Oregon Public Broadcasting

A new home price index released Tuesday shows U.S. housing prices suffering record declines in April.  But for Seattle and Portland, home prices actually posted slight gains.

Even so, as Pete Springer reports, the Northwest housing market is weaker than a year ago.

Portland posted a .3 percent gain in housing prices from March to April of this year, according to the latest Standard and Poor/Case-Shiller home price index.

Seattle posted a .7 percent gain. 

Portland area real estate broker David Somerville says his clients often come from states like California, where housing prices are much higher than the Northwest.

David Somerville: “They come up here and they’re surprised that the house prices are so attractive here -- it’s like, ‘Wow, this is fantastic.  We can buy much more home for our money.’  You look at a 2000 square foot home down there and they’re buying something that is 3000 square feet up here, so it’s great.”

And though both Portland and Seattle housing values have declined more than four-and-half percent over the last year, that’s a much slower decline than the national rate.

Nationally, housing values have dropped more than fifteen-percent over a one-year period.