While Oregon boasts protections for rental tenants, one Sherwood family has felt the stress of not one but two residential properties being pulled out from under them in the last year.

Rebecca Moran, her husband, David Moran, and their two school-aged children, Camilla and Elysia, have been living in their rental home in Sherwood for 10 years. They had no plans of moving, especially not in the next few months.

“For us, the rent had been fairly cheap, and we wanted to stay here as long as we can until we felt it was time to move,” Moran said. “Our daughters are in school in Sherwood and we wanted to keep them in the community.”

But the plans for the family may quickly change after learning earlier this year that their house was being foreclosed on, after the landlord didn’t pay the mortgage on the home for two years, Rebecca Moran said.

“Finding out it was in foreclosure was kind of unbelievable,” she said. “We paid rent every month on time, but there’s no protections for us because the house was going to be foreclosed on, and this is it.”

The property manager that oversees their home told the Morans that the sale would be a quick process. Quick indeed, as they were informed it would be sold on a Tuesday.

By that weekend, the family walked outside to find a for-sale sign planted in the front yard, Rebecca Moran said.

The Morans submitted an offer for the house in the hopes of staying put where they’ve been for a decade, but the offer was denied because an investment company was offering to pay cash for the home.

“We don’t want to move,” Rebecca Moran said. “We don’t want to move our children out of their schools.”

The Morans could be able to rent from the new investment company, but that too brings financial concerns of rising rent over the next few years.

Rent at the Morans’ current home has already been increasing since 2018, and Rebecca Moran said she wouldn’t be surprised if the new owner continues to raise the rent as much as legally possible to eventually hit a price point more comparable to the median rental home in Sherwood, around $3,000 per month.

The Morans currently pay $1,950 in rent monthly, and they were already told by the current property manager that rent would be going up to $2,200 in July.

“We’re going to get priced out regardless,” Moran said. “We stayed because we were paying a lot less than what a mortgage would be. We’ve been able to have time to raise our credit and build a business so we’re making a substantial amount of money and look good on paper to be able to buy a house, but it’s not good enough to buy a $600,000 to $700,000 home in Sherwood.”

Rebecca Moran just started a new job as the youth development leader for the YMCA of Columbia-Willamette after ending her child care business, and her husband, David, is a physical therapist.

Landlords or private corporations that raise rent excessively have recently caught the Oregon Legislature’s attention. Senate Bill 611, which is expected to receive a vote this month, proposes that the annual cap be set at 10% or the change in the Consumer Price Index plus 5%, whichever is less. The cap is contingent on whether the building is more than 15 years old.

Renter advocates pushed for changes after the 2023 cap was set at 14.6% — the Consumer Price Index plus 7%, according to the current formula in the original 2019 law.

The Morans looked at other rentals in the area but were seeing prices at around $1,000 more than they currently pay. That’s not considering the burden of first and last month’s rent and security deposit that many rental properties require.

With the looming increase in rental cost or a new mortgage, the Morans are looking at cutbacks to their everyday lives to be able to afford housing.

“I get it. It’s life,” Rebecca Moran said. “But at the same time, people in similar situations don’t have the resources to keep going on like this. This is why we have housing insecurities, why people are ending up on the streets, having the live with family or live with friends.”

The struggle with long-term housing is not the first run-in with a property being sold out from under the Morans in recent memory.

Rebecca Moran ran a successful child care business out of a different rental home in Sherwood for 10 years. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, she had expanded to three locations, but she closed two as a result of the pandemic.

Last October, the landlord for the child care location approached Rebecca Moran and said the house was going to be sold. Moran considered purchasing the house from the owner, but she didn’t have the money at the time to do so.

By the time that home was on the market, Moran said she decided to step away from the property and attempt to run the child care facility out of her own home. Shortly thereafter, she pulled the plug on the child care business, and recently accepted her new job.

“We’re fighters and continue to fight everything we can and support our family and have a good life for our children, but we’ve had very little control over things,” Rebecca Moran said.

Sherwood housing, by the numbers

The median rent for a home in Sherwood is $2,999, according to rental website Zillow.com — 28% higher than the national median rent and about $200 more than the home rental average in Sherwood last year.

If the Morans continue to look at purchasing a home, they’re looking at a median sale price of $690,000 in Sherwood, according to real estate website Redfin.com. That’s up 12.2% in just the last year.

To move to another city like nearby Newberg — where the Morans have made an offer on a home — the median rent for a home is $2,350, still $400 more than the Morans currently pay.

In Newberg, the average median sale price is $469,900, down 15.5% from March of last year.

Still, the pickings are thin in either location, as 29 homes were sold in Sherwood last month, and 38 were sold in Newberg.