From today's Seattle Times:

Home prices in the Northwest continued to climb at a double-digit pace in June compared to a year ago, easily twice the rate for the nation’s 20 largest metro areas.

Seattle home prices rose 11 percent, second only to Portland, where prices rose 12.6 percent, according to the Standard & Poor’s CoreLogic Case-Shiller 20-city home price index, released Tuesday.

The article also goes on to state that Portland has topped the list of price gains for the last five months—even while other top markets have begun showing signs of slowing. Read the rest of this story here.

I was recently talking to a local real estate broker about rising house prices, and he had this to say about the current market in Portland: Developers and landlords will continue pushing prices higher and higher until the bubble eventually bursts—even though they know it will only hurt themselves and others. Why? Because the money is there now.

And it won't be after the bubble pops. In other words, it's kind of like this: