If you’ve spent any time on Zillow recently, you might have noticed a lot of listings dropping price. You’re not imagining it– in August, 30.5% of Portland listings had a price cut, vs. 20.4% nationally. This might indicate that sale prices are dropping, but (spoiler): they’re not. The same study reports that the median list price of a home in Portland this August was a scant .7% lower than August 2025 (which is better than the national drop of 1.3%). My own research shows that the median sale (not list) price is basically flat with last year. So if more sellers are lowering their prices but values are remaining more or less flat, what gives?
There are a handful of reasons for this seeming paradox. Among them:
Listing prices and sale prices can be two very different things. Take two houses that are worth $600k. Not priced at $600k, but worth $600k. Seller A lists at $600k and finds a buyer in a reasonable time frame. Seller B lists at $650k because he “knows what he’s got.” Two price cuts and some months later, the house sells for…$600k.
This leads to the obvious question: are sellers pricing too high, leading to more price drops? Here’s one data point. This past July, the median list price for a home on Portland’s west side was $620k. That’s $20k (or 3%) higher than the number for July 2025, even though the market has been flat. Those July listings become August price drops.
Sellers often price based on what their neighbors sold for, or what they need to make from the sale rather than what the market will bear, or because they think it’s still 2021 and money is free. Even the sellers and Realtors who are dutifully scrutinizing the data and are as versed on the market trends as they can be are going to err here and there. It’s not a perfect science by any means.
We are also in a period in which both inventory levels and interest rates are running higher, which can cause a negative (and sometimes panicked) outlook from sellers, and impact home values negatively. Again, though, if these factors are part of our market why are values flat?
Higher inventory gives buyers more choices, but the increase isn’t nearly dramatic enough to suggest a glut of homes. Per the realtor.com report active listings in the Portland metro are up 2.8% year-over-year, while new listings coming on market are actually down 1.7%. In other words, more homes are available because they’re taking slightly longer to sell– not because sellers are suddenly flooding the market.
Putting it another way: on Portland’s west side, 9136 new homes have come on market this year through August. Seems like a lot, but in 2019 that number was 12,668. Even if inventory is growing, it’s far from maxed out.
The bottom line is the same as it has always been. When getting ready to sell a home, a full recognition– and reckoning, if necessary– of market conditions is crucial. Which way is the wind blowing, and how do you adapt. Sellers who are educated on inventory levels, market time, and sale history will have an advantage over those who act on hunches or emotion or haven’t updated their market knowledge since it was a very different market. It is tougher to find buyers these days, but that doesn’t mean they’re not out there. It simply means that the sellers who are most prepared will get them first, and the ones who are unrealistic will be trying to catch a falling knife.
