Portland is supposed to be back in the 90s next week. Fitting, because I’d just read a BBC piece about Europeans buying air conditioners in record numbers after their hottest June on record. Europe has always been a low-AC place: mild summers, old houses, nobody saw the point. That was Portland when I got into this business in 2003. Central air was a nice surprise in a listing, not something anyone expected.
It made me curious where we actually stand now. So we pulled every residential sale in the city of Portland from RMLS for the last three months, about 2,750 closings, and counted how many had permanent cooling of some kind: central air, EnergyStar AC, a heat pump, or a mini-split.
| Price range | Homes sold | With cooling | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under $500K | 1,075 | 668 | 62% |
| $500K to $700K | 780 | 554 | 71% |
| $700K to $1M | 606 | 527 | 87% |
| Over $1M | 286 | 268 | 94% |
About 72 percent overall, and a clean stair-step by price. Over a million dollars, AC is close to standard equipment now. Under $500K, nearly four in ten homes still sell without it. (Window units don’t show up in listing data, so some of those homes have one in a bedroom somewhere. Buyers don’t give much credit for those anyway.)
Then I remembered I’d written this post before
In July 2007, after leaving a home inspection on a 104 degree day, I ran nearly the same search on this blog: SE Portland, sold in the previous 90 days, central air only. So we reran it today, exactly the same way. Same area, same window, central air only:
| Price range (SE Portland) | 2007 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Under $300K | 15% (112 of 724) | 7% (4 of 56) |
| $300K to $500K | 24% (75 of 316) | 33% (111 of 333) |
| $500K to $700K | 21% (9 of 41) | 54% (117 of 216) |
| Over $700K | 50% (7 of 14) | 66% (109 of 164) |
Central air roughly doubled in every band that still has real volume. And that’s central air only. Heat pumps and mini-splits barely existed in Portland houses in 2007 and they’re everywhere now; count those and SE Portland looks like the citywide table above. (The under-$300K drop isn’t a trend, it’s a nearly empty band now, mostly homes that need work.)
The other thing in that table is what happened to the market itself. In 2007, SE Portland did 724 sales under $300,000 in 90 days. This summer: 56. Over $700,000 went the other way, from 14 sales to 164. Same neighborhood, same streets, nineteen years apart.
What I’d do with this
If you’re selling under $700K, cooling still sets you apart. A third or more of your competition doesn’t have it, and a house that shows at 74 degrees during a 95 degree week gets a longer look. A mini-split is usually the practical route in older houses without ductwork, and it’s the kind of pre-listing project our Market Ready program covers upfront. Whether it pencils depends on the house, so that’s a conversation, not a rule. Above $700K it’s simpler: buyers expect it, and if it’s missing they’re deducting the cost of adding it, plus a cushion for the hassle.
If you’re buying under $500K, figure four in ten of the homes you tour won’t have cooling. Not a reason to walk, just something to price in. A heat pump replaces the furnace conversation too, older houses without ducts point to mini-splits, and it’s worth asking your inspector whether the electrical panel can handle any of it. Incentives for heat pumps come and go, so check what’s current when you’re ready.
In 2007 I wrote that there aren’t many days when AC in Portland is needed. That’s less true every year, and buyers know it. Questions about what this means for your house or your offer? Happy to walk through it.
What does air conditioning cost?
There are a ton of variables that go into the cost of an HVAC install but I can give a real world recent example. A Carrier 70k BTU 80% furnace with a 3 ton 13.4 seer AC unit cost $12,500 to install, replacing an outdated furnace that did not have AC. This was for a 1200 SQFT house. This included some electrical work of the condenser. It is important to make sure that the current electrical system can handle the load of an AC unit (and that the existing furnace is “AC Ready”) if your plan is to add AC to a home that does not already have it.
Sold-property data pulled from RMLSweb on July 17, 2026: residential sales within the city of Portland, trailing three months, counted by list price band. Citywide cooling counts include central air, EnergyStar air conditioning, heat pumps, and mini-splits; the SE Portland comparison uses central air only, matching the 2007 methodology. 2007 figures from our July 2007 post, “Air Conditioning in Portland.” European market reporting via BBC News, “As heatwaves strike, Europeans turn to Chinese air-conditioners,” July 2026.