Hammond / Warrenton, OR: An Honest Investment Outlook

What the Price Data Actually Shows -- and Its Real Limits

There is no dedicated "Hammond" price index, because Hammond has not been a separately tracked municipality since 1991. What exists instead is ZIP-level data for 97121 (roughly the Hammond area) and citywide data for Warrenton as a whole. Those figures disagree with each other in exactly the way a small, thin market's figures usually do: Zillow's smoothed valuation estimate for Warrenton put the typical home value at $509,750 as of mid-2026, down about 1.7% over the prior year; Redfin's closed-sale figure put Warrenton's median sale price at $430,000 in November 2025, down roughly 9.4% year-over-year; and a July 2026 Movoto listing-price snapshot cited a $589,000 median asking price. For the Hammond ZIP specifically, an August 2026 aggregator snapshot put the median list price at $545,000 with a separate reported median sold figure near $474,916, against a 22-property trailing-12-month sales count -- genuinely thin transaction volume for a full year. None of these figures is fabricated, but none of them agrees closely enough with the others to be treated as one settled "the market" number; they're different measurements (smoothed value, closed sale, list price) from different windows in a market too small to average cleanly.

The honest read: recent Warrenton/Hammond-area figures skew flat-to-down year-over-year on the smoothed-value and closed-sale measures cited above, in contrast to the strong multi-year appreciation this site has documented in some other Oregon and Pacific Northwest markets -- though a single down-YoY reading in a low-volume ZIP can just as easily reflect one or two atypical sales as a genuine trend reversal. Treat every figure on this page as directional, not as a precise, audited index the way a national Case-Shiller or FHFA figure would be for a major metro.

County and State Context: What the Broader Numbers Suggest

Zooming out to the county and state level, where data is better documented: Clatsop County's overall median home value sits in a comparable range to Warrenton's own figures, and this research did not find a confirmed, current multi-year Clatsop County-specific appreciation percentage independent of the individual-city figures already cited above for Warrenton (and, on this site's separate Astoria page, for Astoria). At the state level, Oregon's housing market has been characterized in 2025-2026 industry and press coverage as considerably cooler than the pandemic-era boom years -- national coverage through 2025-2026 broadly describes a slowing, more buyer-favorable market across much of the West Coast relative to 2021-2022's rapid gains, consistent with the flat-to-down year-over-year figures reported above for Warrenton specifically. This research did not locate a single authoritative statewide Oregon 10-year appreciation percentage with the same level of sourcing confidence this site has documented for some other states (for comparison, neighboring Washington and other Pacific coast states have shown double-digit multi-year gains in other markets this site covers) -- that is a genuine, disclosed gap rather than an invented placeholder number.

What can be said with more confidence is structural, not a price trend: Warrenton/Hammond sits inside a genuinely land-constrained coastal market (bounded by the Columbia River, the Pacific, and Fort Stevens State Park's roughly 4,300 protected acres), which limits new residential supply in a way that tends to support prices over a long enough horizon in coastal markets generally -- though that's a general economic pattern, not a Hammond-specific prediction, and this research found no study quantifying that supply constraint's actual effect on Hammond/Warrenton prices specifically.

Rental Income: A Genuinely Restricted Case, Not a High-Level Read

Hammond's rental-income picture is shaped less by market demand and more by a hard zoning line. The City of Warrenton permits "Homestay Lodging" -- owner-occupied short-term rental of up to five bedrooms -- in certain residential zones with a permit, but it prohibits non-owner-occupied "vacation rentals" (stays under 30 days) in residential zones entirely, allowing them only, upon approval, in commercial zones that already allow hotel/motel-type use. That's a materially more restrictive framework than a typical beach town, where any residential single-family home can often be Airbnb'd outright; a buyer specifically underwriting a Hammond purchase on assumed non-owner-occupied short-term-rental income should treat that income as effectively unavailable on a standard residential lot unless the specific parcel is already zoned commercial, not as a given to confirm later. Long-term/annual rental is a more straightforward case: Hammond/Warrenton sits within commuting distance of Astoria's job market and draws on a genuine, documented recreational draw (the Buoy 10 salmon fishery every August-September, sturgeon and crab fishing, and Fort Stevens State Park's 482-plus-site campground, which itself generates real seasonal demand for nearby short-term worker and visitor housing, separate from vacation-rental zoning specifically).

This research did not find Warrenton-specific rental-vacancy-rate or average-rent data with confident sourcing, which is a genuine gap -- a buyer modeling long-term rental income here should get current comparable-rent figures from a local property manager rather than relying on regional Oregon or national averages that don't reflect this specific, small submarket.

Risk Factors Worth Weighing Before Timing a Purchase

Three real, sourced risk factors are worth naming plainly. First and most significant for this specific location: Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake and tsunami risk. Hammond sits on Clatsop Spit, and Oregon's own state geological survey (DOGAMI) has published a tsunami evacuation analysis specifically titled for "Warrenton and Clatsop Spit" (Open-File Report O-16-08), modeling a worst-case magnitude-9.1 Cascadia earthquake scenario; Clatsop County's land use code separately prohibits new critical facilities inside the mapped tsunami inundation zone. This is not a hypothetical or generic coastal-hazard disclosure -- it is a hazard specifically studied for this exact stretch of coast by name, and it should be weighed directly rather than treated as boilerplate. Second, insurance and earthquake-coverage economics: standard Oregon homeowners policies exclude earthquake damage entirely, only about one in five Oregon homeowners carry the separate optional earthquake policy, and those policies commonly carry deductibles of 10%-15% of the coverage amount -- a real, ongoing cost-and-coverage decision tied directly to the first risk factor, not a separate issue. Third, market thinness itself: with a reported 22 total Hammond-ZIP sales in a trailing 12-month period and Warrenton citywide figures that already disagree by tens of thousands of dollars across sources, this is a market where a single large or distressed sale can meaningfully move the reported comparables for months, and where an investor should expect real difficulty finding a fast, at-market exit if a quick resale is ever needed.

None of these three factors is a reason to avoid the market outright -- millions of people live productively in Cascadia-zone coastal communities, and Fort Stevens State Park's popularity is itself a real, ongoing draw for the area -- but they are real, current risk considerations that belong in any multi-year hold analysis, priced in before closing rather than discovered after.

Bottom Line

The most defensible fact on this page is structural, not a price prediction: Hammond is a small, land-constrained, river-mouth community with genuine, well-documented Cascadia earthquake/tsunami exposure and a City of Warrenton zoning code that meaningfully restricts non-owner-occupied short-term rental use to commercial zones only. Recent price data -- from Zillow's smoothed valuation, Redfin's closed-sale figures, and ZIP-level list/sold price aggregators -- points flat-to-down over the most recent year measured, though the underlying transaction volume is small enough that this shouldn't be read as a confident multi-year trend either direction. This page is informational only. It is not financial, investment, tax, or legal advice, and nothing here should be used as the sole basis for a purchase or investment decision -- talk to a local real estate agent, a financial advisor, and a licensed Oregon insurance professional, get an address-specific tsunami- and flood-zone determination, and pull your own current comps, before making that call.