Bend Housing Market Poised For Turnaround?
Believe it or not — argue over it or not — one national report says Bend’s housing market will have the nation’s second-best growth rate over the next five years.
“The time to buy in Bend is now,” said the Website businessinsider.com, as it ranked Best 15 Housing Markets in the Next Five Years, based on data provided by Fiserv Case Shiller Indexes.
Second only to Carson City, Nevada, Bend (presumably the Bend Metropolitan Area, defined by the Census Bureau as all of Deschutes County) is projected to have annualized housing-price growth over the next five years of 11.7 percent.
Bend’s housing “market is projected to trough in Q3 before several years of accelerating growth,” the online list said, noting, “Home prices are down over 42 percent from peak.”
The rest of the Top 5: Medford, Ore., Napa, Calif and Flagstaff, Ariz.
These are places, the report says, “where the housing market is growing, and could provide you with some nice returns. Nationally, houses are appreciating on an average of 3.7 percent, all of these cities have markets appreciating at over 8 percent.”
The report notes that the list is mostly small cities, with growth “concentrated heavily in the Pacific Northwest and central Florida.”
Many of the comments online since the story was posted last week take issue with their findings, and one by “PGB” is quite skeptical about Bend’s inclusion, pointing to a record number of default notices filed in the Bend area in April.
“Not sure how Bend is going to bottom in Q3 with it looking like next winter-spring will have record numbers of foreclosures on the market,” the commenter said. “Add in the continued 14 percent-plus unemployment and I don’t see a rebound happening there any time soon.”
By the way, in a separate list of the 15 worst housing markets, the worst place to invest is listed as Miami, Fla.
