November 2026 Market Action Report: Portland Metro & Polk-Marion Counties
The market has clear and predictable cycles and every year at this time, the real estate market begins to go dormant. For our local markets, the rainy, darker days that lead into the busy holiday season are a part of that dormancy. This year, sustained high interest rates, the attention directed toward midterm elections, and continued affordability challenges contributed to a more exaggerated dormancy.
Volume is down, inventory is up, and sellers are making big concessions to move their homes in the vast majority of cases. This leads to a virtual flat-line in terms of annual appreciation, but it feels more like depreciation as sellers adjust their expectations for what they can achieve in overall terms (price, contributions, and repairs).
If you’re making decisions right now, whether to list, to buy, or to wait, that context matters. Here’s the full picture.
October by the Numbers
Portland Metro closed 1,622 sales in October, a drop of 21.5% from October 2025’s 2,066 and 7.4% below September’s pace. That’s a meaningful pullback, not a blip. Pending sales followed the same pattern, falling 20.2% year-over-year to 1,587. When both closed and pending are running this far behind last year, the market is telling you something clear: buyers are waiting. The rates have priced some out of the market entirely, but the ones who are still engaged in the market for a purchase are moving more slowly; time is on their side in this season.
New listings (2,077) also fell, down 12.2% from a year ago and 16.5% from September, which makes sense. Sellers read the room too, and fewer people are testing a quieting market with a new listing in October.
The average sale price of $609,900 is essentially flat year-over-year (+0.6%), and the median of $545,000 is up 0.9% from October 2025. Through ten months, the YTD average price of $617,300 is running 0.4% ahead of where we were at this point in 2025.
Inventory increased modestly monoth over month to 4.3 months, and is up from 3.1 months a year ago. This is significant: if you look at the chart on page 2 of the attached repor, in both preceding years (2025 and 2024), the inventory dips from September to October, and then ticks up in November. So this year bucks that dip trend, and we believe we will still see the typical tick up in the trend in next month's report, possibly looking at closer to 5 months of inventory.
The $400–600K range remains where the market lives. Combined, those two price bands accounted for 616 of October’s 1,622 closed sales, 38% of the total. The $600–700K band held steady at 242 sales. Activity above $900K stays thin but present. If your home falls in the mid-range, there is a buyer pool. It’s just a smaller one than it was six months ago.
Polk & Marion: October at a Glance
South of the metro, Polk and Marion Counties are showing a more pronounced shift. Closed sales came in at 174, a 24% drop from October 2025’s 229 and 11.2% below September. Pending sales fell to 183, down 16.8% year-over-year.
Prices here are under more pressure than in the metro. The median sale price of $417,500 is down 5.1% from October 2025’s $440,000, a drop that deserves attention if you’re thinking about pricing a listing in this area. The average is off 1.6% year-over-year. Homes are sitting longer too: total market time hit 71 days, up 17 days from the same month a year ago. That’s a significant change in how long sellers should expect to wait.
Note: RMLS is a supplementary MLS for Polk & Marion Counties; data may not reflect the entire market.
What the Data Is Telling Us
Inventory is the clearest signal of where the balance of power sits. As a rough guide: under about four months of supply tends to favor sellers, four to six months is balanced territory, and above six months puts buyers in the driver’s seat.
Portland Metro at 4.3 months is balanced, but it’s not tilting toward sellers right now. We’re at the buyer-friendly end of the balanced range, and the downward pressure on transaction volume means sellers can’t assume the market is working in their favor the way it was in 2024 and early 2025. Correctly priced homes still sell. Overly optimistic pricing gets punished with longer days on market.
Polk and Marion at 5.1 months have crossed into buyer’s market territory. Buyers shopping in Salem and the surrounding area have more choices, more time, and more negotiating room than they’ve had in years. Sellers in this market need to price to today’s reality, not last year’s comparables.
If You’re Thinking About Selling:
October is not prime listing season, that’s not a secret and it’s not cause for alarm. But the market conditions right now do have some specific implications:
Pricing discipline matters more than it did a year ago. With inventory up and buyer activity down, a home that comes in overpriced won’t get the showing traffic or the offers that might have covered the gap in a hotter market. The homes closing in 67 days or less are priced right. The ones sitting longer typically aren’t.
If you need to sell this fall/winter, it can be done, but it requires realistic expectations on price and presentation. If you can wait until spring, the seasonal upturn typically brings more buyer activity and more competition among buyers. We’re happy to walk through the numbers for your specific property and help you figure out which path makes more sense.
For Buyers This Fall:
If you’ve been watching from the sidelines, the conditions right now are worth paying attention to. More inventory means you have actual choices. Less competition from other buyers means less pressure to waive contingencies or make decisions in 48 hours. And sellers, particularly in Polk and Marion Counties, are more willing to negotiate than they were a year ago.
The complicating factor is rates. The 30-year fixed mortgage rate is sitting around 7.33%, which hasn’t changed the math in buyers’ favor. At that rate, monthly payment calculations look significantly different than they did when rates were in the fives. But if you’re planning to hold a home for seven or more years, the question isn’t just what the rate is today, it’s whether the home makes sense at today’s price, with the understanding that refinancing is an option if rates move.
The fall buying window tends to be underrated. Less competition, more motivated sellers, and often cleaner transactions. It’s not for everyone, but it’s worth running the numbers.
The Bigger Picture
Portland’s October softness isn’t unique to our market. Nationally, Realtor.com’s October 2026 housing report shows active inventory up 7.4% year-over-year, the inventory expansion we’re seeing here is happening across the country. The national median list price fell 2.2% year-over-year in October, marking the twelfth consecutive month of year-over-year declines at the national level. Pending sales nationally dropped 10.5% year-over-year, and 20.5% of active listings nationally had a price reduction. Our local closed sales are off more than the national pending average (-21.5% vs -10.5%), suggesting our market is softening faster on volume than the national composite, though our prices are holding better than the national list price trend.
This is a balancing market; it's not a crashing one. The fundamentals, Portland’s employment base, population patterns, and limited land supply haven’t changed. What’s changed is the pace, due to a variety of local, national, and international factors. But in any market - the strong sellers' markets, the balanced markets, and the strong buyers' markets, people are still buying and selling real estate. But it is key to have a clear-eyed picture of what the market is saying and a strategy to go with it; buyers and sellers who understand that will make better decisions than those expecting 2021-2025 conditions.
Let’s Talk Through It
Whether you’re trying to decide if now is the right time to list, wondering if the fall buying window is worth exploring, or just trying to make sense of data that feels contradictory, that’s exactly what we’re here for. No pressure, no pitch. Just a straight conversation about what the market looks like for your specific situation.
Reach out to The McCreith Team when you’re ready.
Amy McCormick, Principal Broker
503-310-7803 | amy@thebellacasagroup.com
Catherine Summers, Principal Broker
971-219-9858 | catherine@thebellacasagroup.com
Joni McCreith, Principal Broker
503-310-5613 | joni@thebellacasagroup.com
Molly Barajas, Principal Broker
503-310-4267 | molly@thebellacasagroup.com
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