Bend-Redmond 2016 home price rise No. 8 in U.S.

The Bend-Redmond metro area was once again in the top 10 list of U.S. cities in home-price appreciation for 2016, despite a nearly flat fourth quarter, federal statistics showed Thursday.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency listed Bend-Redmond (a metro area that encompasses all of Deschutes County) as having the eighth-fastest rate of home-price appreciation last year, at 10.88 percent.

Even though the fourth-quarter statistic shows the county’s home prices only rose 0.19 percent, the five-year price rise was still a whopping 75.38 percent, one of the highest rates in the top 20 cities list.

Meanwhile, Oregon ranked first in home-price appreciation for the year, up nearly 11 percent, ahead of No. 2 Colorado, followed by Florida, Washington and Nevada. In the fourth quarter, Oregon’s home prices rose 3 percent, also among the highest and double the national increase of 1.5 percent, the FHFA reported. The five-year price rise for Oregon homes topped 56 percent – and they rose nearly 284 percent since early 1991, the data showed.

But that’s all before January, when snow hit the High Desert in full force — and gave home sales a more-than-typical fall for the start of the year.

“The town not only shut down, but so did the real estate market,” Realtor Rob Eggers of Duke Warner Realty wrote Thursday in his monthly update.

Bend home sales last month plunged 25 percent from a year ago on Bend’s Westside and 11 percent on the Eastside, Eggers said.

New listings also took a big fall, so the inventory of homes for sale remained very low, at 1.75 months. Eggers said that also “makes sellers more reluctant to list their homes, because they are fearful that they will not be able to find a replacement.”:

Eggers said he expects “a decent bump of inventory this spring” as warmer weather arrives, and it “may be further fueled by some who want to leave the area altogether, after experiencing this deep, white winter!”