Randy Wortman

Home/property sales in Wallowa County continued to rebound in 2014 when the total number of such sales, including 10 “unusable” sales between relatives, eclipsed comparable sales made throughout 2013 by 31 percent.

Wallowa County Appraiser II Randy Wortman says 189 “usable” sales were culminated in the county during 2014, the last full year from which data is available, compared to a total of 136 sales the previous year.

The usable/unusable distinction applies within the context of ratio studies that county assessors periodically conduct to update real market values. Figures from unusable sales, which include not only sales between relatives but also other sales that aren’t open-market transactions, aren’t used in the ratio studies.

Wallowa Mountain Properties Principal Broker Anette Christoffersen says the upswing in real estate within Wallowa County has continued through the first quarter of 2015 and expects that trend will not stop. “We are coming out of the hole we were in,” says Christoffersen, adding, “I think we are going to have a really good year.”

Although Christoffersen’s numbers, those of one broker, only offer a snapshot of overall real estate sales locally, she says her 2014 sales more than doubled her 2013 sales total and that the same trend has held true through the first quarter of 2015. Christoffersen, who has been selling real estate for 10 years, also notes that prices of properties she has sold in the past three months are up an average of 9.2 percent over sale prices during the same three months a year ago.

Although only midway in the process of determining, for taxation purposes, differences between property values in county records and sales prices for the 199 transactions completed in 2014, Wortman does say that the highest percentage of sales last year was in residential housing.

The locations where overall sales of properties in Wallowa County were made in 2014, in descending order by number of sales, according to Wortman, were Enterprise, Joseph, Wallowa, and then Lostine. “There were very few sales made around Wallowa Lake,” adds Wortman, who has been appraising property in Wallowa County for about 20 years. “The lake area has high property values and people don’t want to live there year around.”

Christoffersen suggests two possibilities as to why real estate sale numbers are increasing here. “The economy is doing better,” she says, “and people are becoming more realistic on pricing.” The latter possibility relates to 2005 and 2006 values before the economic slump hit Wallowa County, which occurred later than in much of the U.S.

Physical appraisals made out of the Wallowa County Assessor’s Office, ideally done on a six-year rotation, currently are being conducted in the rural Wallowa/Lostine area.