Central Oregon market insight

Last week I took a call about a tenant's washing machine overflowing and flooding the upstairs, with water coming through the ceiling below, while standing in the Costco parking lot, holding a cart, two children by my side, and a rotisserie chicken that was slowly heating my back seat. I called my trusted restoration company, and they scheduled with the tenant within minutes to arrive the same day to mitigate the water damage. Of course, there was more to do in the days to come, but that is property management in a nutshell, and after twenty years of it in Central Oregon, I have opinions.

I am starting this blog because I want to share what I have learned in my twenty years in property management in Central Oregon with you. What are the numbers and what are they showing us. What are homeowners doing when they want to rent. How is the rental market. Numbers are useful. So, each week I am going to give you the straight skinny on Central Oregon, plus what it means for you if you own a rental here, rent here, or lie awake wondering whether you should sell.

What houses are actually selling for right now

Bend's median sale price sits right around $704,000 for the three months ending in May, down about 6.4% from a year ago. Zillow's broader home value index lands a little higher, near $726,000, and shows a similar year-over-year dip. Price per square foot, meanwhile, ticked up about 1.4% to roughly $386.

Read that again, because it matters. Prices per square foot went up while median prices went down. That tells me the mix of what sold shifted, not that Bend homes suddenly lost value. Smaller and mid-range homes moved. The trophy properties sat. Anyone yelling "crash" is reading the median and skipping the fine print.

Volume backs that up. Bend closed 525 homes in May, up from 470 the year before. More houses sold, not fewer.

Inventory has loosened to somewhere between three and four months of supply depending on whose report you read, which is the closest thing to a balanced market we have seen here since roughly the invention of the sourdough starter. Homes are moving in about three to six weeks on average, though that average hides a lot: some sell in a weekend, and a stubborn chunk have been sitting for four months and counting.

Redmond is the story I am watching hardest. Median sale price there is around $470,000, down roughly 10% year over year, at about $304 per square foot. Homes are selling in under a month. Redmond has always been Central Oregon's value play, and right now the value got louder.

Two more numbers you will not see on a billboard. Cash transactions in the Bend area climbed from about 23% last year to roughly 33% this spring. And in-migration has slowed hard, with Bend's population growing around 1.5% a year now compared to the roughly 9% spurt earlier this decade. Fewer new arrivals, more cash buyers. That is a market being repriced by people who already live here, not by a stampede from California.

What the rental side looks like

Here is where owners need to pay attention, because sales headlines and rental reality are not the same animal.

Median asking rent in Bend runs about $2,100 a month, down roughly 4% from last year. Single-family houses pull a median closer to $2,600, while apartments sit near $1,795. Apartment surveys tell a slightly different story, showing average apartment rents around $1,909 and up about 5% year over year. Redmond's median lands near $1,895.

So, which is it, up or down? Both. Apartments are holding and climbing. Single-family rents, especially the ones priced ambitiously in 2024, have softened. I am seeing well-maintained three-bedroom homes lease quickly at a fair number and identical homes priced $200 too high sit empty for six weeks. Six weeks of vacancy on a $2,600 house costs you about $3,600. To chase an extra $200 a month, you would need almost a year and a half of that higher rent just to break even.

Do not do that. Please. I have watched owners do that for two decades and it never once penciled out.

The tenant pool here is real, by the way. Renters make up close to 38% of Bend households. This is not a market where renters are scarce. It is a market where renters are informed, they have Zillow open on their phone, and they will absolutely notice that your listing has been up since Memorial Day.

What I am telling owners this month

Price to lease, not to impress. Get the home rented at market and keep it occupied. Occupancy is the whole game.

Spend the money on the small stuff. Fresh paint, working blinds, a functional dishwasher, and a yard that does not look feral will beat a $150 price cut every time.

If you have been quietly wondering whether to sell, know that you are selling into a market with more inventory and pickier buyers than we have seen in years. That is not a reason to panic. It is a reason to prepare, and to be realistic about what your neighbor's Zestimate means, which is very little.

And if you are thinking about buying a rental, look hard at Redmond. Lower entry price, tight rental demand, better yield math. I have been saying this for a while now and the numbers keep agreeing with me, which is honestly my favorite thing that can happen.

The bottom line

Central Oregon is not crashing, and it is not booming. It is normalizing, which is a boring word for a genuinely healthy thing. Prices are flat to slightly down, inventory is up, rents are holding, and the people who do this thoughtfully are doing just fine.

I have run rentals here through a recession, a pandemic, a boom, and whatever we are calling this. The owners who win are the ones who stay organized, price honestly, and take care of their properties and their tenants. That has never changed.