The Paperwork That Keeps Stafford's Acreage Rural While West Linn Grows Around It
August 13, 2026
August 13, 2026
"People come and offer me money all the time because they want to develop it. As long as I own the property, it's never going to get developed. It's not going to get sold."
That's a Stafford farmer, describing an offer on his land to Rich Fiala of Fiala Farms, who repeated the exchange at a community meet and greet in September 2025. It's the kind of line that sounds like sentiment. It isn't. It's a fairly accurate description of the legal status of the ground beneath a lot of Stafford's barns and pastures right now, and it's the piece most acreage searches skip past on the way to square footage and asking price.
If you're looking at horse property or a hobby farm wedged between West Linn, Lake Oswego, and Tualatin, you've probably made an assumption without noticing you made it: that land this close to three growing cities is either already suburbanizing or about to. Neither is true, and the reason isn't market timing. It's paperwork, signed by five governments, and it's the single fact that should shape how you value and hold a Stafford property.
Stafford sits inside what Metro calls an urban reserve, land the region designated in 2010 as eligible for future annexation into the urban growth boundary. On paper, that sounds like a countdown. In practice, the City of West Linn's own planning page describes something closer to a set of locks with no combination in circulation yet.
Two intergovernmental agreements control what happens next. Metro, Clackamas County, and the cities of West Linn, Lake Oswego, and Tualatin signed a Five-Party IGA in June 2017. West Linn, Lake Oswego, and Tualatin followed with a Three-Party IGA in February 2019. Together they say the cities cannot adopt a concept plan or apply for a boundary expansion into any part of Stafford until Oregon's I-205 widening project is fully designed and funded. The portion of Stafford north of the Tualatin River is walled off even further: no concept plan there before 2029.
Stafford is not a small parcel waiting on a technicality. It totals more than 6,000 acres and, according to reporting at the time the Three-Party IGA was signed, only a small share of that is considered developable given the area's topography. A hearings officer reviewing a related land use appeal put Stafford's share of the region's entire urban reserve inventory at over 25 percent. That's the scale of ground currently sitting behind the I-205 trigger.
If you assume five governments signing an agreement means the question is closed, it isn't. In 2019, the Home Builders Association of Metro Portland and David Marks, a member of the Stafford Land Owners Association, filed an appeal with the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals, arguing the Three-Party IGA functioned as an improper ten-year moratorium on development. The builders' association later dropped that appeal. Marks kept the fight alive through a separate petition to the state's Land Conservation and Development Commission, which was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. In 2023, the Oregon Court of Appeals reversed that dismissal and sent the case back for further review. West Linn Mayor Rory Bialostosky said at the time that he wasn't worried the ruling meant faster development was coming.
That's the honest state of things as of the most recent reporting available: unresolved, litigated in fits and starts since at least 2019, and moving slowly enough that a mayor's public reaction to a court reversal was essentially a shrug. If you're pricing Stafford acreage on the assumption that annexation is a matter of years, you're pricing in a certainty the record doesn't support.
Every six years, Metro reassesses whether the region has enough land inside the urban growth boundary for the next two decades of housing and job growth. The most recent cycle concluded in 2024, and the expansion that resulted went to Sherwood West, based on a concept plan the City of Sherwood had been developing since 2015. Stafford, sitting on more than a quarter of the region's urban reserve acreage, was not part of that expansion.
This is the clearest evidence available that Stafford's rural character isn't a temporary lull. It's the outcome of a specific set of triggers that haven't fired, in a cycle where the region had every structural reason to consider the area and didn't move on it.
None of this means Stafford is static. It's the site of real, dated activity that any buyer touring property there this year should know about.
None of these facts change the annexation timeline. But they're the texture of buying here today, and none of them show up in a listing description.
Oregon has offered reduced property taxes for qualifying farm and forestland since 1961, and Clackamas County administers that program for Stafford parcels the same way it does elsewhere in the county. Qualifying is about use and profit motive, not simply acreage. Under the state's farm use statute, boarding, stabling, and training horses for income can qualify land for the deferral. Horses kept purely for personal use, with no income attached, generally do not.
The friction shows up if that status changes. When farm or forestland is disqualified, whether because a subdivision plat is recorded, the use changes to something incompatible with farming, or the required income threshold isn't met, the county calculates the deferred taxes for the past five to ten years and adds that amount as a Potential Additional Tax Liability. That liability is tied to the land, not the person who owned it when the deferral was granted, which means a buyer can inherit it. If you're closing on Stafford acreage currently in farm deferral, this is worth confirming with the seller and the county assessor before you sign, not after.
If your goal is a working pasture, a barn, and a rural buffer within a short drive of West Linn, the freeze described above is good news, not a caveat. It means the character you're buying is unusually secure. Nothing in the current record suggests Stafford annexes on a predictable near-term timeline, and the 2024 growth decision is direct evidence the region passed it over again when it had the chance.
If your reasoning includes an expectation that this land eventually rezones and the value follows, treat that as a long-dated option with no expiration you can point to, not a near-term catalyst. The I-205 trigger has no funded construction date attached to it as of now, the north-of-river restriction runs at minimum to 2029, and the litigation around the agreements hasn't produced a result that changes any of it.
Either way, the road construction, the farm deferral status, and the school boundary changes are the kind of details that belong in your due diligence before you write an offer, not after you've closed.
Does buying land in Stafford mean my children attend West Linn schools? Stafford falls within the West Linn-Wilsonville School District. After the board voted in December 2025 to close Bolton and Stafford Primary Schools, boundary lines for the remaining primary schools were still being redrawn, with the question of continuing choice zones for the Stafford Primary area still open at the time of the vote. Confirm current attendance boundaries with the district before assuming a specific school.
If I buy acreage that's in farm tax deferral, do I take on the tax liability? The Potential Additional Tax Liability is attached to the land itself under Oregon law, so it can transfer to a new owner if the qualifying use ends. Ask the seller and the Clackamas County Assessor's office for the current farm deferral status and any calculated liability before closing.
Is there a date when Stafford could actually urbanize? No fixed date exists. The earliest any concept planning could begin north of the Tualatin River is 2029 under the current Three-Party IGA, and that's contingent on the I-205 widening project reaching full design and funding, which hadn't happened as of the most recent reporting. Litigation over the agreements themselves had not been resolved as of the Court of Appeals' 2023 remand.
Stafford's acreage rewards buyers who understand exactly what they're holding, and exactly what they're not. If you're weighing a horse property here against a home inside West Linn's city limits, Laura Piccard can walk you through what each choice actually commits you to, from the zoning to the fence line. Let's Connect.
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