OFM April 1, 2017 Population Report

The OFM just released their April 1, 2017 population and housing stock estimate.  They do this once a year.  Given the apparent shortage of housing in Clark County, I was particularly interested in the ratios between the population and numbers of different types of houses in Vancouver and Clark County.

As most people in the industry would have guessed, there are far fewer homes-per-person in Clark County and Vancouver than there have been in many years.  Once again, the builders did not build enough homes of any kind to keep up with the demand driven by population growth.

Below is a summary of some of the information I pulled from the report:


Clark County:

Population Up 2.17%
·                     Population in 2017:  471,000
·                     Increase of 9,990 people

Housing Units Up 2.13%
·                     Housing Units in 2017: 181,287
·                     Increase of 3,792 housing units (most since 2006)

Clark County Housing Shortage
·                     Fewest housing units per person since at least 1990
·                     Fewest single-family units per person since 2000
·                     Multi-family units per person up from 2016 – No apparent shortage of multi-family homes


Vancouver

Population up 1.8%
·                     Vancouver Population in 2016:  173,500
·                     Increase of 3,100 people

Housing Units Up 0.9%
·                     Housing Units in 2016: 74,368
·                     Increase of 1282 housing units

Vancouver Housing Shortage
·                     Housing Units per person up from 2016
·                     Second fewest housing units per person since at least 2001
·                     Fewest single-family units per person since 1996 annexation

·                     Most multi-family units per person since the 1996 annexation

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