Oregon Measure 49: Home Sites, Filing Claims, and Appeals

Oregon Measure 49, approved by voters in November 2007 and codified at ORS 195.300 through 195.336, lets qualifying landowners claim up to three or ten residential home sites as compensation when a land use regulation enacted after they acquired their property reduced its fair market value. It replaced the broader Measure 37 system with a narrower one focused on residential use, with the tightest limits on high-value farm and forest land.

How Many Home Sites You Can Get

Measure 49 offers two pathways, and which one is open to you depends mostly on the character of your land.

The express pathway authorizes up to three home sites. Any dwellings already on the property count against that cap. This is generally the only pathway available if your property is predominantly high-value farmland, high-value forestland, or sits in a groundwater-restricted area.

The conditional pathway authorizes up to ten home sites, but only if the property is not more than 50 percent high-value land. Conditional claims also require a professional appraisal showing that residential use was the highest and best use of the property when the restricting regulation was enacted, and that the regulation actually reduced the property’s fair market value.¹

No single owner can receive county permits for more than 20 home site approvals statewide across all their Measure 49 authorizations.

What Counts as High-Value Land

High-value farmland is broader than a soil chart. It includes irrigated or non-irrigated land with prime, unique, Class I, or Class II soils in exclusive farm use or mixed farm-and-forest zones.² It also sweeps in land inside designated viticultural areas at certain elevations and slopes, land with five or more acres of wine grapes, land within irrigation districts, and certain Class III and IV soils in the Willamette Valley and along the southern coast.³

High-value forestland is defined by timber productivity thresholds that differ between western and eastern Oregon, measured in cubic feet of wood fiber per acre per year and total commercial tree production per year on the tract.³

Who Qualifies to File

Eligibility turns on two things: when you acquired the property, and what you want to do with it.

Acquisition Date

You can only claim compensation for land use regulations enacted after your acquisition date. A regulation already in place when you bought the land gives you no claim, because you paid a price that reflected the restriction. All owners must consent in writing to the filing.⁴

Your acquisition date is normally the date you became the owner in county deed records. For multiple owners filing a single claim, the earliest acquisition date among them controls. If you sold and later reacquired the property, the date resets to reacquisition unless the whole round trip took fewer than ten days.⁵

Surviving Spouses

If you inherited the land from a deceased spouse, your acquisition date is the later of either the date you married or the date your spouse originally acquired the land. A surviving spouse who married into a long-held family farm can therefore claim compensation for regulations enacted after the marriage. Either the claimant or a surviving spouse may disclaim this relief using the procedure in ORS 105.623 to 105.649.⁵

Allowed Uses

Your desired use must be residential, farming, or a forest practice. Commercial, industrial, and other non-residential uses are not eligible under Measure 49.¹

Regulations That Don’t Trigger Compensation

Even when a regulation reduces your property’s value, several categories are exempt. You cannot build a claim on:

Regulations enacted before your acquisition date.
Restrictions on activities historically recognized as public nuisances under common law, though this exception is read narrowly in the landowner’s favor.
Regulations protecting public health and safety. For farming and forest practice regulations enacted after January 1, 2007, the primary purpose must be protecting human health and safety.
Regulations implementing federal law, to the extent federal authority required them, with a similar carve-out for post-2007 farming or forest regulations where the state had discretion to decline.
Land planned and rezoned to industrial use for inclusion in an urban growth boundary.

These exceptions appear in ORS 195.305(3).⁴

What a Claim Must Include and Where to File

Claims under ORS 195.310 go to the public entity that enacted the restricting regulation. State regulations are filed with the Department of Land Conservation and Development. City, county, or Metro regulations are filed with that jurisdiction’s chief administrative office. The written claim must contain:

Name and address of every owner, with written consent from all of them.
Tax lot number, township, range, section, street address if any, the county, and the city if applicable.
The instrument conveying the property to you (deed, land contract, probate record), plus a title company report identifying the titleholder, acquisition date, and any encumbrances.
A citation to the specific land use regulation you believe restricted your use, detailed enough for the reviewing entity to identify the rule.
A description of what you want to do with the property but cannot because of the regulation.
An appraisal prepared by a certified or registered Oregon appraiser, compliant with the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice, showing fair market value one year before and one year after the regulation was enacted. The appraisal must determine the highest and best use of the property at the time the regulation took effect.

Up to $5,000 in claim preparation costs, including the appraisal, can be added to the calculated reduction in fair market value.¹

Deadline and Fees

You have five years from the date a land use regulation is enacted to file a claim based on it. Miss that window and the claim is gone.⁶

Claims filed with DLCD cost $12,500 as of January 1, 2021, with annual inflation adjustments based on the Consumer Price Index. Withdraw within 21 days of submitting and DLCD refunds everything except a $1,000 non-refundable portion.⁷ Cities, counties, and Metro set their own fees, capped at the actual and reasonable cost of reviewing the claim.⁶

How the Review Works

Once the reviewing entity considers your claim complete, it must send notice at least 30 days before either a public hearing or the deadline for written comments. The notice goes to you, nearby owners and residents, DLCD, Metro if applicable, the county, and the city if applicable.⁸

Pay attention to the comment period. Any issue you want to raise on judicial review later must be raised during this window, with enough specificity for the entity to respond. Stay silent and you lose the right to argue that issue in court.

The public entity has 180 days after the claim is deemed complete to issue a final determination. A copy of the determination goes to you and anyone who submitted written evidence, and a memorandum is recorded in the county deed records.⁸

After Approval: Permits, Deadlines, and Transfers

Approval is not permission to break ground. You still need a county land use permit for each authorized home site. The county must approve the application under current local standards unless a standard it finds reasonably necessary to prevent a nuisance, protect public health or safety, or carry out federal law prohibits the proposal. Setback rules, road access standards, and septic requirements still apply.

Home site authorizations run with the land. If you sell, the authorization transfers to the new owner, and it can keep transferring through subsequent sales without limit.⁹

The ten-year development clock starts when the property passes to the first owner after the original claimant. A transfer to a spouse does not start it. Once the property moves to anyone else, that owner and every subsequent owner share whatever time is left in the ten-year window to finish development.⁹

Challenging a Decision

If you disagree with the final determination, you can seek judicial review. City, county, and Metro decisions go up under ORS 34.010 to 34.100 (writ of review). State agency decisions go through ORS 183.484, filed in the county where the property is located. The court is limited to the evidence in the record at the time of the decision, and you can only raise issues brought up during the comment period with enough specificity for the entity to have responded.¹⁰ By the time a judge sees the case, the record is closed.

1
Oregon State Legislature. Oregon Revised Statutes 195.310 – Claim for Compensation; Calculation of Reduction in Fair Market Value; Highest and Best Use of Restricted Property; Status of Use Authorized
2
Oregon Public Law. Oregon Code 215.710 – High-Value Farmland Description for ORS 215.705
3
Oregon Public Law. Oregon Code 195.300 – Definitions for ORS 195.300 to 195.336
4
Oregon State Legislature. Oregon Revised Statutes 195.305 – Compensation for Restriction of Use of Real Property Due to Land Use Regulation
5
Oregon State Legislature. Oregon Revised Statutes 195.328 – Acquisition Date of Claimant
6
Oregon State Legislature. Oregon Code 195 – Local Government Planning Coordination – Section: 195.312
7
Oregon Public Law. Oregon Administrative Rule 660-041-0520 – Procedures for Measure 49 Claims
8
Oregon State Legislature. Oregon Revised Statutes 195.314 – Notice of Claim; Evidence and Argument; Record on Review; Final Determination
9
Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development. Measure 49 Frequently Asked Questions
10
Oregon Public Law. Oregon Code 195.318 – Judicial Review