With a decade under his belt in Pleasant Hill city management, Ben Champ has heard a few things about the city, and now a study has confirmed the stories: The city can accommodate a more diverse housing market than what has developed over the years.

Anecdotally, city officials believe they have been missing out on market-rate multifamily projects and single-family housing that will fill a big middle that runs between the upper end of entry-level homes and more expensive estate residences.

Leland Consulting Group Inc. provided the data to confirm the suspicions. 

The findings are important for a suburb that boasts the quickest drive to downtown Des Moines and sees the state’s capital city as supplying the jobs, recreation and entertainment that are crucial to Pleasant Hill’s population. At some point over the next 30 years, there will be a direct link from downtown to Pleasant Hill via the Southeast Connector, a project the city is preparing for in big ways.

“While there are employment centers in all of our metro cities, how downtown goes, goes the rest of the metro,” Champ said. “Downtown is is our biggest feature right now … our access to those jobs, access to the recreation, to the restaurants, while still being able to live this close in the neighborhood of your choice.”

What the study found is that Pleasant Hill’s multifamily vacancy rate stands at 3 percent, below the Greater Des Moines average, and it soars above regional average in the number of single-family homes in the $260,000 to $270,000 price range, and it is above average in the supply of homes in the $440,000 to $450,000 range.

In the multifamily market, the city has not issued a new building permit since 2016.

There is room to fill those gaps. The Leland Group found that city also is above area norms in the number of young families, before leaping again to baby boomers. And the median annual income is about $80,000, compared with $68,000 for Greater Des Moines.

If you are a developer and get the notion that the city’s population is prepared to support more diverse housing, city officials want to have a chat.

The study also found that about 14,000 new housing units of all types should be added to a market that is within a six-mile radius of Pleasant Hill and that the city should expect to capture up to 2,000 of those units.

“That’s really helping us focus our conversation with city staff and the council on what can we be doing to get towards the higher absorption rate. So what economic development activities can we do? How can we be supportive of the development market to make sure that we’re pushing the limits towards that high absorption rate?” said Pleasant Hill Community Development Director Madeline Sturms.

Sturms also pointed out the importance of attracting renters to Pleasant Hill.

“We’re below that healthy vacancy rate [of 5 percent], which means that if there is a renter that’s looking to enter into our market, the chance of them finding an available unit is really small. … There are not units available for them to be able to rent,” she said. “And that’s a big deal to us. Because if we can’t get new people entering into our market, you know, there’s data that proves that people will buy their first home within a close radius of where they rented their first apartment.”

Developers, naturally, will build what they believe the market will support. Hence, the large number of homes in the $250,000 range.

“The message that we want to share is that it’s OK to take a little bit of risk, it’s OK to do something outside of that [range], because we’re showing that there is a demand and that there would be buyers in those different price ranges,” Sturms said.

The city is considering zoning changes, such as allowing for higher densities in some developments, that could encourage more developers to build in Pleasant Hill.

Pleasant Hill officials will deliver the data to any developer who wants to see it.

“We have a co