The 2026 Real Estate Market Explained: What Buyers & Sellers Need to Know

How's the real estate market?

It's one of the questions REALTOR® Rashelle Newmyer gets asked every day, and the truth is, there isn't a one-size-fits-all answer.

In this special solo episode of The Realtor Who Wines, Rashelle pulls back the curtain on what she's seeing in the Oregon real estate market and shares practical advice for both buyers and sellers navigating today's housing landscape.

Recorded from one of her Bull Mountain listings in Tigard, Oregon, this episode is packed with real-world insights, market perspective, and tips she shares with clients every day.

🏡 Is It a Buyer's Market or a Seller's Market?

One of the biggest misconceptions in real estate is thinking the market is the same for everyone.

Rashelle breaks down:

• Why today's market feels different to buyers and sellers
• What a balanced market actually means
• Inventory trends in Oregon
• Supply and demand realities
• Why pricing strategy matters more than ever

She also discusses the challenges many buyers and sellers face as they try to reconcile today's market with the ultra-low-interest-rate environment of 2020–2022.

📈 Seller Tips: How to Position Your Home for Success

Thinking about selling?

Rashelle shares practical advice on:

• Pricing your home correctly from the start
• Why overpricing can hurt your sales
• Decluttering and preparing your home for showings
• Creating a strong first impression
• The benefits of pre-listing inspections
• Choosing the right REALTOR®
• Questions every seller should ask before hiring an agent
• Creating a transition plan for your next move

Whether you're selling your first home or your fifth, these tips can help you maximize your results and reduce stress.

🔑 Buyer Tips: What First-Time Buyers Need to Know

Many buyers wait too long to start preparing.

In this episode, Rashelle explains:

• Why talking to a lender early is so important
• Common misconceptions about credit scores
• Down payment assistance programs
• The difference between down payments and closing costs
• Earnest money explained
• Why inspections matter even with new construction
• What to expect during the buying process

If you're considering homeownership in the next year or even the next few years, this conversation can help you build a roadmap for success.

🤝 Real Estate Is About Education

One of the core themes throughout this episode is the importance of having the right team and the right information.

From lenders and inspectors to REALTORS® and escrow officers, buying or selling a home becomes significantly easier when you're working with professionals who educate, communicate, and advocate for your goals.

🍷 Why This Episode Matters

Whether you're:

• Thinking about buying your first home
• Preparing to sell
• Curious about the Oregon housing market
• Wondering what today's market conditions really mean
• Looking for practical real estate advice

This episode provides honest, actionable guidance you can use right now.

Grab a glass of wine, settle in, and join Rashelle for a candid conversation about buying, selling, and navigating today's real estate market with confidence.

Cheers! 🥂

Thank you for listening! Connect and collaborate with Realtor Rashelle on any of her social media platform pages > https://linktr.ee/RealtorRashelle 

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the Realtor Who Wines podcast. I'm Rashelle Newmeyer. Your hostest with the mostest a student of life, a connector, a passionate wine enthusiast and your local favorite guide. Join me as we explore the vibrant Pacific Northwest. Savor the finest wines and champion the spirit of entrepreneurship. Each episode, I'll sit down with inspiring guests, supporting business ownership and uncovering the stories that make this community unique. So grab a glass of wine, settle in, and let's embark on a journey of discovery and connection together. Cheers. Cheers. Welcome back to the realtor who wines. I'm Rachel Neumayer, your host and the realtor that just freaking loves to wine. This way. Not so much this way. Today we have a special episode for you. I'm coming to you live from one of my listings in the Bull Mountain Tigard area. I wanted to do a little solo episode because I get asked a lot of questions about being a realtor, about the market, about buying a house, about selling a house. So I thought it'd be really fun to showcase this. Listening to you, I would definitely recommend that you go check out Realtor Shell on Instagram, or the realtor who wins on Instagram to see this house at its full capacity. And there's a couple different reels there. Or of course on YouTube there's a whole walkthrough of the house. But today we'll also give you a little sneak peek of this beauty that I'm standing in. So cheers. Thank you for being here. Today. I am excited and sad to share with you the wine that I'm drinking. It's a Grenache from a winery that was a Newberg, Oregon Distaff Wine Co, but they recently have decided as a family to do a different adventure. So they just closed. But I still have some bottles left and I thought it'd be fun to share with you while we chit chat about real estate. One of the questions I get asked every day as a realtor is, how's the market? And that's always an interesting question because there's no direct answer, if any. But if you ever ask an agent or a realtor, how's the market? And they say, great. That's weird. That's an interesting response, because why are you asking about the market? What is it about the market you want to know about? Are you curious how the market is for buyers? How is it for sellers, condos, land leasing, flips, investment properties, short term rentals, long term rentals, mid-term rentals like they're all different markets. So that's why that question is a little bit more complex as a whole. Right now, we're filming and recording in May 2026, and something that's really interesting about the market in general right now is we're kind of in a really like balanced market. It's not really a seller's market or a buyer's market, but the buyers feel like it's a buyer's market because there's more inventory and the sellers feel like it's a seller's market because there's still a supply and demand issue. So even though we're seeing inventory go up, especially out here and the Portland and Salem metros in Oregon, the demand is still high, too. There's not enough homes on the market for everybody looking for homes, but there is more inventory. So buyers feel like they have a little bit more negotiation and room, which is true. But sellers are also not wanting to give up as much. So it's been really interesting to see the conversations that are happening and between buyers and sellers through their agents, of course, because that's why you hire representation is to help guide the whole process. And what I mean by that, as far as like the interesting conversation, is buyers are paying top dollar right now for properties because of the appreciation that we saw during the time of the lowest interest rates we've ever seen in history in 21, 20, 20, 21. And then maybe a little bit of 22 when the market started to shift, interest rates went up. But during that time, interest rates were really low. Appreciation really shot up. So houses are selling even more or for even more than they have been in the past. So buyers are, you know, really wanting to buy, but also they're trying to make sure they're getting a good value because they're paying so much more. Sellers, on the other hand, saw their friends and colleagues and family members houses go for 50,000 100,000 over because of all the bidding wars that we saw. While interest rates are low and they're still hoping to get some residual of that, and that's just not realistic for the market that we're in. So my first seller tip if you're a seller out there, is somebody thinking about selling your house. My first tip to you is to price right out the gate. If you price too high because you're trying to catch the wave that's already passed, of when people were paying absolute top dollar during those low interest rate times, your house is going to sit on the market a little bit longer than it normally would if you priced it right, right out the gate. As a buyer, be honest with yourself and have have those conversations with your agent. Is this house price right out the gate? Because if it is, you shouldn't come in and also ask for a million things from the seller. So that's what we're running into right now, at least in this area, is that buyers are asking for the world and offering under asking price, and then sellers don't want to give the world and want you to be closer to asking price. And sometimes they want the price to be a little bit higher than it should be. So it's been this really interesting dance. The truth is the truth. I know that what I just said isn't always favorable to sellers or to buyers, but if you really do want to get on a home, especially home that you love, you're going to want to not like compromise, but just be realistic. And also, how would you feel in that position? That's a conversation I had with my clients a lot. If we came in under asking because we already could tell the house needs a new roof. So we say like, hey, your home's on the market for 650. We know what needs a new roof. We're offering 625 upfront because we're going to have to replace the roof during the inspection period. It's unrealistic to say, oh, we want you to replace the roof when you've kind of already had the roof conversation. Does that make sense? So like you don't want to come in, offer low and then turn around and offer basically or ask for the same thing for what you already offered low on. And that just frustrates sellers too, because they're also turning around most likely, and trying to buy. So they're trying to walk away with the most equity that they can so they can make their next purchase. So again, right now it's interesting that it's a more balanced market. So buyers are getting in homes. Sellers are selling homes. Buyers are seeing concessions. For those of you that don't know what concessions are, that could be like sellers helping pay closing costs, buyer's agent fees or doing some sort of replacements like roofs or HVAC systems, something like that. And then sellers are still getting top dollar for their homes, as long as they're price right. And on the market show ready with its best foot forward. Your home might be worth more than you think. Curious what your equity looks like. I'll run the numbers for you. No pressure, just clarity. Please reach out any time. Let's look at this together. With all of that being said, today on this episode, I'd like to share with you some seller tips. If you happen to be somebody looking to sell your house, currently selling your house, or just even thinking about it, and then I'll follow it up with some buyers tips as well. So I want to be able to provide information to both sides of the transaction today. So let's start with seller tips. One group of clients that I tend to assist with is people selling their first time home. So they've never sold a house before. They don't know anything about selling a house, because the only part of the transaction that they've experienced up to this point is being first time home buyers. So the first few things I always tell those clients, and this also works for anybody that has sold a handful of houses, but you just might already know this information, but it could be a good refresher as first impressions are everything. I know that your home has been a great home for you is a very exciting first time. Home buyers like you know this was a home you may be built a family in or became a family in. Just growing in general. Like you bought this because it's what was within your budget before. You had different promotions and life changes and things like that. So it's hard sometimes to see our home as a product, and so we change it into a house. When you're getting ready to go on the market, you have to think of your home as now a product. And so that's why I like to use the word house when it's being sold versus home, when it's being purchased, because you are going to live in it and turn it into a home. But right now you're selling it. So you're turning it into a product. And the first thing to do to make your product stand out better than the others is to showcase it better. So one tip I always give first and foremost to sellers is to declutter, make the space a little bit more bare so that when a buyer comes in, they can really visualize their stuff in the area like, well, my couch fit in here. What will my kitchen table look like? Where will my pictures hang? Sometimes what happens is if you don't take down family photos, not that you have to take them all down, but like if you come into my house, I love pictures, I love social media, I love showcasing big moments. So if you come into my house, it's full of pictures I don't want. If I were selling my house, I wouldn't want buyers to get distracted by my pictures. And then they're picturing me and my family living in my house versus picturing themselves. So that's what I mean. It's a little bit more psychology and helping the buyer visualize themselves being there, having coffee in the morning, having dinner in the evenings with there's an immigrant, other family or friends, you know, or even like, where's my cardio going to go? Where's my fur baby going to live? So you really want to make the place as much of a blank slate as possible? It's a little bit harder to do when you're still occupying the home, but it's still doable. We don't want you to be unrealistic expectations. Where for picture day, for example, like the kitchen I'm sitting in, there's nothing on the counters right now, right? So but if you were living in this house day to day, there might be a soap dish here. There might be a dish towel right here. There might be something else on the counter. That's okay. But just trying to put your homes, your house best foot forward is the first step of selling a home is just getting the home itself ready. Another thing that some sellers like to do is have the home pre inspected. It's kind of an unpopular opinion within realtors that some love when sellers have the house inspected before it goes on the market. Excuse me. Others don't. But sometimes it's nice to know what's going on with your home and what to expect. Some things you can get in front of and take care of if you know that what's happening. We don't spend a lot of time in our crawl spaces or our attics, or looking at electrical or things like that, so it's nice to have a fresh set of eyes on your home, and you can fix certain things before you go in the market. Also, then when a buyer has a home inspection, things aren't going to pop up and surprise you and you're not going to be caught off guard that there might be something in the attic that we don't want going on in the attic, or something in the crawl space that you weren't expecting or didn't want to deal with. So there's not as many financial surprises if you get the home pre inspected. One thing to consider being a seller too is obviously who you partner with to market your home. So definitely partner with a realtor you know like and trust. Sometimes you reach out to the agent that helps you get into the house as a buyer. Sometimes they've moved on. They're no longer in the industry. Depending on how long you've been in your home or sometimes they've relocated themselves and or sometimes they're a buyer's agent. Sometimes people in our industry specialize on one side of the transaction. Others do both. So just have those conversations. Have a list of questions like what's important to you? I always tell my clients to ask if they're going to interview multiple realtors, like, how do you plan to market my home? What your 30 day plan, what happens as soon as it goes live on the MLS? Do you have a strategic plan to market my home, or are you just going to post a sign and pray someone calls? So there's a couple different, you know, strategic things. That realtor is not a couple, actually. There's quite a bit of things that Realtors can be doing to strategically market your home to the right buyers and the right area and the right price points. Right, because we all have our own budget. So just asking those questions, what's their communication style? And think about what's important to you as a seller. Do you want your agent reaching out to you weekly? Do you only want them to reach out to something's going on with the house if there's an offer or question. So I, a lot of my clients tend to like constant communication, and I like to provide that too, because it also just gives them peace of mind knowing what's going on, because they're not with me all day at the office or out and about with showings and doing things like that. So I like to just keep them in the loop when I'm running ads for their home, or reaching out to agents, or having one on one conversations with agents about if this home is a good fit for their clients. Scheduling showings, especially if the home's vacant because they're not getting alerted every time that the house has a showing request. So just keeping your clients in the loop, and if that's really important to you, ask those questions when you're interviewing agents like, what is your 30 day plan? Your 60 day plan? When would you do a price adjustment? If like, how long would we be on the market before you would talk to me about a price adjustment? What kind of marketing do you do? Just all of those questions will really tell you if it's a good fit for you and that realtor. then first and foremost or first and foremost, I did that out. And then lastly, as a seller, knowing your transition plan, like where are you going? How does that look to sell a house and buy a house at the same time? I help a lot with relocation, so I'm helping people move into Oregon as well as move out. Obviously, I help a lot of the locals stay local as well, but sometimes you're relocating out of the state, so your house may be on the market while you don't live in it. Sometimes you're living in it or you're in the middle of moving, so just having those conversations and having a plan with your realtor will really help. The whole process goes more smoothly, but start thinking about if you're selling your house because you want to downsize. You want to be on a smaller commute towards work. You want a little bit more land. You decided you want a mini cow. P.S. I would love to have a mini cow so that you're trying to, like, go outside the city limits a little bit more. It's like whatever the reason is that you're moving. Think about those goals and also like, what do you want your next home to look like? And then normally it's more favorable to go under contract if you're selling your house. Once your house is under contract, contingent offers are still being accepted. It's just hard to be a little bit competitive with non contingent offers, especially if you're not under contract. So I especially my sellers that are super excited to downsize or upsize. I always say let's like we'll be perusing the market, but let's not like fall in love or be hardcore looking at stuff until your homes under contract, because I really want you to be able to be competitive and really get that house that you truly want. And if something pops on the market that you love, of course we'll go see it. We can always try and throw our hat in the ring, but I just want you to be prepared that we aren't as we aren't as favorable, especially if there's multiple offers which we are still seeing. Even though I said earlier, it's a balanced market depending on the property and how brightly price the property is, the location, all the features of that property. We're still seeing multiple offers on some homes, while others were not. So if we were to be offering on a house that already has multiple offers, we're not as favorable. If we're contingent and we're not even under contract yet. And I just don't want to set you up for disappointment. So I like to have those conversations upfront, and it's just something to be mindful as a seller, depending on what your next transition looks like, to just have that in mind, that you'll probably won't go under contract on what you're buying unless there are options to to buy and sell at the same time. Sometimes people take a heat lock out on their home so that they can do a down payment on another home. Move out while this home sells. But a lot of times you're selling and buying all kind of simultaneously. It's just harder to do until you're under contract with your current house. If you ever have questions about selling your house, it doesn't matter what state you live in. I love being a real estate resource. Please reach out to me. I'm happy to answer your questions to the best of my ability, especially if you're not in my state. But I know Realtors all over the world, so I'd be happy to also connect you with somebody that if I can't answer your question, I can help you get the answer that you're looking for. All right. So those are just some of my little tips and tricks for sellers. Like I said reach out with any questions. But now let's transition a little bit to the buy side of things. So if you're a first time buyer hey congratulations. It's so exciting. If you're even thinking about buying a home, that's one of the best ways to build wealth. It's proven science, it's facts, its history. One thing I always say the first time buyers is a lot of times at a barbecue or something. I'll here, oh, I'd love to buy a house. Maybe next year I'm going to try and pay off some credit, or I'm going to try and pay off my car. I want to wait until I'm done with school or whatever. My very first response to always is, have you talked to a lender? Because it's really beneficial. Even if you truly do want to wait a year to have somebody look at your finances, look at your current credit score and the other like a a myth, I should say that people don't realize is they think when you start talking to a lender, they're instantly going to do a hard pull on your credit, and you're not interested in that. That's not the case. You can have a consultation with a lot of lenders and just basic knowledge that they can get from you. They can at least give you an overall picture of what you should be doing with your finances, with your credit score, to get you in the proper position to buy a house, so that it's easier when you are trying to go through that process. Some people also think like, well, my credit score is 580. I'll never qualify for a house. That's also not necessarily true. There's a lot of different, especially here in Oregon, programs for first time homebuyers that help with lower credit scores, help with down payment assistance. But you wouldn't know any of that unless you met with a lender. If you don't know of any lenders or you don't even know how to get connected with one. I love being a resource. It doesn't matter if you're in my state or not. I know some great professionals all over. I would love to connect you with them so please reach out. You can send me a DM, a message, a text and email, whatever and I'll get you connected with the right people to at least start having the conversations to get you moving in the right direction. I always say it's hard to know where you're going. If you don't have a map. And that's what the lenders tend to provide us, is a map to get you in the proper position so that you have a successful real estate transaction. So even if you're just even remotely thinking about buying, even if you're like, it's probably not for me for five years, still, it doesn't hurt to have that conversation now to just have a true idea of what it looks like and maybe what you would want your finances to be. Also, the other thing that surprises a lot of people is they think like, oh, I'm going to cancel a certain credit. Like, oh, I've had this credit card, I got this credit card in college. I never even use it anymore. I'm going to cancel it. Sometimes I'll under might tell you not to do that because that's a really long. If you're like me and you've been out of college for quite some time, but you open a card that long ago that shows a long standing credit line and actually helps your credit score. So by even though it doesn't have a balance or anything, by closing, it could actually lower your credit score. So just stuff like that is like why you would want to talk to a lender upfront. So make sure you don't accidentally damage yourself from a credit score standpoint or an ability standpoint. So please reach out to me or reach out to a lender if you happen to know one. The other part of the process is once you're pre-approved. The thing that a lot of first time homebuyers don't know about is the difference between down payment and closing costs, because they all kind of happen at the end of the transaction. A lot of people group those together. There is a difference. So a down payment is specific to your loan and how much you're putting down to get your loan payment where you want it to be and to qualify for that mortgage itself. Closing costs is something different. It has to do with property taxes, county fees, escrow and title fees. Sometimes closing costs includes your agent fees. If you're paying for your agent out of pocket or your agent services, I should say out of pocket. If the seller isn't covering that for you, you can ask throughout your offer. It will not throughout your offer. When you make your initial offer, there is a part, especially in Oregon. Again, keep in mind I'm an organ licensed realtor that you can ask the seller, just like to pay closing costs. You can ask them to cover your buyer's agent fee, but sometimes buyers pay for it out of pocket. So that would also be part of your closing costs. So there are two different buckets. They do all get both buckets get handed over towards the end of the transaction. But they are two different things. Some of the money that you need upfront at the beginning of the purchase would be earnest money, and then money for inspection. Because you can't wrap earnest money into your loan, you can't ask the seller to pay for earnest money, and the seller is not paying for inspections, and you can't wrap inspections until long. So even if you do a down payment assistance program, you're still going to need some cash in your pocket to accomplish these things. Earnest money. And this is pretty true across the board. So it doesn't matter if you're an organ or not, but earnest money is basically you explaining to the seller you're super serious about buying their home. It's kind of an initial down payment that will later get into the bucket of your down payment or closing costs. You can decide where that money is going to go as you close the transaction, but at first it's you telling the buy or the seller, hey Mr. Seller, I'm super serious about this house. I'm going to put $5,000 down right now to show you how serious I am. The seller gets access to that money. If you were to back out for any reason, that doesn't have to do with something with the home or financing changes, things like that. So the only time I've ever had. I've been a realtor for eight years, and the only time I've ever had a seller get to keep the earnest money I've had. It happened twice. One, I was the buyer's agent and my buyer got cold feet the day of closing and just panicked and said, I don't know my guts telling me not to buy this house. He can keep the earnest money. I'm so, so sorry and I don't want to buy the house. So the seller got to keep the money in that regard because the buyer backed out at no fault of the seller, no fault to the home, no fault to financing, nothing like that. The other time it happened was there was a the seller or I was representing the seller. The buyer didn't do within the loan you have to or within the contract. You have to do certain things for your loan to keep the loan contingency active. And they faulted on the loan portion of their responsibilities of the contract and ended up backing out. And it was at no fault of the seller, no fault of the home. And because the buyer didn't do it within a certain time frame and it was an unrepresented buyer, so he didn't have somebody guiding him on the other side, he did fault on the contract, and he did end up for fitting his earnest money. So that's two examples of how you might lose your earnest money. But nine times out of ten, knock on wood, that it comes through at the very end of the transaction and it goes towards your down payment or closing costs. And then the other thing that you pay for at a pocket up front, right after your under contract is home inspections. Definitely always recommend home inspections, even if you're buying new construction. A lot of people assume, and this is no lake shade on new construction by any means, but something's still pop up. Sometimes the vapor barrier isn't down all the way, or only half the vapor barrier made in town with new construction. Even if it's one builder, a lot of times they're using a variety of contractors to build that one house, and they don't always have eyes on each contractor every minute of the day. So it's just nice, again, to have a fresh pair of eyes looking at the biggest investment that you're probably going to make in your life, and just making sure everything's dialed in and is the way it should be. So whether you're buying resale or new construction, I highly recommend that you get the home inspected. Even if you're buying it as is, you still need to know what you're buying, When you're ready to make a move, make it with someone who knows the market and truly cares about your home journey. I would be honored to help you each step of the way. Don't forget to reach out. so I recommend it. On average, inspections can cost anywhere from 5 to $600 to $1,200. It depends on the size of the home and what all you're having the inspector look at. Sometimes there's extra inspections if you're buying property like a well inspection or a septic inspection, things like that. So again, partner with your agent. They'll guide you and tell you, depending on the home that you select, what inspections are really important. And Oregon we have a natural gas called radon. And it comes up through the soils and it can be cancerous. It's odorless. So like you wouldn't know what's in the house unless you had the house tested for radon. So a lot of times and it's like $150 to like 200 bucks to get your house tested for radon. And so a lot of people do that during the inspection period to just to make sure that no natural gas is coming into the house from outside that you don't realize. So those are like some of the things that you'll need money for upfront to pay those inspectors during the home buying process. Other than that, really, first and foremost, get educated. And the best way to get educated is partnering with somebody that you trust. We are seeing with the rise of AI and of course Google, very informative, does provide a lot of great information, but AI is also pulling from a wide variety of sources, and we don't always know if those sources are credible. So it's definitely good to just double check with somebody that is in the industry that is doing this every day in and out. But the number one thing about selling a house or buying a house is being educated and then being partnered with somebody that you trust to get you through the process. So those are just my little bit of tips and tricks today on selling a home or buying a home. And then I would love to showcase to you the listing that I'm coming to you from here in Mountain Tigard area. Definitely stay if you're watching on YouTube, watch and we'll give you a little sneak peek of this listing. If you're listening, please go check us out on YouTube or Instagram. Like I said on YouTube, it's Realtor Rochelle. On Instagram you can find me as a realtor shell or as the realtor who wants. I can't wait to see you next week! Thanks for listening and watching. Cheers!