Rental Property in Oregon: What the Numbers Actually Look Like

Oregon has a wildfire problem and, on the face of the policy, no wildfire deductible.

That is genuinely unusual and it is worth understanding why. Oregon is not among the nineteen states plus D.C. that the Insurance Information Institute identifies as having hurricane or named-storm deductibles, which is unsurprising. But it also has no separate percentage wildfire deductible in the admitted market and no statute creating one, and separate wind-and-hail deductibles are rare here too — Insurify's May 2026 hail study measures Oregon's average wind/hail deductible at 0.68% of dwelling coverage, among the lowest in the country. Wildfire in Oregon is settled as an ordinary fire loss under the policy's standard all-perils deductible, which is $1,000.

Compare that to Colorado, where the same house would carry a separate wind-and-hail deductible of 2% of the dwelling limit — $6,000 on a $300,000 policy. Oregon's $1,000 is not a rounding difference. It is a different structure.

The premium is cheap too. $1,484 a year at $300,000 of dwelling coverage is the lowest in this batch — 5.38% of gross rent on the example below, and only 13.48% of total operating expenses.

So the expense that decides an Oregon rental is property tax. At 0.81% the bill on the statewide median is $4,223.08 — 2.85 times the insurance premium. Oregon is the exact mirror image of Florida, where insurance is 2.6 times the tax bill. And the county-level spread in tax rates is the widest in this batch by a distance.

If you take one thing from this article: in Oregon, the tax rate for the specific county is the number to get right, and the insurance question is about availability rather than price.

A note before you start: this is general educational information about how rental property arithmetic works in Oregon. It is not investment, tax, insurance, or legal advice, and it is not a recommendation about any property. Oregon property tax is administered county by county and Oregon's assessment system is not a simple percentage of market value — see Section 2. Oregon also has a statewide framework governing residential rent increases and terminations that is not covered here and that you must not take from an article. Talk to an Oregon CPA about tax treatment, a licensed Oregon insurance agent about a real quote, and an Oregon real estate attorney about anything contractual.

1. What a rental costs to buy here

The statewide median sale price is $521,368 (Redfin, June 2026, down 1.4% year over year). Houzeo's live MLS data reads $507,600 for the same period, and a smoothed home-value index reads about $504,432 — deliberately not used, because it is a different kind of number.

County medians:

• Multnomah County (Portland): $506,000, effective property tax rate 0.98%, average insurance $1,152
• Washington County (Beaverton, Hillsboro): $564,000, effective property tax rate 0.84%, average insurance $1,189

Note that Multnomah's premium of $1,152 is the cheapest county insurance figure anywhere in this batch of seven Western states, and its 0.98% tax rate is nearly the highest county rate in Oregon. Section 5 works out how that trade lands.

The cash you actually need

Oregon prohibits state and local real estate transfer taxes. ORS 306.815 bars them outright. There is exactly one grandfathered exception: Washington County retains a pre-existing local transfer tax of 0.1% of sale price, which predates the statewide ban. On the Washington County median of $564,000 that is $564. Everywhere else in Oregon the figure is zero.

There is also no Oregon mortgage recording tax, intangible tax, or mortgage registry tax — confirmed as an absence rather than left unchecked. Only flat county recording fees apply. (Nationally, only Florida and Georgia levy an intangible tax on mortgages.)

Closing costs run 2% to 5% of purchase price on the inclusive buyer range, with ClosingCorp-sourced data putting the Oregon average nearer 2.83%. This article uses a 3.5% midpoint.

On the $521,368 statewide median at 25% down:

• Down payment: $521,368 x 0.25 = $130,342
• Loan amount: $391,026
• Closing costs: $521,368 x 3.5% = $18,247.88
• Transfer tax: $0 outside Washington County
• Total cash in: $148,589.88

On price growth: FHFA's purchase-only index has Oregon at +0.57% year over year (Q1 2025 to Q1 2026, ranked 37th among states). Positive and close to flat.

2. The two expenses that decide whether it works

Property tax: the largest single operating expense, and the one with the widest county spread

The Tax Foundation puts Oregon's effective property tax rate on owner-occupied housing at 0.81%, ranked 24th nationally and about 12% below the national average of 0.92%. Other sources in the aggregated range read 0.78% to 0.93%.

On the $521,368 example: $521,368 x 0.81% = $4,223.08 a year, or $351.92 a month.

That is the single largest operating expense in an Oregon rental — larger than management, larger than insurance, larger than maintenance and capital reserve combined.

And the statewide figure conceals an unusually wide county range. Our source records Oregon county rates running from roughly 0.48% in Curry County to about 1.01% in Gilliam County — a 2.1x spread. Here is what that range does to the identical house at the identical rent:

0.53 percentage points of cap rate and $230.27 a month separate the top and bottom rows. That is the widest tax-driven spread in this batch of seven states, and it is larger than what the entire insurance measurement uncertainty does in Colorado.

Two Oregon-specific things to sort out with the county assessor before you underwrite:

Oregon does not assess at market value, and the effective rate above is measured against market value. The Tax Foundation figure is an effective rate on owner-occupied housing value, which makes it the right number for comparing Oregon against Washington or Colorado and the wrong number for predicting your bill. Get the assessed value and the combined levy for the specific parcel from the county assessor, and ask directly what the bill will be after the sale closes. Do not assume it behaves the way California's does, and do not assume it behaves the way Florida's does either.

Oregon has no general homestead exemption to lose or gain. Unlike Florida or Texas, there is no broad ad-valorem exemption for owner-occupants and no broad age or income-based exemption. Oregon's targeted relief consists of a partial assessed-value exemption for disabled veterans and their surviving spouses, a partial exemption for deployed National Guard and Reserve members, and a Senior and Disabled Citizen deferral program — which defers rather than exempts, with the state paying the county and recovering the amount plus interest on sale. None of that applies to a rental, and the practical consequence is a good one: converting an Oregon home to a rental does not trigger the tax step-up that it does in Florida.

Insurance: the cheapest in this batch, and the average hides the only thing that matters

The reference figure is $1,484 a year at $300,000 of dwelling coverage with a $1,000 all-perils deductible — the midpoint of Insurance.com's $1,647 and Insurify's $1,320 at the same coverage level. NerdWallet's $1,705 at $400,000 dwelling brackets it from above. A separate statewide figure used elsewhere in this dataset reads $2,065 on a $500,000 sample policy, and MoneyGeek reads as low as about $1,124, so the honest full range across methodologies is roughly $1,100 to $2,100.

On the example, $1,484 is 5.38% of gross rent, $123.67 a month, and 13.48% of total operating expenses.

The statewide average badly understates the wildland-urban interface, and our data source says so directly. That is the whole caveat. Premium and availability both diverge sharply from the mean in high-hazard areas, and a statewide figure cannot tell you which side of that line a specific address sits on. Model it: run the example at $4,500 — a plausible WUI level, not a quoted figure — and the expense ratio rises to 55.22%, the cap rate falls to 2.18%, DSCR to 0.36, and cash flow to -$1,654.03 a month. Insurance goes from the fourth-largest expense to the largest.

Rebuild cost runs about $260 per square foot in Oregon (a $190 to $330 band shared with Delaware, so read it as a regional range). An 1,800 square foot house has a replacement cost near $468,000 — well above the $300,000 the reference premium is priced at. Insure to the real number, and expect the premium to scale accordingly.

There is no catastrophe deductible, and the reason matters

Recorded as genuinely absent after three separate checks: Oregon is not on the Insurance Information Institute's hurricane and windstorm deductible list; Insurify's live-quote data puts Oregon's average wind/hail deductible at 0.68% of dwelling coverage, among the lowest nationally, consistent with most Oregon policies simply applying the ordinary deductible; and Oregon's own Division of Financial Regulation consumer material describes wildfire as a covered peril under the standard homeowners policy with no separate wildfire deductible mechanism.

So on a $300,000 policy, an Oregon wildfire claim clears a $1,000 deductible. In Colorado a hail claim on the same limit clears $6,000. That is a real structural advantage for an Oregon landlord and it deserves to be said plainly.

The Oregon analogue to a catastrophe deductible is availability, not retention. The constraint in a high-hazard area is whether an admitted carrier will write the risk at all — which is why the FAIR Plan matters more here than any deductible convention.

The Oregon FAIR Plan, created by the Legislature in 1971, is a nonprofit association of licensed property insurers writing basic property coverage for applicants who cannot obtain it in the normal market. Three facts a landlord needs:

• Its policies do cover wildfire damage. That is not true of every state's residual market and it is the most important thing about it.
• It is deliberately basic — closer to a dwelling-fire policy than a full homeowners policy, with no liability coverage and limited add-ons. Buyers typically pair it with a wrap-around policy from the surplus-lines market. A landlord without liability coverage is exposed in a way an owner-occupant is not.
• The reported maximum dwelling limit is about $600,000. Against a $468,000 replacement cost that is workable; against a larger house in a high-cost county it may not be. Our source flags that specific number as indicative rather than confirmed from plan documents, so verify it if it matters.

Encouragingly, Oregon's voluntary market remains comparatively broad — well over 100 companies write property business in the state per Division of Financial Regulation testimony — so the FAIR Plan is still a genuine last resort here rather than a de facto primary market, which is not the case in California.

Two Oregon regulatory facts, and one roof trap

The state wildfire hazard map is gone. A 2023 Oregon law barred insurers from using any state-published wildfire hazard map to raise premiums, cancel, or non-renew a homeowners policy, and in 2025 the Legislature repealed the statewide wildfire hazard map outright via Senate Bill 83. That sounds like protection. Read the limit: carriers continue to use their own proprietary wildfire risk scores, which the repeal does not touch. Removing the public map removed your ability to check the state's assessment of a property; it did not remove the carrier's assessment of it.

Mitigation credits are proposed, not enacted. A bill introduced in the 2026 session would require insurers that do not use catastrophe models to give a premium discount or other incentive for property-specific wildfire mitigation. As of this writing that is proposed legislation, not law, and Oregon has no mandatory statewide mitigation-credit rule of the kind California's Safer from Wildfires regulation created. Oregon's R327 wildfire building code has been adopted locally — Deschutes County and Sisters in 2026 — but a statewide Class A roof requirement is drafted and not yet in effect. Where carriers offer credits voluntarily, Class A roofing typically draws the largest one. Ask; do not assume.

And the roof trap, which is specific to western Oregon. No Oregon law fixes whether a roof claim settles at replacement cost or actual cash value — Oregon has no matching statute, no matching regulation, and no reported matching caselaw, so roof age and the attached endorsement decide it. But west of the Cascades the dominant degradation driver is moisture, moss, and organic growth rather than storm damage, which pushes claims toward the wear-and-deterioration exclusion. That is a denial that has nothing to do with the settlement basis and is regularly mistaken for one. A moss-degraded Portland roof may not be a covered claim at all, at any settlement basis.

For a landlord that converts a maintenance item into a capital certainty: roof cleaning and moss treatment on a western Oregon rental is not cosmetic upkeep, it is claim preservation. Budget it.

3. A full worked example

The property. A single-family house at the Oregon statewide median of $521,368.

The rent — read this carefully. This site does not carry rent data. The $2,300 a month used below is an assumption chosen to be plausible for a house at that price. It is not a market observation. Pull three to five real comparable listings for the specific neighborhood and substitute the actual number.

The other assumptions:

• Vacancy: 8% of gross rent
• Property management: 10% of collected rent
• Repairs and maintenance: 5% of gross scheduled rent
• Capital reserve: 5% of gross scheduled rent
• Financing: 25% down, 30-year fixed at 7.00% — the rate is an assumption, not a quote
• Property tax at the 0.81% statewide effective rate. See Section 2 for why your county's number is what matters
• No HOA

Step 1 — income

• Gross scheduled rent: $2,300 x 12 = $27,600
• Vacancy loss: $27,600 x 8% = $2,208
• Effective gross income: $27,600 - $2,208 = $25,392

Step 2 — operating expenses

Management is charged on rent actually collected, not scheduled rent:

• Management: $25,392 x 10% = $2,539.20
• Property tax: $521,368 x 0.81% = $4,223.08
• Insurance: $1,484
• Maintenance: $27,600 x 5% = $1,380
• Capital reserve: $27,600 x 5% = $1,380
• Total operating expenses: $11,006.28

Expense ratio: $11,006.28 / $25,392 = 43.35% of collected rent — inside the normal band. Property tax is 38.37% of that entire expense line.

Step 3 — net operating income and cap rate

• NOI = $25,392 - $11,006.28 = $14,385.72
• Cap rate = $14,385.72 / $521,368 = 2.76%

The mortgage is deliberately absent from that figure. Cap rate exists to compare properties independently of how they are financed; putting debt service into it is the most common error in this whole exercise, and it makes two identical houses look like different investments because one buyer put more down.

Step 4 — debt service and cash flow

Loan: $521,368 x 75% = $391,026. At 7.00% over 30 years, principal and interest is $2,601.51 a month, or $31,218.12 a year.

• Annual cash flow = $14,385.72 - $31,218.12 = -$16,832.40
• Monthly cash flow = -$1,402.70
• Debt service coverage ratio = $14,385.72 / $31,218.12 = 0.46

Step 5 — cash-on-cash return

• Cash invested: $148,589.88 (Section 1)
• Cash-on-cash = -$16,832.40 / $148,589.88 = -11.33%

Rate sensitivity, since 7.00% was an assumption

• At 6.50%: P&I $2,471.55/mo, annual cash flow -$15,272.88
• At 7.00%: P&I $2,601.51/mo, annual cash flow -$16,832.40
• At 7.50%: P&I $2,734.11/mo, annual cash flow -$18,423.60

A full point of rate is worth $3,150.72 a year — about three-quarters of the property tax bill, and more than twice the insurance premium.

The simplest version of the same finding

Add up the three bills a lender escrows:

• Principal and interest: $2,601.51
• Property tax: $4,223.08 / 12 = $351.92
• Insurance: $1,484 / 12 = $123.67
• Total: $3,077.10 a month

Against $2,300 of assumed rent, that is -$777.10 a month before vacancy, management, or a single repair. Notice the shape of it: the tax line is nearly three times the insurance line.

4. The expenses people leave out

Vacancy, management, and capital reserves do not arrive as invoices. Nobody bills you for the month the house sits empty, or for the roof you will need in nine years, or — if you self-manage — for your own weekends.

Here is the same house with those three removed and everything else identical:

The three omissions are worth $6,127.20 a year — $2,208 of vacancy, $2,539.20 of management, $1,380 of reserve. They flatter the cap rate by 1.17 percentage points and hide 36.40% of the annual loss. A 25.68% expense ratio sits well below the 35% to 55% band real rentals occupy; a number that low is a signal that something is missing.

Vacancy. Eight percent is roughly one month a year, which is what a single clean turnover costs between move-out and the next tenant's first full month. Setting it to zero assumes the house is never empty, including between tenants.

Management. Self-managing saves $2,539.20 a year, lifting NOI to $16,924.92, the cap rate to 3.25%, DSCR to 0.54, and cash flow to -$1,191.10 a month. Real money, and it does not fix the deal.

There is an Oregon-specific reason not to zero this line casually. Oregon's residential tenancy rules — notice requirements, permitted grounds for termination, and the statewide framework on rent increases — are detailed enough that self-management carries real compliance risk for an owner who is not fluent in them. A management fee is partly a purchase of that fluency. Section 7 has more.

Capital reserves. Roofs, HVAC, water heaters, and flooring have known lives, and Section 2 explains why the western Oregon roof clock is shorter than the shingle warranty suggests: moss and moisture degrade the roof continuously, and the resulting damage falls under the wear-and-deterioration exclusion rather than being a claim. That is a maintenance cost you fund yourself, every year, forever.

The 5%-of-rent convention used above is one option. A harsher and equally common convention is 1% of purchase price a year for maintenance and 1% for capital, which here is $5,213.68 each. Run that way: total operating expenses $18,673.64, expense ratio 73.54%, NOI $6,718.36, cap rate 1.29%, cash flow -$2,041.65 a month, DSCR 0.22.

So the honest cap-rate range is 1.29% to 2.76% depending on which reserve convention you choose. Choose one deliberately.

What would actually have to be true

The rent this property needs. For cash flow to reach zero at this price and this financing, gross scheduled rent must reach about $50,721.43 a year, or $4,226.79 a month — 0.81% of purchase price per month. The assumed $2,300 rent is 0.44%.

The price this rent supports. Hold rent at $2,300 and solve for the price at which cash flow reaches zero with 25% down: about $273,750.69, roughly half the statewide median and well below both county medians.

The down payment this price needs. Keep the $521,368 price and the $2,300 rent and solve for the loan the NOI can service: about $180,190.35 — which means roughly $341,177.65 down, or 65.44% of the price.

5. What actually varies by county here

Oregon is a tax-spread state, not an insurance-spread state, and the two Portland-metro counties in our data make the point neatly.

Take the identical $521,368 house at $2,300 rent and apply each county's actual tax rate and average premium:

Multnomah has the cheaper insurance and the worse result. Its $1,152 premium saves $37 a year against Washington County's $1,189, and its 0.98% tax rate costs $729.92 more. Net: $692.92 a year less NOI and 0.14 percentage points less cap rate, on the identical house at the identical rent.

That is the Oregon lesson in one line: the insurance figure is too small to move the answer, and the tax rate is not.

Run each county at its own real median:

• Multnomah at $506,000 with an assumed $2,250 rent, 0.98% tax and $1,152 insurance: NOI $13,545.20, cap rate 2.68%, cash flow -$1,396.05 a month, cash in $144,210, cash-on-cash -11.62%.
• Washington County at $564,000 with an assumed $2,450 rent, 0.84% tax and $1,189 insurance, plus the $564 local transfer tax: NOI $15,476.60, cap rate 2.74%, cash flow -$1,524.51 a month, cash in $161,304, cash-on-cash -11.34%.

Both rents are assumptions, and the two land within 0.28 points of each other on cash-on-cash.

Two further things to check for a specific address, neither of which is in a county average:

Wildland-urban interface exposure. This is the largest unmodeled insurance variable in Oregon, and after SB 83 repealed the statewide hazard map there is no public map to check it against — only the carrier's own proprietary score. The only way to find out is to get a quote for the specific address.

Local ordinances. Portland in particular layers requirements on top of the statewide framework, and city rules on rental registration, screening, and relocation obligations differ from what applies elsewhere in Oregon. This is a legal question, not a data question. See Section 7.

6. Financing a rental is not financing a home

These are the standard mechanisms across the mortgage market. Any specific rate or overlay is your lender's, not this article's.

Down payment. Conventional financing on a non-owner-occupied one-unit property generally requires more equity than an owner-occupied purchase — 20% is usually the floor and 25% the common expectation, which is why this article models 25%. FHA and VA are not available for a property you do not occupy. The genuine exception is house hacking: a two-to-four-unit property you live in one unit of qualifies for owner-occupied programs.

OHCS's FirstHome and NextStep programs both require owner occupancy and are not available for a rental purchase. The 2026 one-unit conforming loan limit is $832,750 in both Multnomah and Washington counties — the FHFA national baseline.

Rate. Investment-property loans price above owner-occupied loans. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac apply loan-level price adjustments for investment occupancy that scale with loan-to-value and credit score. The 7.00% modeled above is an assumption; a point of rate here is $3,150.72 a year.

Reserves. Lenders typically require post-closing reserves — months of principal, interest, taxes, and insurance held in liquid assets — scaling with the number of financed properties you own.

Rental income counting. Lenders credit a portion of market or lease rent toward qualifying, not all of it. Ask what percentage yours uses and whether they need an appraiser's rent schedule.

DSCR loans. A debt service coverage ratio loan qualifies the property rather than the borrower. The trade is a higher rate, a larger down payment, frequent prepayment penalties, and a minimum DSCR — commonly at or above 1.0 and often above 1.2.

Look at Section 3. This property's DSCR is 0.46, and even with vacancy, management, and reserves stripped out it is 0.66. It does not qualify at 75% loan-to-value.

Insurance is a closing condition. In a WUI-exposed part of Oregon a bindable quote can be what decides whether the transaction happens. Get one during your inspection period. Note also that nationally, since March 2026, the FHFA has relaxed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac requirements so actual-cash-value roof coverage can satisfy a lender rather than replacement cost being required in all cases — which removes a constraint that had protected borrowers by default. Your lender may accept a policy you should not want.

7. What to check before you buy in this state

Property tax, from the county assessor, first.

1. Get the assessed value and the combined levy for the specific parcel from the county assessor, and ask what the bill will be after the sale closes. The statewide 0.81% effective rate is measured against market value and is an average across a 0.48%-to-1.01% county spread.
2. Recompute the NOI with that number rather than with 0.81%. Section 2 shows the spread is worth 0.53 points of cap rate.

Insurance, second, and treat it as an availability question.

1. Get a bindable landlord policy quote for the specific address — a dwelling fire form with loss-of-rents coverage, not a homeowners quote and not the $1,484 statewide average.
2. Ask whether the admitted market will write it. Since SB 83 repealed the state hazard map, the carrier's proprietary wildfire score is the only assessment available and a quote is the only way to see it.
3. If the answer is the Oregon FAIR Plan, understand that it covers wildfire but carries no liability coverage and caps dwelling coverage at roughly $600,000, and price a wrap-around policy at the same time.
4. Insure to a realistic replacement cost — roughly $260 per square foot, so about $468,000 for an 1,800 square foot house, not $300,000.
5. Get the roof age and last replacement date in writing, and if the property is west of the Cascades, get a roof inspection that specifically addresses moss and organic growth. That damage falls under the wear-and-deterioration exclusion and is not a claim.
6. Ask whether any Class A roof or wildfire mitigation credit is available from that carrier. Oregon has no mandatory credit rule, so it varies.
7. Confirm the policy carries loss of rents and find out how many months it pays.

The rent, from the market.

1. Pull three to five genuine comparable rentals for the specific neighborhood and note how long they sat.
2. Divide monthly rent by purchase price. Section 4's breakeven for this example was 0.81%. Oregon's last published appreciation figure was +0.57%.

The law, from the statute rather than from an article — and in Oregon this is not boilerplate.

1. Oregon has a statewide framework governing residential rent increases and terminations, and Portland layers additional local requirements on top of it. Those rules affect what your rent can do over a holding period, which is an input to every figure in this article. Do not take the specifics — caps, notice periods, permitted grounds for termination, relocation obligations, security-deposit handling, or screening rules — from a blog, including this one. Read the statutes at the Legislature's own site, https://www.oregonlegislature.gov/bills_laws, and have an Oregon real estate attorney tell you what applies to the specific address.
2. Check the city and county separately for rental registration, inspection requirements, and short-term rental restrictions.

The money and the tax treatment.

1. If you are buying in Washington County, budget the 0.1% local transfer tax — the only one in Oregon.
2. Ask an Oregon CPA how the property will be taxed, including depreciation, passive activity loss rules, treatment on sale, and Oregon's own income tax treatment of rental income. Oregon has a state income tax and no general sales tax, which changes the shape of that conversation but not its necessity.

What to do next

Every figure above came from a data file or was computed in front of you. Re-run all of it with your own numbers.

The Oregon rental analysis calculator does exactly the work in Sections 3 and 4 — enter your price, your real local rent, your county's actual tax rate, and your own vacancy, management, and reserve assumptions, and it produces NOI, cap rate, cash flow, cash-on-cash, and DSCR. It also warns you when you have left out the expenses Section 4 is about.

Because property tax is the largest operating expense in an Oregon rental, get that input right before anything else — the Oregon mortgage payment calculator will show you the combined monthly picture at the rate you are actually quoted, which Section 3 shows is worth $3,150.72 a year per point.

The Oregon insurance premium estimator will get you closer to a real figure at a realistic dwelling limit than the $1,484 statewide average. Use it to sanity-check a quote, not to replace one — in Oregon the number that matters is whether a carrier will write the address at all.

This article is general educational information about rental property arithmetic in Oregon, based on figures current as of August 2026. It is not investment, tax, insurance, or legal advice. The rent figures in the worked examples are stated assumptions, not market data. Insurance premiums, property tax assessments, and mortgage rates change and vary by property. Consult an Oregon CPA, a licensed Oregon insurance agent, and an Oregon real estate attorney before buying.