Average Rent in Portland (Gresham, Donald: middle-class, condos, house)

[eric351982]

From 2005 to now, the rent on the places I've lived has gone up about 50-60%.

[ccjarider]

Originally Posted by eric351982

From 2005 to now, the rent on the places I've lived has gone up about 50-60%.

That's a pretty long time. I wonder what it did from 1995 - 2005 or 1985-1995 or 1975-1985?

Also any comment on how much more you make % wise since 2005?

[bler144]

Originally Posted by ccjarider

That's a pretty long time. I wonder what it did from 1995 - 2005 or 1985-1995 or 1975-1985?

Also any comment on how much more you make % wise since 2005?

Official inflation has only been about 20% over that span, though certainly one can debate the pros/cons of the official inflation rate.

[NWGirl74]

Originally Posted by ccjarider

That's a pretty long time. I wonder what it did from 1995 - 2005 or 1985-1995 or 1975-1985?

I can't even find rental prices for the complexes I lived in from 1996-1998 and 1998-2000, but I paid around $425 - $450. I can't remember what I paid in the complex I lived in from 2000 - 2002, but 2-BR (which I lived in) are starting at $855 and the complex is now income restricted. For two people, the income limit is $29,400.

[AndyAMG]

You know something I just realized.

For the price of a 2/2 1100 sqft in the Pearl you could have a mortgage on a $624K home.

I guess I will just never understand paying 2500-3500/ mo for an apartment.

I thought the last episode of South Park summed up Portland and millennial lifestyles perfectly.

I think someone on Craigslist is disgruntled
https://portland.craigslist.org/mlt/apa/5244748006.html

[borntorun1180]

Nothing like having an apartment go up several hundred dollars in rent over two years....someone needs to tell these slumlord landlords that this isn't a big city and these rents are ridiculous.

[NWGirl74]

Originally Posted by AndyAMG

I think someone on Craigslist is disgruntled
https://portland.craigslist.org/mlt/apa/5244748006.html

I wonder how many responses to his ad he's received. I was reading an article on the housing prices in Portland recently and one of the comments after the article was from a woman who said out of curiosity, she posted her shed for rent for $500/mo on CL and was overwhelmed by responses.

[Minervah]

Originally Posted by NWGirl74

I wonder how many responses to his ad he's received. I was reading an article on the housing prices in Portland recently and one of the comments after the article was from a woman who said out of curiosity, she posted her shed for rent for $500/mo on CL and was overwhelmed by responses.

No doubt some of those responses were from people who wanted to live in it.

My former apartment had an open house showing which was put on CL last Saturday. The showing was for Sunday. The owner had about thirty people respond to the ad. He winnowed the list down to ten likely tenants, then five.

Out of the five, he chose the person he wanted to rent to. So that means about twenty nine people give or take, are still out apartment hunting.

This was all done in a matter of days. He used to take more time and often would rent to people from out of state, one time out of the country. Sometimes he would rent to out of state people who had a lot of savings but no job. He stopped doing that though for a few reasons. One because even those with a hefty amount of savings found them eaten up pretty quickly, this is Portland after all, if they couldn't secure a job or if the job they did find didn't pay well enough. So they couldn't afford the rent and had to move. Two, because it just took more time to deal with someone from out of town than it did someone living right in town and three often he could get a recommendation from a present tenant and that was reassuring that he was getting a good tenant. That's how I got an apartment there without it ever having been advertised. I lived there for seven years.

I think these are all valid reasons to choose those already living in the city over someone from outside the city. He owns several complexes and they are all small ones. It's harder on him to have constant turn-overs than it would be for large building management companies that can absorb the loss. The last couple of years, though, he has been experiencing this so he has been screening prospective tenants more carefully, which goes back to the reasons why he won't rent to out-of-staters or people with cash but no job any longer.

[JonathanLB]

A lot of people who are renters have THE funniest ideas of their living situation. I'm not trying to be mean, but in life in general, no matter what you're talking about, you really need to have a "birds eye view" perspective. Say I think I made a great short film, I submit to Sundance, and I get rejected, my first reaction can't just be, "Wow, they suck, what the heck, my short film was GREAT! Everyone I know thought it was great!" Well, 2% of the entries get into the festival, and I wouldn't be surprised if 5% of all short films are "great" or at least "very good," so sometimes it's just not all about you. It's about the overall market.

When some of you guys say rents are ridiculously high, or rents are going up too fast, you're considering only your own very narrow perspective which quite frankly doesn't mean anything. The market doesn't care about you. It's like the human race. It doesn't care about you either. It cares about the survival of the species as a whole. Apartment rent prices are completely 100% dependent on supply and demand and NOTHING else. Not one other factor goes into it. I'm a partial owner in a downtown apartment complex that my family owns and we have raised rents repeatedly the past 5-6 years, over and over, even charge for storage, pets, parking, every little thing that can be charged for, we charge for it. And you know what? It's constantly 98% occupied. For every 1 person who moves out in anger over the rent increases, 5 more are ready to take their place. If you no longer make enough money to afford living where you are, then you are forced to move, or find a better paying job. Clearly, other people CAN afford the rents.

What do you think would happen if my apartment building was actually overpriced? It would be empty. Nobody would want to live there. There would be better deals all around town and people would say, "Screw that place, it's way too expensive, you can rent an apartment just down the road for half the price!" You'd be lucky to have it 50% full if your rents were ridiculously high. What does a 98% occupancy tell you? It tells me rents are way too low and should be raised further until the occupancy drops to low 90s, then maybe it's well priced enough to balance per-unit cash flow against occupancy numbers.

The idea in America of anything being overpriced that is selling is completely laughable and makes me wonder if we're just not educating people on what capitalism really means. If there is a theater full of 200 tickets to see the new Star Wars movie a month early and tickets go for $1 million, but the event sells out, then the tickets were not overpriced. They may have even been underpriced. Just because you and I don't have the money to buy a ticket doesn't mean they were overpriced, it means we're simply not able to afford something that other people deem worthwhile. I know if I had $5 billion, I'd pay $1 million to see a new Star Wars movie a month early if it was for a charitable, tax-deductible cause, sure, why not? Can't take the money with you and if I had $5 billion odds are good I'd make that $1 million back in maybe 2-3 days.

I think people in Portland often have this totally wrong idea that, "Well, I'm a hard working person, and rents are not affordable to me, so therefore they're too high!" Nobody cares. It doesn't matter how hard you work or how nice you are or anything else. It ONLY matters that enough people can afford those high rents to make them fair market value. The 4 competing buildings around our apartment are consistently 96-100% occupied as well so if you want to live in the area, you're going to pay what the fair market rate is, or you're going to be living in Beaverton where it's cheaper. Up to you. But the owners aren't going to lower rents just so you can afford a new video game console at year's end or so that you have more gas money for your weekend vacations or whatever else. It's not charity. It's business.

And, by the way, most business owners are still taking large risks and plowing money into their upkeep to make sure these apartments remain viable assets well into the future. I have not had a single distribution of even 1 penny in the past 3 years because we're redoing most / all of the apartments with stainless steel appliances, granite countertops, redone hardwood floors, etc. Besides that, another large sum of money is being spent on plumbing so that all of the units will now have washers and dryers in the units rather than in the shared laundry rooms. The building is also being brought up to code with fire sprinklers installed throughout, which wasn't required in 1960 when the building was built, but it was important to make sure this building doesn't become dated and old and remains a great asset. As a result, yes, the rents needs to rise because the quality is also rising and people will pay for those amenities and that location.

Just something to consider next time you complain about "rents being too high," since if they're ACTUALLY too high, you should be able to move easily. If you say ALL Portland rents are too high, you sound like a moron, since that's impossible.

[borntorun1180]

As they say, as long as someone is dumb enough to pay high rents, rents are just gonna keep getting higher.