Risk Vs. Reward: Bend, Oregon Real Estate Values...Second Installment!

This is the second installment in a series article written by David Pease of The Garner Group Real Estate in Bend, Oregon. To read the first installment see our blog post from last week. The article in its entirety originally appeared in Bend, Oregon's newspaper, The Bulletin.

Bend displays evidence that all real estate is local.

“Don’t be unduly influenced by national news reports describing a housing Armageddon,” Sandy Garner of The Garner Group advised. “By definition, they don’t reflect local or even regional conditions. Reports come from different sources on different days. It’s a classic example of mixing apples and oranges.”

Even within Bend there are market fluctuations. NorthWest Crossing, the Bend, Oregon neighborhood where The Garner Group is headquartered, has created an environment that is attracting builders and home buyers, and supporting prices, on a scale not measured elsewhere.

As documented previously in The Bulletin, 48 of the 62 single-family building permit requests filed with the city during the first six months of 2011 were for homes in NorthWest Crossing. The neighborhood marketed as Shevlin Pines was second, with 13 permits.

Freddie Mac statistics show annual average commitment rates for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages peaked at 16.63% in 1981 and did not recede into single digits until 1991, when the annual average was 9.25%.

Rates have largely been below five per cent in 2010 and so far in 2011. The rate for June was 4.51 per cent.

We have one last installment of this article series coming next week!