BEND, OR -- With low commercial vacancy rates and a shrinking inventory of buildable land in Central Oregon, experts say it’s a seller’s market. And Pat Kesgard, with Compass Commercial Real Estate, says timing is everything, "A number of investors bought properties in 2009, 2010, 2011, because it was a steal. And so now – a perfect example: I sold a building [in Bend] late last year, he paid $800,000 for it; he sold it for $1.8 million."

According to Kesgard, the current economic cycle is very similar to what the region saw in 2006, "When you look at where we are today: increasing interest rates, people have survived the downturn – those that did, they’re starting to sit there and go, ‘OK, when are we going to hit the peak of the bell-curve and start to go down? What are my options? What can I consider doing?’." Despite the similarities with a decade ago, Kesgard doesn’t believe we’re headed for another real estate bubble, "You have to qualify for loans now, banks can’t just arbitrarily take a high concentration of raw real estate land to be developed; so there are so many things in place, if there’s a bubble, it’s going to come from someplace else. It’s not going to come from housing; it’s not going to come from the lenders being over-leveraged in a certain category."