[jyl]

Portland SFH market is pretty hot. I think we are the second highest growth rate in prices after Seattle. Our MFD market has been hot too, apartment buildings popping up all over. However, the MFD market may be showing. Apartment rent growth rate has slowed from >10% annually to flattish, the new projects are offering 1-2 months free rent and other incentives. Hard to tell since we're starting the seasonally slow period, but the SFH market may be slowing a bit.

The increase in housing prices over the past several years has been good for homeowners but tough on renters and first time homebuyers. Increasing social and political tension. The developer community has used the rising prices and shortage of affordable housing to push for changes that make development more profitable, like eliminating requirements that apartment buildings have parking, re-zoning SFH neighborhoods to MFD, increasing permitted density. But at the same time, development is getting more expensive with sub and labor shortages. So the end effect is that what gets built remains the expensive, higher-end stuff . . . And even as we are starting to see an oversupply of that, we're seeing ever-increasing shortage of affordable (low and mid-range) stuff.