1,500 new apartments on the way in Bend, Oregon

6/19/2017 (Permalink)

The housing crisis in Bend may soon have some relief.

Applications to build apartment complexes rose from nearly nothing between 2004 and 2013 to about 1,000 units proposed in the past 1½ years in June. Applications for more than 500 more have been filed in the last few months.

The surge in applications is still lagging behind the demand for new rental housing. The Central Oregon Rental Owners Association annual spring survey of rental vacancies and average rents in Central Oregon found an overall vacancy rate of 1.6 percent for large apartment complexes in Bend and 1.4 percent for those with five units or fewer.