Bend's Housing Target: What the Numbers Are and Where They Come From

Bend is planning for more housing than it has ever built, on a schedule set by the state. This guide is what the numbers actually are, where they come from, and what they mean for someone buying or selling here, updated with the figures published through 2026. Anything we could not trace to the city, the county, the state, or the Census Bureau is not in it.

Two targets, not one

Bend's adopted 2016 Comprehensive Plan, which still governs today, identified a need for 17,234 new housing units by 2028. Oregon's newer Housing Needs Analysis, run by the state's Office of Economic Analysis, assigns each city a twenty-year production target. In its December 2025 results report the twenty-year target for Bend's urban growth boundary is 34,116 units, with a one-year target of 2,010. The state number is roughly double the plan Bend is operating under. The city will have to update its plan to the state target, and we have not found a published adoption date, so we are not printing one.

What Bend actually builds

The Census Bureau's Building Permits Survey counts the units cities authorize. For calendar 2025, the City of Bend authorized 646 new single-family units, and all permit-issuing jurisdictions in Deschutes County together authorized 1,166. The state's one-year target for Bend, 2,010 units of all types, is above what the city permitted in single-family homes last year, and the twenty-year target works out to about 1,700 units a year. Closing that gap is the whole housing debate in Bend: where the land comes from, what gets built on it, and who pays for the pipes and roads to reach it.

Who the housing is for

Portland State University's Population Research Center certified Bend's population at 107,079 as of July 1, 2025, up from 99,312 at the 2020 census base. That growth is the demand side of the target. The supply side is constrained by the urban growth boundary, the state line around the city that decides where urban development can go.

The urban growth boundary and Caldera Ranch

In 2024 the Oregon legislature passed Senate Bill 1537, which let cities add land to their urban growth boundaries for housing outside the normal process, with an affordability requirement attached. On December 4, 2024, the Bend City Council selected the Caldera Ranch site in southeast Bend, near Knott Road and Caldera High School, as eligible for that expansion. As of the city's project page in April 2026, the site had not yet been added to the boundary. The applicant had submitted the boundary amendment and comprehensive plan amendment, and city staff were reviewing it. We have not verified a newer status or the final unit counts on the city's own pages, so the figures reported in the press for that project are not repeated here. When the city publishes the staff report, this page will carry the numbers from it.

What it means if you are buying

New supply in Bend comes on in subdivisions on the east and southeast sides and, when the boundary expansions land, on the edges. A buyer who wants a newer home has more choice in those areas each year, and the new construction guide covers how to buy one with your own broker. A buyer who wants the close-in west side is competing for a fixed stock of older homes, which is why that side holds a price premium. Westside vs eastside explains the trade.

What it means if you are selling

New construction is your competition in the east-side subdivisions, and it comes with builder incentives. A resale home there sells on lot, condition, and price against the builder's all-in number. On the west side, the constraint on supply is the seller's advantage, and the pricing question is about the comps, not the pipeline. How to price your Bend home covers it.

Questions

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Get listing alerts for Bend to see new subdivisions as they list, or Value my home if you are selling into that pipeline.