The Bend, Oregon rental market continues to show signs of strength as we head into the winter months. The good news for real estate investors is it looks like this strength will continue well into next year and beyond.
Over the last month and a half Preferred Residential has had four vacancies. Three of those were single family homes and one was a duplex. All of them rented within a week of becoming available and none of them sat vacant for more than five days. Not only did we not have trouble renting them we were able to raise the rent an average of 15 percent. It should be noted that part of what accounted for the large increase in rent was that the previous tenants had lived in the houses for more than two years and the owners had been content to leave the rents as they were.
The way the Bend real estate market was looking back in the spring it appeared prices were headed to a level that would make it tougher for real estate investors to add new properties to their portfolios. As of this writing that doesn’t seem to have happened. We have two clients who have made purchases recently with minimum required down payments. One purchase was a four-plex and the other was a single family home. Both properties produced positive cash flow right out the box.
Even if home prices do continue to rise, the Bend real estate market should continue to be a good place to be invested for the foreseeable future. A recent survey by Credit.com found that 28 percent of Americans said the American Dream is to retire financially secure at age 65 and 23 percent defined it as being debt free. Only 18 percent of those surveyed said they thought the American Dream to own a home. Owning a home no longer has the same lure that it once did.
Let’s consider that for a minute, owning a home is not the top priority for more than 51% of Americans. This should be music to the ears of real estate investors. Now is a great time to be invested in Bend, Oregon real estate. If sentiment changes and owning a home once again becomes the American Dream the strong rental market may soften but you will have made money on your rental over that time period and the influx of buyers will mean higher prices if you decide to sell. Call Preferred Residential today to discuss your Bend real estate investment options.
Here are some more reasons illustrating why Bend is a great place to invest in real estate.