Custom homes for Bend's only private waterfront community — a forested west-side enclave of lakes, creek, and acreage, minutes from NorthWest Crossing and downtown Bend.
Explore Central Oregon's premier luxury communities through the eyes of a builder who has spent more than 25 years designing and constructing custom homes throughout the region.
There is nowhere else in Bend quite like Tanager — private water, forest, and acreage, ten minutes from town.
Tanager is Bend's only private, boutique waterfront community: twenty-one large homesites spread across 182 wooded acres on the city's desirable west side. Pass through the handcrafted timber gates and the pace changes. Homesites front a regulation water-ski lake, a quieter recreational lake, or the rimrock above Tumalo Creek, with roughly 117 acres of shared open space, trails, and water woven between them. It is the rare place where you can water ski, paddle, or fish from your own shoreline and still be minutes from NorthWest Crossing.
Sunrise Construction is a design-driven custom home builder in Bend, and Tanager is exactly the kind of setting our work is made for: a distinctive High Desert home on a demanding, beautiful site. We build your ideas — not a stock plan — with our owner, Chris, personally involved from the first sketch to the final walk-through, working shoulder to shoulder with your architect and designer.
Building well on a Tanager homesite asks for care that goes beyond the floor plan: siting the home to the water and the low western light, keeping the ponderosas that give the lot its privacy, and shaping indoor-outdoor rooms for a life lived largely outside. Tanager lets you choose your own builder, subject to its Architectural Review, and we plan for all of it early. See how we build →
A custom home builder serving Tanager, NorthWest Crossing, and Bend's west side.
Ask why someone chooses Tanager over anywhere else in Bend, and the answer is simple: it is the only place in the city where private water, real acreage, and a forested setting come together this close to town. Most west-side lots give you trees or a trail. Tanager gives you your own shoreline.
For the right family, that changes daily life. Mornings can start with a ski lap or a paddle across a glassy lake, an afternoon can mean casting into Tumalo Creek or rolling out from the driveway onto the Johnson Road cycling trail, and dinner can still be a ten-minute drive to a NorthWest Crossing restaurant. The recreation people usually drive out of town to find is simply part of the property.
The homesites themselves — from about 1.32 to 10 acres — buy something increasingly hard to find in Bend: space and quiet. There is room to spread out, to keep mature ponderosas between you and your neighbors, and to orient a home toward water and sunset rather than toward the house next door. It is privacy without isolation, since the city limits, schools, medical care, and the airport are all minutes away.
Tanager is also a place for design-conscious owners. Its guidelines call for a High Desert aesthetic — stone and pale stucco, weathered timbers, low horizontal forms, and shade-giving porches, arbors, and trellises — carried with a relaxed, unmistakably Central Oregon informality. No single style is required, though a few, like Tudor, Colonial, and Victorian, are not appropriate, and a repeat-plan rule keeps neighboring homes distinct. The result is homes that feel individual, yet plainly at home in the landscape.
The most successful Tanager homes are not the largest. They are the ones that sit lightly among the trees, open generously to the water, and make a rare west-side lifestyle feel effortless in every season.
Bordered by Bend's city limits near Shevlin Park and Tumalo Creek — about 5 miles from NorthWest Crossing, 7 from downtown, and 25 from Mt. Bachelor.
Approximate orientation · Bend's west side
Understanding the community is just as important as understanding the home you will build within it. These official Tanager resources are the best place to explore its homesites, amenities, water features, and architectural guidelines.
A private 182-acre community of 21 waterfront homesites — two lakes and Tumalo Creek, maps, and design guidelines, all maintained by Tanager.
Homesite availability, maps, and architectural guidelines are maintained by Tanager, not Sunrise. The official resources below open the source directly.
With only twenty-one homesites, each Tanager lot has its own character — and choosing the right one shapes everything that follows. Whether you're drawn to the energy of the water-ski lake, the calm of the recreational lake, or the rimrock privacy above Tumalo Creek, Sunrise is glad to walk a homesite with you and your Realtor before you buy.
A waterfront, forested lot rewards early builder involvement. We look at how the home should meet the shoreline, where the ponderosas can be kept for privacy and shade, how the low western light falls across the seasons, and how slope, access, and setbacks will shape both construction and everyday life.
Ski-lake, recreational-lake, or creek frontage — each asks for a different relationship to the water, the dock or shoreline, and the sunset.
Which ponderosas to preserve for screening and shade, and how to place glass and outdoor rooms to catch morning and low winter light.
Making the most of 1.32 to 10 acres — outbuildings, approach, and privacy — while designing to Tanager's Architectural Review Guidelines from day one.
A High Desert vocabulary — stone and pale stucco, weathered timbers, deeply set windows, and low horizontal forms — with shaded porches and covered outdoor rooms that look out at the water and the trees rather than at the neighbors.
The guidelines reward rugged, well-proportioned craftsmanship — exposed beams and outriggers, generous trim, stone bases — built into the forest and detailed to weather Central Oregon rather than decorate over it.
Tanager shapes scale and character too — horizontal massing, wall offsets, a two-story limit, and a roughly 3,000-square-foot covered main level. We design to the Architectural Review Committee's expectations from the start, so approvals move smoothly.
Tanager lets homeowners choose their own builder, and that freedom is exactly why reputation matters. For more than 25 years, Sunrise Construction has built custom homes throughout Bend and Central Oregon — including riverfront, forested, and high-desert work that maps closely to what a Tanager homesite asks for. We know how to build thoughtfully on a demanding, beautiful lot.
The endorsement we value most comes from the homeowners, architects, and designers who send the next family our way. Our reputation has been built one relationship at a time — because every project is a chance to earn lasting trust, not simply finish another house.
We believe every homeowner should be free to choose the builder who fits their vision. When people choose Sunrise, we treat it as a privilege — and we build like it, from the first conversation through the years of care that follow.
Sunrise has not yet completed a home at Tanager, and we will never show another builder's work as our own. As our first Tanager residences are built, they will be featured here. Until then, the imagery below reflects the community's forested, waterfront setting — and you can explore our completed custom homes elsewhere in Central Oregon.
We are honest about where we stand: Tanager is a newer community, and our first homes there are still ahead of us. But a builder's readiness for a place is written in the work they have already done — and much of ours translates directly. Riverfront and forested siting, substantial stone-and-timber craftsmanship in a High Desert vein, and the quiet coordination it takes to build well on a sensitive parcel — and within a community's design guidelines — are all familiar ground for Sunrise.
As we complete homes at Tanager, this section will grow into a record of that work — with photography and detail added as each residence is finished and our owners are comfortable sharing it. Until then, we would rather show you the setting truthfully than imply a history we have not yet earned here.
Central Oregon is widely known for its abundant sunshine, low humidity, cool evenings, and four distinct seasons — Bend is often described as seeing roughly 300 days of sunshine a year. On Tanager's west side, that means long summer evenings on the water, gold and amber autumns in the pines, real winter snow, and springs that bring the creek and lakes back to life. It's a place where paddling, cycling, and skiing can all belong to the same week. Visit Central Oregon ↗
Tanager's greatest luxury may be everything just beyond it. Trailheads, a nationally known food and beer scene, and the Cascades are all within easy reach — the kind of west-side access that makes leaving the property almost as good as staying on it.
Shevlin Park's old-growth ponderosa loops are minutes away, the Johnson Road trail connects at the community, and the Phil's Trail network and Deschutes National Forest open up world-class running and mountain biking.
Shevlin Park Visit ↗ Phil's Trail & mountain biking Visit ↗ Deschutes forest & trails Visit ↗NorthWest Crossing's shops, restaurants, and Saturday farmers market sit five miles away; the Old Mill District and downtown Bend bring riverfront shopping, summer concerts, coffee roasters, and a celebrated brewery scene.
NorthWest Crossing Visit ↗ Old Mill District Visit ↗ Downtown, dining & the Ale Trail Visit ↗Mt. Bachelor's slopes and bike park are about 25 miles west, the Cascade Lakes Highway strings together alpine lakes for paddling and fishing, and the Deschutes River is Bend's home water for floating and casting.
Mt. Bachelor Visit ↗ Cascade Lakes Highway Visit ↗ Deschutes River & Old Mill Visit ↗Local recommendations are shared as a courtesy; hours, access, and details are maintained by each organization.
Yes. Tanager does not require a specific builder. Homesite owners are free to choose the builder that fits their project, provided the home follows Tanager's Architectural Review Guidelines and the plans are approved by the community's Architectural Review Committee. Because Tanager's waterfront and forested homesites are unusual for Bend, choosing a builder experienced with these conditions makes the process smoother.
Not yet. Tanager is a newer west-side community, and we build custom homes throughout Bend and Central Oregon, including riverfront, forested, and high-desert designs well suited to Tanager's setting. As we complete our first homes at Tanager, we will feature them here. In the meantime, this guide reflects the community itself rather than implying homes we have not built.
Tanager is Bend's only private, boutique waterfront community — 21 large homesites across 182 acres on the desirable west side, with frontage on a regulation water-ski lake, a recreational lake, or Tumalo Creek. You get real privacy, acreage, and water recreation just minutes from NorthWest Crossing and downtown Bend, a combination that essentially does not exist elsewhere in the city.
Tanager's 21 homesites range from about 1.32 acres to 10 acres. Eleven surround the water-ski lake, seven sit on the rimrock above Tumalo Creek, and three border the recreational lake, with roughly 117 acres of shared open space, trails, and water throughout the community.
Earlier than most people expect. Bringing us in before the plans are finalized lets us help evaluate the homesite — how the home meets the water, the trees, the sun, and the slope — while coordinating with your architect and designer, keeping real construction costs in view, and preparing for Tanager's architectural review.
No. Some clients already have an architect, interior designer, or completed plans, while others are starting from the very beginning. Sunrise is flexible enough to meet you wherever you are in the process.
If you're assembling your team, we'll recommend architects whose design philosophy, communication style, and personality are the right fit for your project—not simply the same architect for every home. We believe the relationship between homeowner and architect is just as important as the plans themselves.
One of Sunrise Construction's unique advantages is our in-house interior design team through Sunrise Interiors. Because interior design and construction work together from the beginning, selections, lighting, cabinetry, finishes, budgets, and construction details are coordinated early, creating a smoother building experience and a more cohesive home.
That's perfectly fine. We regularly build homes designed by architects selected by our clients and are equally comfortable joining projects that already have completed construction documents.
Our role is to become a collaborative member of your team—working closely with your architect, interior designer, engineers, consultants, and trades to help move the project from drawings to a beautifully built home.
Whether your plans are just beginning or already permit-ready, Sunrise adapts to your process rather than asking you to adapt to ours.
Tanager sits about 7 miles from downtown Bend and 5 miles from NorthWest Crossing, is connected to the Johnson Road cycling trail, and is roughly 1.8 miles from Shevlin Park and 2.5 miles from Tumalo State Park. Mt. Bachelor and the Cascade Lakes are about 25 miles west.
Sunrise builds throughout the region. Explore more guides in the series, with additional communities on the way.
Whether you're still searching for the right homesite or already own one, early collaboration leads to better homes, smoother approvals, and decisions that pay dividends throughout the entire building process.
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