The Housing Situation

Let me just start by saying we knew the housing situation would be different in Portland. I mean, we've watched both Grimm AND Portlandia, so we thought we knew what we were getting into. Victorians, Craftsmans, funky little houses with personality - sign us up!

One thing we didn't consider is that the forces of television and the California drought had conspired to suddenly turn Portland into a relocation hotspot. For the last year or two, out of state buyers with deep pockets have been flocking to Portland. According to one realtor we called, Portland is the cheapest major city on the West Coast and basically everyone wants to live there.

Yaaaaay! So we are not exactly on the tail end of the trend, more like right smack dab in the middle of it and totally affected by it. We've now read a ton of articles about how home prices are being driven up like crazy, locals are angry and hate it, etc. People from CA and Seattle are flocking in. New apartment buildings are being built pretty much constantly and as of yet are not able to keep up with the housing demand. It's kind of like when we sold our house in Frisco last year and the housing market was blowing up and it was a madhouse.

All rentals are going quickly. We aren't ready to buy - we want to spend a year there getting settled first - and now I'm worried about how much it will cost when we are ready to buy. We were going back and forth about house rental vs apt; I wanted a house, a charming little antique with character. My husband wanted another year of no maintenance pampering and would have loved another high rise apartment like we are in now. We looked all over and determined that to get the quality and relative location of our current apartment but in Portland would cost us approximately 50% more and even then, we would really not get the same quality. We looked at some nice places but everything is much smaller in Portland, with less storage, and some places only had parking for 1 car! We quickly realized that everything is, in fact, different in Portland.

We can't sell either of our cars right now, which is kind of funny because we want the walkable lifestyle which means we don't really need two cars, but can't unload one yet. So we increased our budget slightly and, after looking at a ton of townhomes, apartments, condos, and houses, and eliminating quite a few from our housing matrix (of course we have a housing matrix, in excel, with weighted categories), we had an uh-oh moment. It's like an ah-ha moment but less fun. Uh-oh, we said. It's time to decide what we can compromise on (price, size, location). Do we want the size we want, in the location that's ideal (Pearl), but totally blows our budget? Do we want to sacrifice size, but get closer to price in ideal location (Pearl)? I told my husband I would do either for him, since he really wanted to live there. It could be fun! Personally, I was feeling done with apartments, but would do it another year for him to get the location he wanted.

The next day, as if by magic, my husband found the perfect house rental. I can't even tell you. A restored 1906 Craftsman style house with hardwood floors throughout. It has tons of character, a cute yard, and it's in a neighborhood with tons of walkable restaurants and coffee shops. There are parks and a huge cemetery!! It is LITERALLY my dream house. I flipped out when I saw it. We sent in a few questions, filled out the applications (a process far more arduous in Portland than in Dallas, btw), and BAM! We found out today we got the house!! It has 3 bedrooms so we can have separate offices, and the 2 bathrooms that were a MUST HAVE for us. SO happy!! Today we are giving thanks that our plan is starting to come together - we have a place to live!!! Now we just need to finalize the movers....