If you're cross-shopping Central Oregon right now, you've probably run into the same two headlines. Redmond's median sale price cooled earlier this year. Prineville's shot up nearly 17 percent. On paper, that reads like Prineville is the smarter play and Redmond is losing steam.
I'd flip that read entirely. The number that actually matters here isn't the price change. It's how long homes are sitting once they're listed, and that number is telling two very different stories about how sustainable each market's growth really is.
What the headline numbers hide
Prineville's median sales price reached $449,450 in February 2026, up 16.89 percent from $384,500 the year before, the strongest year-over-year gain tracked anywhere in Central Oregon. The engine behind it isn't a mystery. Meta and Apple's data center campuses on the rimrock above town have created genuine, well-paid, long-term employment, and every electrician, HVAC technician, and support-business hire that comes with it needs somewhere to live in a town that was never built for this kind of demand.
Redmond's numbers, over the same stretch of 2026, looked tamer. Trackers following the spring market showed the median sale price dipping to roughly $470,000 over the three months ending in May, down about 10 percent from a year earlier. Taken alone, that looks like a market losing momentum while its neighbor to the east catches fire.
Here's the piece that gets lost. By late summer, Redmond's market had already tightened back up. As of August 31, 2026, there were 34 active listings against 51 pending sales in the Redmond 97756 zip code, a pending-to-active ratio of 1.50 that points to a seller's market rather than a cooling one. Over the trailing six months through that date, the median closed sale price sat at $475,000, with half of all sales landing between $410,000 and $624,000. Zillow's own tracker, updated at the end of July, put the average home value at $517,100, down a modest 0.6 percent year over year, with homes still going pending in about 26 days.
Redmond didn't crash. It dipped in the spring and found its footing again by summer. Prineville, meanwhile, kept climbing on paper while something underneath it started to strain.
The number that actually predicts trouble
Prineville's average cumulative days on market hit 127 in February 2026, up 76 percent from 72 days the year before. That's the detail worth sitting with. A market where prices rise and days on market rise together isn't a market getting stronger. It's a market where sellers are pricing to the boom story while buyers are taking longer to decide the number makes sense.
Redmond's tightening pending-to-active ratio moved in the opposite direction from its price. Prices softened, then homes started moving faster again. That's a market clearing itself. Prineville's prices and its selling times climbed in lockstep, which is closer to a market backing up.
Some of that friction is showing up in how it feels to do business downtown. Karl Wilkerson, co-owner of Dad's Place, a longtime breakfast and lunch spot on Prineville's Main Street, told a Central Oregon reporter this summer that rising wages tied to the data center boom have driven up his own costs to run the diner. "To me it hurts the economy, it doesn't help the economy," he said. That's one shop owner's experience, not a verdict on the whole town, but it's a useful reminder that a single-industry boom doesn't lift every cost line evenly.
There's also a clock running on Prineville's tax picture. Both the Meta and Apple campuses were built under 15-year enterprise-zone property tax exemptions, and those exemptions are set to begin expiring in 2027. That's expected to bring a meaningful tax windfall to Crook County, which is good news for the city's budget. It's also a reminder that some of what's currently propping up the local economic story has an expiration date attached to it.
What's underneath Redmond's steadier number
Redmond's job base doesn't have one dominant employer the way Prineville's data center campuses do, and that's the actual mechanism behind its calmer price behavior. The clearest current example is happening at Roberts Field, Redmond's own airport.
The city is midway through a $180 million terminal expansion, funded through FAA grants, airport revenue bonds, and airline and passenger fees, not local property taxes. When it opens in November 2027, the project adds more than 80,000 square feet of terminal space and is projected to create 207 new permanent jobs across airline operations, TSA, concessions, rental car counters, and airport staff, with an estimated $39 million in annual local economic impact. Tailwind was selected to run the new concessions program and will operate Sisters Coffee, Bend Brewing Company, Sparrow Bakery, and Peet's Coffee & Tea inside the terminal once it opens.
That project sits alongside employers Redmond already had before the airport expansion was announced: aerospace casting manufacturer PCC Structurals and the regional hospital system St. Charles Redmond among them. None of those alone would move a housing market the way a hyperscale data center campus does. Together, they spread demand across healthcare, manufacturing, logistics, and aviation instead of stacking it all on one industry's construction schedule and tax-abatement clock.
Here's how the two markets actually compare on the numbers that matter most:
| Redmond (as of August 2026) | Prineville (as of February 2026) | |
|---|---|---|
| Median sale price | $475,000 over the trailing six months | $449,450, up 16.89% year over year |
| Market pace | Pending-to-active ratio of 1.50, homes going pending in roughly 26 days per Zillow | Average cumulative days on market: 127, up 76% year over year |
| Demand driver | Diversified employers: airport expansion, aerospace manufacturing, healthcare | Concentrated employers: Meta and Apple data center construction and operations |
Why the funding source is the detail buyers skip past
One more thing worth flagging for anyone weighing where to put money down. Because Redmond's terminal project draws on FAA funding, airport revenue, and airline fees rather than a local bond measure, it isn't the kind of public project that typically shows up as a new line item on a homeowner's tax bill the way a school bond or a city infrastructure levy would. That's a meaningfully different risk profile than a boomtown economy where a handful of large employers carry an outsized share of both the job growth and the eventual tax exposure once their abatements run out.
None of this means Prineville is a bad place to buy. Real, durable jobs have moved there, and the population growth behind those jobs is genuine. It means the price line by itself doesn't tell you which market is actually more resilient. The days-on-market line does, and right now it's telling a story that favors Redmond's steadier, less concentrated growth over Prineville's sharper, more exposed spike.
Quick answers
Does the Redmond airport expansion mean my property taxes will go up? Not directly. The $180 million project is funded through FAA grants, airport revenue bonds, and airline and passenger fees, not a local property tax increase.
Is Prineville still a good place to buy an investment property? The underlying job growth is real, but the 127-day average time on market as of February 2026, up sharply from the year before, is a sign that pricing has run ahead of what buyers are willing to absorb quickly. Anyone considering it should factor in that pace alongside the price trend, not just the price trend alone.
If you're trying to figure out which Central Oregon market actually fits your budget and your risk tolerance, that's exactly the kind of comparison I spend my days running for clients. Reach out to Kenzie Carlstrom and let's walk through the numbers for your specific situation, whether that's a first purchase in Redmond, an investment property near Prineville, or a move that starts with selling a home you already own.
