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Oregon Road Conditions & Cams Email Story to a Friend April 13, 2006 Central Oregon's housing boom rages on Median home prices continue to rise in fast-growing Bend: good news for investors, bad news for lower-income hopeful homeowners The Associated Press BEND — Shane Welsh and Mike Milichichi are on different sides of the Central Oregon housing boom. Six years ago, Milichichi and his wife, Barbie, scraped to make a down payment on their first house, a $137,000 place on the east side of Bend. Their asking price this spring: $329,000, enough, they hope, to afford a 10-acre site with a manufactured home near Eagle Crest. "I would never have dreamed that prices would go this high," Barbie Milichichi said this week. "But we're happy." Welsh, meanwhile, spent Tuesday working a flagman's job for a Cascade Natural Gas crew installing lines into a new subdivision. Though the job pays an average of $15 per hour during the busy summer months, Welsh said he and his girlfriend can barely afford their $620-a-month rent, much less save for the high price of local property. Welsh, 22, fears he might never be able to buy. Advertisement "Could be worse," Welsh said. "Could be raining." The median price of a Bend single-family home, the price at which half are higher and half are lower, reached $327,500 by the end of the first quarter this year, up 30.5 percent from the first quarter of 2005, according to the Central Oregon Association of Realtors. The Redmond median hit $238,000, up 38.6 percent in the last year. Prices in La Pine jumped 18.8 percent, and median prices spiked 35.9 percent and 33.8 percent, respectively, in lower-priced Jefferson and Crook counties. It's no surprise that year-to-year numbers are up, since the last three quarters of last year brought a record-breaking surge in home prices. But the pace of the increases has barely slowed in the first three months of this year. Median prices in Bend have risen 6.3 percent since the fourth quarter of 2005, according to the Multiple Listing Service of Central Oregon. Redmond's prices are up 6.7 percent. In Crook County, where new subdivisions are sprouting in Prineville, the median is up 1.8 percent. Only in La Pine, where new subdivisions also are adding to the housing stock, are prices down since the fourth quarter of 2005. The median price there has slipped about 6.5 percent to $154,000. But sales volumes are nearly twice what they were a year ago, jumping from 17 homes in the first quarter of 2005 to 31 in the first quarter of 2006. The demand for Central Oregon property — driven by people selling out of higher-priced markets like California, and by local buyers cashing out equities to buy bigger homes — is pricing out many families, or making them take on an enormous amount of debt. The Milichichis needed four years to get into their first home after they moved to town a decade ago. But Barbie and Mike, the owner of a small construction company that specializes in interior finish work, found the key to their first-time house in a sweat-equity program that allowed them to save by putting their own work into the construction. Could they have done it at today's prices? "No," Barbie Milichichi said. "No." ___ Information from: The Bulletin, " target="_blank">http://www.bendbulletin.com Mail Tribune Home | Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life | Opinion AP News | Archives | Site Map | Community | Classified Copyright © 1997-2006 Mail Tribune, Inc. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions | Website Feedback www.bingo.com Home Security Systems Trunks, Footlocker Custom Build Computers Computer Security Discount Hotel Reservations online casinos news Send Flowers California Casinos GMAT Prep Windermere Van Vleet Deep Muscle Stimulator Sports Equipment Online Casino Reviews Hammocks Online Bingo Entertainment Guide Online Casino Fundraisers Sudoku Online Casinos Canada Email Security Advertisement s Advertisement