More than 1,000 rental properties proposed in booming Central Oregon city.
BY JACOB PALMER | DIGITAL NEWS EDITOR
More than 1,000 rental properties are in some stage of development.
The building boom is a direct response to low rental-property vacancy rates — 2.4 percent for a house in April, 0.8 percent for a duplex.
“This is a huge amount of multifamily housing activity all at once,” wrote Aaron Henson, city senior planner, in a recent email. “To put things in perspective, there was virtually no new multifamily housing built in Bend during the 10-year period from 2004 to 2013.”
(SOURCE: Bend Bulletin)
The Bend economy has mostly recovered from the Great Recession.
Employment is also a key indicator, [director of development for Evergreen Housing Development Group Andrew] Brand and others said. Not only has Bend recovered most of the jobs lost during the Great Recession, but it’s also moved into growth territory, according to the Oregon Employment Department. The unemployment rate in Deschutes County dropped to 5.6 percent in April, its lowest point since November 2007, according to the department. Many of those jobs are filled by newcomers to Bend. Portland State University projects nearly 10,000 new arrivals this year, and 16,000 by 2020. Housing is already a problem for many of them, and employers complain that some new employees are commuting to Bend from as far as Prineville.
From the Associated Press:
Rising rents reflect the tight market. Rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Bend has increased from an average $629 in 2012 to $847 this year, according to the Central Oregon Rental Owners Association. That’s a jump of nearly 35 percent.
The apartment construction boom follows a long drought. Aaron Henson, a senior city planner, says there was virtually no new multifamily housing built in Bend from 2004 to 2013. The new projects range from government-subsidized public housing to high-end market-rate apartments.
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