PRICE REDUCTION $649,000
In the heart of Sunriver, on the Meadows Golf Course 14th fairway. Northwest contemporary home with vaulted great room, exposed beams, Brazilian cherry hardwood floors and vaulted ceilings creating an elegant yet rustic feel. Generous, open kitchen includes a sitting bar with slab granite counter tops – a perfect place for everyone to gather. Two fireplaces and AC. Open, unobstructed views of golf course, 1 1/2 tax lots plus turn-key furnished and strong rental history.
Boomers, Millenials want housing Bend has little of
By Mac McLean / The Bulletin / @agingbeat
Rick Brickner and his wife, Daria, were having dinner at a downtown Bend restaurant a couple of years ago when she asked him an interesting question: “Could you move here?”
The Brickners, respectively 61 and 58, passed through Bend a number of times as they traveled from their home in Boise, Idaho, to vacation on the Oregon Coast. They slowly fell in love with the city and eventually decided it was where they wanted to retire.
But one thing is standing in the way of this dream.
Even though they have a budget of almost $2,500 a month, the Brickners are having a hard time finding a nice 2,000- to 2,400-square-foot townhouse or condominium to rent that meets a few basic criteria and is within walking distance of a commercial district such as downtown Bend or the Old Mill District.
“I know it will be very difficult to find what we’re looking for,” said Brickner, who has given himself a 50-50 shot at finding the type of rental home he and his wife want before his moving truck arrives in Boise at the end of this month.
Recognizing predictions that Deschutes County’s senior population will more than double over the next 15 to 20 years, Bend planners reviewed the city’s housing inventory and found it does not have the type of housing units, or enough of them, that baby boomers will be looking for when they retire.
They’re including a call to build more of these units — a mixture of small, cottage-style single-family homes, duplexes, triplexes and condominium/townhouse complexes — as they move forward with a long-range plan that’s supposed to guide the city’s future development.
“We need to diversify,” Senior Planner Brian Rankin said as he talked about the city’s need to build more multifamily housing units and fewer traditional, detached single-family homes so it can be ready for this demographic trend. “Ultimately, it’s about creating more choices in the marketplace.”
The boomers
When they sent back Bend’s request to expand its urban growth boundary in 2011, officials with the Oregon Land Conservation and Development Commission ordered city planners to pay close attention to current demographic trends and figure out how or whether they will affect the city’s growth in the years to come.
One of these trends involves the country’s 76 million baby boomers.
Population projections from the Oregon Office of Economic Analysis predict that Deschutes County’s senior population will more than double over the next 10 to 15 years because of the sheer size of its current boomer population — the youngest member of this generation turns 65 in 2029 — and the fact more and more boomers are expected to move to the region in the future because they see it as a good place to retire (see “Population boom”).
Between one of every six and one of every seven Deschutes County residents (roughly 15 percent) are 65 or older; by 2029, residents age 65 and older will make up 25 percent of the population. That age demographic affects housing.
“More than 50 percent of older Americans have said their next house will be smaller than their current house,” Rankin said, citing surveys that show many boomers are thinking about downsizing as they get ready to retire. “At some point, they will be forced to, or choose to, live in a housing unit that has fewer needs.”
Brickner and his wife had this goal in mind when they started looking at houses in Bend on Tuesday afternoon.
While Brickner and his wife loved the 3,000-square-foot home they built in Boise 14 years ago, Brickner said that when he gets older, he does not want to continue doing the type of maintenance and yardwork that living on the property required.
Brickner said there’s also no guarantee the housing market will continue to improve, which affects a decision to invest their retirement savings in another piece of real estate. He said many people learned this lesson when the housing market crashed five years ago and are also leery about buying a new home.
“There’s a lot of baby boomers who now realize owning a home is not necessarily a moneymaking proposition,” Brickner said, explaining why he and his wife want to rent their next home.
Brickner said his ideal place would be a nice townhouse or condominium that’s located in a development where someone else is responsible for keeping up the property’s yard work and other routine maintenance tasks. He also wants it to be located in an area where it’s easy to walk to nearby parks, grocery stores, restaurants and other amenities.
Over the past year, Brickner said he’s seen a couple of these developments pop up with vacancies on real estate ads. But these units are often available only on a short-term or seasonal basis because they’re owned by a boomer who plans to live there full time when he or she is ready to retire.
“It’s always hard to find townhomes or condos in small cities,” Brickner said, accepting the fact he may have to settle on one or two of his wishes to find a place. “I don’t think you’re going to see (more of these units) in Bend anytime soon.”
The need
Rankin said Bend’s current housing mix is one of the reasons Brickner might be having such a hard time finding the type of home he wants. According to the city’s records, detached single-family homes made up about 71 percent of the city’s total housing units in 2008.
Rankin said that’s because detached single-family homes were favored over any other type of housing when most of the residential development inside the city and the area that Bend annexed during the 1990s took place.
“Generally, what we see now is a continuation of what we’ve seen in the past,” Rankin said, explaining that because this type of home continues to be so popular, it now makes up closer to 75 percent of the city’s housing inventory.
But while this trend is good for people who either have families or are looking to start a family, it doesn’t necessarily meet the needs of aging boomers who may be ready to downsize or reduce maintenance .
It also doesn’t work for millennials, many of whom are expected to forgo homeownership in part because they’re likely to be carrying around record amounts of student debt when they graduate from college.
Members of this generation — who were born between 1980 and 2000 — will make up about 24 percent of Deschutes County’s population in 2030, according to the state’s estimates.
“Mobility is kind of an issue as well,” Rankin said, giving another reason the millennials may forgo buying their first home. “Younger people just tend to bounce around as they look for good jobs and experiment with places to live.”
Rankin said a committee involved in the city’s long-term urban growth boundary expansion process recently approved a target housing mix for 2030 that would be 68 percent to 70 percent detached single-family homes. He said this goal could be met by providing incentives or using the city’s zoning process to encourage developers to build more multifamily units such as the ones the Brickners are looking for.
But here, too, is another problem, because like boomers, millennials have expressed a strong desire to live in a neighborhood or community where they can walk to stores, restaurants and other amenities. Rankin said meeting this goal could be difficult because there is a dearth of empty space around the city’s main commercial centers that could be used to build new townhomes, condominiums and other multifamily housing units.
He said if the city wants to move toward its goal of building more multifamily housing, it may need to consider putting housing units on top of existing businesses, such as the apartments above Jackson’s Corner on Bend’s west side, or building new developments on available land that include a mixture of commercial and dense residential property.
“We have to figure out how many and what kind of housing units we want to build,” Rankin said, explaining it will probably be another two years before the city has finished its current long-term development plan. “And then we have to figure out where we are going to put them.”
— Reporter: 541-617-7816, mmclean@bendbulletin.com
SOLD $185,000 – Full price!
Enjoy the peace of the large treed back yard from your private deck and french doors. Over sized landscaped lot with plenty of room for all. This home lives comfortably with 3 full bedrooms, master bath includes an indoor hot tub, separate laundry room, great room layout, garage with storage shed and side yard with double gate with room for small boat or toys.
$1,250,000
First time on the market elegant, lodge style custom home in the celebrated Crosswater GC, situated on a .65 private acre w/ unobstructed views of the Golf Course, and water. Enduring design & extraordinary craftsmanship is evident from the massive great hall, soaring ceilings, wood beams & custom touches, handsome office/den w/ built-ins, lg. master on the main w/ fireplace, kitchen w/ island & sunny breakfast nook, 4 bedroom, 4 bath, large deck with built-in seating looking over the golf course & pond
SOLD and LISTED $639,000
Elegant custom one owner Sunriver property, situated on the celebrated Woodlands Golf Course w/ unobstructed views. Enduring design & extraordinary craftsmanship is evident from the elegant entry, soaring ceilings, extensive wood accents through-out, grand stair case & rock fireplace. Four bedrooms, open living space w/ over sized French doors, game room, casual & formal dining, large private deck w/hot tub. Attention to detail is evident in all aspects of this home. Includes high-end furniture package.
Bend’s median hit $325,000 last month; Redmond’s reached $210,000
Published Sep 24, 2014 at 12:01AM
Area housing prices on rise
Median prices for single-family homes in Bend and Redmond increased last month, 2.5 percent and nearly 4 percent, respectively, over July’s prices, according to the latest report from the Bratton Appraisal Group.
In Bend, the median price for a single-family home rose to $325,000, according to The Bratton Report. Sales of single-family homes in Bend dropped nearly 6 percent, to 223, in August. Inventory stood at about four months as of Sept. 10, the date of the report. The bulk of the inventory, 125 homes, lay in the $250,000 to $300,000 range.
In Redmond, the median price of a single-family home increased to $210,000 in August over July. The report also found sales of single-family homes in Redmond rose from 80 to 85, or 6.25 percent, over July.
Redmond’s inventory also stood at about four months, as of Sept. 10, with the majority of homes on the market, 77, in the $200,000 to $250,000 range, according to the report
Meg Roussos / The Bulletin
This home on NW Starview Drive on Awbrey Butte is on the market for $1.45 million. Sales of homes in Bend priced at $750,000 and above have increased.
Sales of homes for $750,000 and up more than doubles since 2012
By Joseph Ditzler / The Bulletin / @josefditzler
Published Sep 7, 2014 at 12:01AM
A panoramic view of the Cascade Mountains spills through a cathedral-style arched window into a living room in a château on Northwest Starview Drive, on Awbrey Butte in Bend.
A rooftop-solar system creates radiant heat for the floors. A room with a built-in dog bath sits just off the mud room, adjacent to the neatly appointed room dedicated to fly tying. The 5,712-square-foot home is for sale at $1.45 million.
Mountain views, fairways, wrap-around decks and river frontage are the hallmarks of high-end custom homes in Bend. While home prices continue to rise, luxury homes priced at $750,000 or more are still a value when contrasted with properties in towns similar to Bend, real estate brokers said.
“Compare (Bend) to any comparable resort town and you will not find the pricing you find here,” said Kerry Planegger, who put his four-bedroom home on Northwest Duffy Drive on the market for $1.04 million, or $131 per square foot.
The average price per square-foot in Bend comes to $195, according to Zillow.com, the online real-estate information site; and $182, according to Trulia.com, another real-estate website. The Multiple Listing Service reported a median sales price of $166 per square foot in Bend in July.
In Boulder, Colorado, population 103,000, Zillow places the average home price per square-foot at $324; Trulia places it at $354. In Mammoth Lakes, California, a town with a tenth the population of Bend, average price per square-foot comes to $313, according to Zillow, and $228, according to Trulia.
Planegger’s real estate broker, Laura Blossey, of Cascade Sotheby’s International Realty, agreed that high-end real estate can be a steal at prices that in some cases fall below the cost to replace that home on the same lot.
“Bend is just downright inexpensive, compared to the feeder markets: San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco,” she said.
The median price of a single-family home in the city climbed to $317,000 in July from a low of $166,000 in November 2011, and more homes, 523, sold in the $200,000-$250,000 price range in the year ending in July than from any other category.
Homes priced at $750,000 and above are also selling again, according to the Bratton Appraisal Group and the Central Oregon Multiple Listing Service.
Sixty-six homes priced at $750,000 and above sold in the 12 months from July 2013 to July 2014, 13 more than the preceding year and more than twice as many as sold in the year ending in July 2012. In the past 100 days, brokers have listed 39 properties with asking prices at or above $1 million, said broker Terry Skjersaa of Duke Warner Realty, in Bend.
High-end homes spend more days on market than less expensive properties, however, meaning the demand is low and property owners are holding out for their asking prices. Skjersaa calculated more than 20 months of inventory in homes in and around Bend listed at $1 million or more. Real estate brokers like to see four to six months of inventory, although the high-end market obeys its own dynamic.
Luxury homebuyers will wait for the right property; sellers, who sometimes own more than one property, often have no imperative to sell.
At Broken Top, the golf-course community on Bend’s west side, an unblemished ribbon of blacktop leads past manicured lawns, ponderosa pines and aspen trees to a contemporary style, two-story home of 3,730 square feet. Its 2-inch-thick front door opens into a living room, where floor-to-ceiling windows put the visitor nearly on a stretch of emerald green fairway outside.
The property owners, whom Blossey also represents, only live there three months out of the year, she said. They’re willing to wait for the buyer who meets their asking price, $1.8 million. Recent buyers have paid, on average, 94 percent of the asking price on homes listed for $1 million or more, Skjersaa said, basing his estimate on data from the Multiple Listing Service.
“I think the biggest thing that’s helped see the up-tick in the higher price range is other markets are loosening up and people being able to sell, and maybe fulfill their dreams and move to Bend,” he said.
Those feeder markets continue to supply newcomers with money to spare on high-end homes, he and other real estate brokers in Bend said. About half the buyers in the luxury home category, however, are locals looking to trade up from their existing homes into something custom built, with tree-screened privacy, vaulted ceilings and solid granite countertops.
“Many people are coming from Los Angeles, San Francisco or Seattle, where a million doesn’t buy much, and the value that we have in Bend for that price is over the top,” said real estate broker Becky Breeze, of Bend.
Interested buyers run the gamut from high-tech entrepreneurs no longer tied to one location for business, or commuting back and forth between a career in a larger city and a home in Bend, to wealthy clients looking for a second home, she said.
Out-of-town buyers in any price range arrive most often with a list of properties they wish to see, rather than asking local agents to show them something with the amenities they desire, brokers said. Internet research is the rule, they said, although brokers sometimes pierce buyers’ misconceptions about the availability of, say, riverfront property within walking distance of downtown.
Brokers like Blossey, who have access to franchise partners in other cities, network with their counterparts in those feeder markets to find prospective buyers, and use social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to advertise their listings.
“I have a huge stack of cards of Sotheby’s agents in other markets,” she said. “I went to three Sotheby’s offices in Los Angeles, and gave them an example of the homes in Bend. People were laughing; they couldn’t believe what you could buy here for ($1 million).”
Big-ticket homes in and around Bend range from 20-acre ranches to half-acre lots on Awbrey Butte, in Broken Top and elsewhere. Amenities, the backbone of the luxury home, range from wet bars to open floor plans to well-appointed kitchens.
Broker Cate Cushman of Bend Premier Real Estate listed William Todd’s home on Northwest Lakeside Place, north of downtown Bend, for sale at $1.8 million. It’s one of 89 homes for sale at or above $750,000 in July, according to the Bratton Appraisal Group.
Real estate brokers take sales figures for comparable properties, or “comps,” to establish the listing price for their clients’ properties. Cushman said the Todd property has few, if any, comps for its size and location so she partly relied on its unique setting to arrive at a price. Whoever buys the 4,050 square-foot home and its 0.9 acres will buy it for its 102 feet of property on a bluff overlooking the Deschutes River, she said.
Breeze represents the owner of a four-bedroom, 4,756 square-foot home on Northwest Morningwood Court, a rental that looks barely lived in, she said. The property last sold in July 2005 for about $200,000, according to Deschutes County property records. Today, it’s listed for $1.15 million.
“The market has made a nice comeback,” Breeze said. “It’s not skyrocketing by any stretch. Over the last three years, we’ve gotten rid of the short sales and repossessions in the area and we’re living normally again. The important thing is that people are able to sell where they’re living, pull that trigger that they would have liked to have pulled a long time ago, and move to our area.”
— Reporter: 541-617-7815, jditzler@bendbulletin.com
Prices increase 19 percent in second quarter, federal data show
Published Aug 26, 2014 at 11:59AM / Updated Aug 26, 2014 at 12:52PM
Deschutes County home prices continued to increase in value in the second quarter, rising 19 percent over the second quarter 2013, according to federal housing data released today.
The increase gave the Bend-Redmond Metropolitan Statistical Area, which comprises all of Deschutes County, the eighth-highest rate of home-price appreciation out of 276 MSAs nationwide, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s All-transactions House Price Index.
It also marked the fifth straight quarter Deschutes County’s housing prices showed double-digit percentage increases, according to the index, which tracks average price changes from repeat sales and refinancings on the same single-family properties.
For more on housing prices in Deschutes County, visit www.bendbulletin.com tomorrow or pick up The Bulletin.
Housing market in particular strongest in years
By Joseph Ditzler / The Bulletin / @josefditzler
Published Aug 24, 2014 at 12:02AM / Updated Aug 24, 2014 at 06:32AM
The Central Oregon economy is gaining ground it lost to the Great Recession, according to the Central Oregon Business Index for the second quarter.
“It looks very sustainable, a sustainable pattern of activity, much like we saw in that era prior to the bubble,” said Tim Duy, the University of Oregon economist who compiles the data for the index. “Some of the job growth has been remarkable. Five percent job growth year over year. … It’s really quite stunning.”
The index shows nonfarm payrolls increased to 68,100 employees, the highest employment number since summer 2007, when it stood at 71,500. The Oregon Employment Department on Aug. 18 reported a 5.1 percent increase in job numbers for the second quarter over the same quarter last year, slightly lower than the 5.2 percent in the index.
“A return to the pre-recession peak of 71,500 jobs is now in sight,” Duy wrote in his report.
The index, based on nine variables that include housing units sold, nonfarm payrolls and lodging tax revenue, stood at 124.2 for the second quarter. The benchmark index, 100, was measured in 1998. The first-quarter index measured 120.3, at the time an increase of 3.9 percent from fourth quarter 2013.
Duy described the recovery from the 2007 housing market collapse and subsequent recession as strong and broad based. Although tourism this summer grew predictably in Central Oregon, measured by an increase in hiring and lodging tax revenue, other sectors showed strength, too. Hiring in business and professional services, construction and health services showed steady gains, according to numbers released by the Employment Department.
“I’m just pretty darn impressed with this set of numbers,” Duy said. “You could almost sense in the air that this is an economy that is picking up speed fairly quickly.”
Signs that the housing sector is also gaining speed include an increase in numbers of residential units sold, a decline to 95.8 in the number of days those units spent on the market and a continued increase in the number of building permits issued in Deschutes County, according to the index.
Duy’s figures show 402 homes sold in Central Oregon in the second quarter, a peak-and-valley climb from a low of 177 in late 2007. The number of July home sales in Bend reached 237, up from a low of 101 in January, according to the Bratton Report, a compilation of real estate data from Bend and Redmond. That report showed a three-year high of 249 home sales in Bend in May 2013. In July, the median price of a single-family home in Bend reached $317,000, according to the Bratton Report.
Residential housing sales that slacked off elsewhere remained comparatively strong in the Bend area, Duy said. That phenomenon has less to do with investors picking up low-priced foreclosures, as it had in 2011-12, than it does with a strong housing recovery, he said.
“I don’t think you can play that off as so much bottom feeding, because prices have been higher as well,” he said. “There’s a fundamental interest in the region as an attractor of new residents.”
A healthy recovery could achieve equilibrium with a growth rate of 3 or 4 percent annually, with no further decline in new unemployment claims and stabilization in the number of days on the market for home sales and the number of building permits issued, Duy said.
“You can have equilibrium with a steady rate of growth,” he said.
While some may see signs of a growing bubble in real estate prices of the kind that precipitated the 2007 crash, Duy said he’s not concerned that Central Oregon is rushing toward another imminent recession. For one, the underlying cause of the recent crash, risky mortgage lending, is nearly nonexistent this time around, he said. The escalation in housing prices and numbers of homes sold, while steady, is not as hot as in 2006-07, he said.
“We know this housing recovery does not have the underlying weakness of the last housing boom,” Duy said. “Yes, interest rates are down, but you’re not seeing a surge in new mortgage purchases as a result of that. I don’t think it’s reached the level yet of something to be concerned about.”
— Reporter: 541-617-7815, jditzler@bendbulletin.com
Editor’s note: The Bulletin has partnered with the University of Oregon’s College of Arts and Sciences and Department of Economics to produce the Central Oregon Business Index. The index provides a regular snapshot of the region’s economy using economic models consistent with national standards. The index, exclusive to The Bulletin, appears quarterly in the Sunday Business section.
Plan suggests buildings with shops, condos on Arizona Avenue
By Joseph Ditzler / The Bulletin / @josefditzler
Published Aug 20, 2014 at 12:01AM
Greg Broderick has a vision for a narrow stretch of property along Arizona Avenue that today holds what’s left of a Burlington Northern Santa Fe rail spur.
Broderick, a real estate broker with Hasson Company Realtors, bought the property, a strip 48 feet wide and 735 feet long near NW Lava Road, for $80,000 from the railroad on Aug. 8. On the site, Broderick foresees four buildings, each three or four stories tall, with retail on the ground floors and high-end, one- or two-bedroom condominiums on the upper floors, according to rough plans he sketched out for city planners. Broderick is scheduled to meet today with planners to discuss the project.
Zoning
“I’m glad to say we will meet the desire of the city for commercial zoning, high density,” Broderick said. “That’s the intended purpose of (CG) General Commercial; they want to see high density.”
The area is zoned light industrial, but the Bend General Plan allows general commercial development there, said Craig Chenoweth, development services coordinator for the Bend Community Development Department. The developer must request a zone change through a public hearing process, he wrote in an email.
A city hearings officer in 2010, for example, granted Eugene-based Market of Choice its request to rezone to general commercial a light-industrial property directly across Arizona Avenue from Broderick’s tract. The grocery chain has yet to build there. Broderick sees his plan as complementary to Market of Choice and existing uses in the neighborhood.
“We’re in a position to set the tone on the east side of Arizona,” he said. “It’s something that myself and the city can be proud of when it’s done.”
Higher-priced lofts
Broderick said the ground floor of each building could accommodate coffee shops, pubs, restaurants or similar uses. Above, each floor would hold two residential units of 700 to 1,000 square feet each. He described lofts in a style common in Seattle or San Francisco, at similar prices.
“And definitely because of the caliber of construction, the quality of construction, the price has to be higher on those,” he said Monday.
His preliminary plans show two 30-foot-wide driveways off Arizona Avenue into two parking lots, each with space for 13 vehicles. Chenoweth said the city prefers one access point at each site, but circumstances sometimes dictate more than one. The city looks closely at access points on streets that carry large amounts of traffic.
If Broderick’s plans for commercial and residential development prove impractical, he said, he might build storage units on the site instead.
— Reporter: 541-617-7815, jditzler@bendbulletin.com