Skip to main content

Hailey Works to Increase Housing

By April 19, 2017March 3rd, 2022News
Housing

Photo by Roland Lane (Mountain Express)

On April 14th, the Idaho Mountain Express, the Wood River Valley’s local newspaper, had a comprehensive article on the current housing situation in the Valley.

At ARCH, we believe that we’re in the grip of a very serious housing shortage and we’re not the only ones with that point of view. Our friends at Blaine County Housing Authority agree, and the city of Hailey is making efforts to address the rising crisis. We’re specifically seeing the shortage in the low to mid-income range.

Currently, the average rental price for a three-bedroom house in Hailey, has climbed 74% since 2011. Not only has the cost of rentals increased, but the amount of rentals on the market has decreased by 39% since 2011.

Only a short 6 years ago Blaine Country was in the middle of a housing crash. This quickly became a free fall, there were over 365 mortgage defaults in the Wood River Valley. Many of those homeowners lost their homes to the banks through foreclosures, or sold through short sales with massively reduced housing prices.

ARCH tried to purchase many, many foreclosed properties, but we were rarely successful. Most of the time, we were unable to get our hands on these properties because we were being outbid by investors who made all-cash, no contingency offers on multiple units at a time. By the time the Federal Government delivered a program that would help us acquire these properties the crisis was all but over.

As a result of many of the foreclosures, previous homeowners turned into renters. 48 percent of the Woodside foreclosures were acquired by investors rather than families.

For the complete article, head on over to mtexpress.com!