It’s no surprise, but early indicators show that apartment transactions in Portland Metro will be down in 2020. Sales from January through March are typical of recent years, but only 7 transactions for April (reported so far) likely represents the beginning of slower sales.
There is no clear road map for the year ahead as we are in unprecedented times. To get an idea of how the Portland apartment sales market reacted to previous shocks to the system, we looked back at sales before/after the events of September 11th and the start of The Great Recession. There are major differences with our situation today, but this provides some insights.
The tables below summarize the number of transactions and sales volume in the year before and after these major events. We excluded the three months immediately following each event as sales were limited and the sales that did occur were in contract prior.
