didn’t see much, if any, appreciation as they may have in the past. Showing more of a balanced market.
The real change wasn’t price; it was leverage, and the Buyers had more of it in 2025 than over the past decade.
Going into 2026, the market feels less emotional than in the past, with Buyers making decisions based on math and Sellers having to adjust to the reality of making repairs, providing concessions, and other strategies to ensure their home sells.
