Deschutes County’s population grew to an estimated 170,388 people last year, making it the seventh-fastest-growing metro area in the country, according to new U.S. Census Bureau figures released Thursday.

The population increased by 2.67 percent between July 2013 and July 2014. The influx of new residents has made Deschutes County the fastest-growing county in Oregon for the second year in a row. Between 2012 and 2013, the county grew by 2.6 percent.

Multnomah County, the largest county in the state, grew 1.4 percent last year. Crook and Jefferson counties grew 1 percent and 1.7 percent, respectively.

Deschutes County Commissioner Tony DeBone, who also sits on a steering committee for the city of Bend’s urban growth boundary expansion process, said he senses the increase in construction activity and demand for workers to build homes.

“It’s good to know that the numbers are measurable, because it does feel like a lot of things are happening at the same time,” said DeBone.

In 2010, the county’s population was estimated to be 157,733. An estimated 4,433 people moved to the county last year.

The increased population comes at a time when many have called the lack of affordable housing in Bend a crisis. The city was estimated in 2013 at having a population of 81,236.

City leaders formed an Affordable Housing Advisory Committee and has sought advice from Bend 2030, an organization studying livability.

The city advisory committee has recommended a break in system development charges — known as SDCs, which pay for roads, sewer upgrades and parks — to entice developers to construct affordable housing. The committee also recommended changing the city code to create incentives for development of smaller single-family “cottages” on a lot around a common open space.

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WASHINGTON — Janet Yellen, the Federal Reserve chairwoman, said Friday that the Fed planned to raise interest rates more slowly than during past recoveries because of the unusually fragile condition of the U.S. economy.

Fed officials, who have held short-term interest rates near zero for more than six years, have indicated that they plan to start raising short-term rates this year. Yellen’s remarks, delivered at a conference in San Francisco, are part of an effort to prepare markets for the end of that prolonged era.

And her message was that the return to normal conditions is likely to be very slow.

“The average pace of tightening observed during previous recoveries could well provide a highly misleading guide to the actual course of monetary policy over the next few years,” Yellen said.

Yellen emphasized that the economy was improving. She highlighted particular progress in labor markets, and said she expected the economy to gain steam after a slow start to 2015 as consumer spending increased.

“With continued improvement in economic conditions, an increase in the target range for that rate may well be warranted later this year,” she said.

That, however, is a more cautious formulation than the recent comments by some of her colleagues that they expect the Fed to raise rates by September.

Yellen said the timing of the first increase was less important than the pace of subsequent increases, which will determine borrowing costs in coming years. And she offered three reasons the pace is likely to be quite slow.

First, the economy remains weak: “If underlying conditions had truly returned to normal, the economy should be booming,” Yellen said.

Second, the Fed sees the potential costs of tardiness as smaller than the costs of moving too quickly, because if it tightens too quickly and the economy swoons, the Fed has substantially exhausted its ability to stimulate a recovery.

Finally, pushing economic growth above a sustainable pace could help to push up inflation and perhaps reverse some economic damage caused by the recession.

Empty nesters, retirees and new arrivals are snatching up homes in Bend that builders thought would attract entry-level buyers, some brokers and builders say.

“We noticed a shift in the demographic make-up of, particularly, the new home sales in NorthWest Crossing a couple of years ago,” said David Ford, general manager at the subdivision. “Probably as much as 60 percent of our sales” went to the older demographic.

Jay Campbell, president of Woodhill Homes, and real estate broker Tim Buccola have had similar experiences at two developments in southeast Bend: Reed Pointe, at SE 15th Street, and IronStone, on Sonata Way east of Parrell Road.

Prices were set with first-time homebuyers in mind, Campbell said. Two homes in IronStone, both 1,468 square feet, are listed by The Buccola Group of The Hasson Co. at $279,950. Three Reed Pointe homes range from $249,950 to $276,450 and from 1,400 square feet to almost 2,000 square feet.

“Ideally, we were building them for entry-level, first-time homebuyers,” Campbell said. “But, we’re finding there’s a lot of retirees and empty nesters; we ended up with a lot of single stories.”

The median price for a single-family home in Bend stood at $297,000 in February, down from $322,000 the month prior, according to the Beacon Appraisal Group, of Redmond.

At McCall Landing in northeast Bend, Hasson Co. real estate broker Rhianna Kunkler said the builder, Pahlisch Homes, set a price to attract first-time homebuyers. A 1,400-square-foot home there starts at $235,000. Entry-level buyers showed up, but so did older buyers looking to downsize or be free of maintenance chores. Investors buying with cash are in the mix, too, along with retirees, Kunkler said.

“It wasn’t what I expected,” she said.

First-time homebuyers still appear hesitant to rejoin the market as it recovers from the Great Recession, Buccola said. They remain wary in light of the housing bubble that burst and hastened the recession.

“Many of them are still shy,” he said.

Chris Starling, a mortgage broker and vice president at Arbor Mortgage Group in Bend, said he sees many empty nesters and retirees moving to the area and looking for homes, as well as homeowners looking to buy up into a larger home. First-time homebuyers are active in Central Oregon, but the median home price in Bend may be pushing them to Redmond and elsewhere, he said.

“A lot of what’s in my pipeline are folks who moved here a year ago,” Starling said. They rented until finding the right home to buy, he said, and now they’re pulling the trigger.

Woodhill and Buccola may be pricing their homes for what the market demands in Bend, he said. Nonetheless, a homeowner in the city needs to earn about $66,000, annually, about 25 percent more than the median household income for Deschutes County, or face a tough time paying anything other than the mortgage, Starling said.

Ford, Campbell and Kunkler all said homes are selling in their developments about as fast as crews can build them.

Bend’s commercial real estate market saw vacancy rates falling and lease rates increasing at the end of 2014, according to a quarterly summary by Compass Commercial Real Estate Services.

The vacancy rate for industrial property in Bend dropped from 12.3 percent at the end of 2013 to 6.7 percent a year later, Erich Schultz, principal broker with Compass Commercial, wrote in the latest issue of Compass Points. Lease rates went from 45 cents per square foot in 2013 to 65 cents for space in newer, smaller buildings in 2014.

The market for office space in Bend also improved for landlords. The vacancy rate fell from 11.3 percent in the third quarter of 2014 to 10.5 percent in the fourth, according to Compass Commercial. Lease rates today range from $1.20 per square foot to $1.70, Schultz wrote.

The vacancy rate for retail property citywide fell from 8.3 percent in the third quarter to 6.7 percent in the fourth. A total of 92,000 square feet of retail space was leased in 2014, according to the quarterly survey by Compass Commercial. Downtown Bend, at 3.16 percent, had the lowest fourth-quarter retail vacancy rate of seven market areas in the city.

In Redmond, demand for industrial space dropped the vacancy rate from 15.9 percent to 10.5 percent in the fourth quarter. Nearly 108,000 square feet was leased in Redmond, with another 154,000 square feet of industrial property still available, according to Compass Commercial.

The Bend area dropped to 10th place nationally in December on the list of metro areas with the greatest annual increases in home prices, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

Housing prices grew by 11.25 percent in the area from the fourth quarter 2013 to the same period in 2014, according to an FHFA report released Thursday.

The Bend-Redmond Metropolitan Statistical Area, which comprises all of Deschutes County, ranked eighth on that list out of 276 metro areas in both the second and third quarters of 2014.

House prices have climbed 28.51 percent in the Bend-Redmond area over five years, according to the report.

In Bend, the median price of single-family home increased in January to $322,000 after a seasonal dip to $290,000 in December, according to a February report by the Beacon Appraisal Group. The median price in Redmond reached $218,000 in January, up from $189,000 the month before, the group reported.

Overall, house prices in the U.S. rose 1.4 percent in the last three months of 2014, according to the FHFA. Year over year, prices were up 4.9 percent.

“The key drivers of appreciation over the last few years — low inventories of homes available for sale and improvement in labor markets — likely played a role in driving up prices during the quarter,” FHFA Principal Economist Andrew Leventis stated in a news release accompanying the report.

Deschutes County added more than 3,000 jobs in 2014, the strongest gains in employment since 2006, according to the Oregon Employment Department. In August, the median price of a single-family home in Bend reached $325,000, according to Beacon. Afterward, the pace of home sales in Bend slowed, according to the same report. Redmond experienced a similar trend.

Prices increased in all but two states, according to the FHFA report. Oregon ranked 11th in 2014 with a 6.74 percent gain. The District of Columbia ranked No. 1 with a 12.53 percent increase. Vermont occupied the bottom, with a 2.03 percent decline in house prices, the FHFA reported.

The Merced, California, MSA saw the greatest increase in house prices year over year of any metro area in the nation at 14.84 percent. The Macon, Georgia, MSA occupied the bottom position with a 1.40 percent decline, the FHFA reported.

The median price for a single-family home dipped 1 percent in Bend last month, but jumped nearly 12 percent in Redmond, according to a report released in early December.

Bend’s median home price fell to $295,000 last month, $3,000 below October’s median, according to The Beacon Report, formerly called The Bratton Report. But the median price last month in Bend was the same as the price recorded in November 2013, according to the report.

The 156 homes sold in Bend last month represented a drop of 51 sales over October, according to the report by Appraiser Donnie Montagner, owner of The Beacon Appraisal Group in Redmond. In November 2013, Bend recorded 165 single-family home sales.

Redmond’s median price for a single-family home last month reached $210,000, a $22,000 increase over October’s median and a $10,000 increase over November 2013, according to the report.

Sales of single-family homes in Redmond increased by two, from 64 sales in October to 66 in November. The report showed 51 single-family home sales in Redmond in November 2013