Report: Bend-Redmond still one of the top draws in U.S.

The Bend-Redmond metro area is seventh in the nation in a ranking of urban areas Americans are most relocating to — and the only one in the top 10 not in the Southeast U.S., according to an analysis of new Census Bureau data.

Business Insider recently looked at the new Census Bureau estimates of population change and its causes for the nation’s 381 metropolitan statistical areas, or MSAs.

One major factor in population change is “net domestic migration” — the difference between the number of people moving into an area, vs. those moving out. The website mapped net domestic migration in the year ended July 2015 as a percentage of the estimated 2014 population.

As it turns out, most metro areas saw net negative migration, but eight of the spots with more folks arriving than leaving were in Florida, topped by The Villages, at 6.3 percent for that year.

The Bend-Redmond metro area, which is all of Deschutes County, saw 4,289 net domestic migration, which represents 2.5 percent of the total 2014 population of 170,397.

Bend, meanwhile, is Oregon’s fastest growing city of at least 50,000 residents, at 3.4 percent, according to another Business Insider report.

As for the metro areas with the most departures (the largest net minus migration) Farmington, New Mexico was No. 1, losing 6,116 people, or nearly 5 percent of its 123,990 residents as of July 2014.

The continued draw of the Bend-Redmond metro area also was evident in last week’s house price appreciation numbers for the first quarter of the year, from the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

Bend ranked third among all U.S. metro areas in the one-year ranking of home price appreciation, at 14.09 percent, topped only by Port St. Lucie, Florida at 14.68 percent and Boulder, Colorado at 14.44 percent.

Bend’s house price index (including purchases and refinancing) rose 2.78 percent in the first quarter of the year, and it saw nearly 70 percent appreciation over the past five years, ahead of every other metro area in the U.S. top 20, FHFA reported.

Also, Oregon saw the largest house-price appreciation (purchase-only) of the 50 states, at 11.77 percent, followed by Florida, Washington, Nevada and Colorado.