Is Portland a stagnant city propped up by foreign money? (real estate market, 2014)

[henry_george39]

It 'appears' the US Pacific Northwest is caught up in a traditional real estate bubble.


I'm a low grade manager, considering an interview in Portland but I'm terrified of the Portland rental/ housing market. I've lived in a bubble city in California a few years back and spent months looking for an affordable place. It only got better when the market crashed, but by that time I was gone. It seems the bubble is back, but the source of money is from foreigners trying to diversify portfolios instead of NINJA loans.


Can someone from Portland clarify if most of the buyers are foreign?



Judging from what I've seen across Canada wealthy Chinese are parking their cash in the form of housing in targeted markets. A look at the Vancouver market shows this process can go on for decades!!
There is no hope for a person of modest means in such a place. Things only get worse and worse....


If there's no true job growth or new businesses then Portland rents and housing should not be going up!
Does Portland have that 'scrubbed', empty feeling I've seen appearing in boutique communities across America?


Does Portland need its people or do no-show foreign land-lords pay the taxes? I imagine one day, many cities will be just empty 'investment areas' without a soul or future.



Reading many articles about foreign money fueld housing markets in US and abroad!



Canadian Mortgage Insurer Tells US Hedge Funds Why Canada

[CanuckInPortland]

Can someone from Portland clarify if most of the buyers are foreign?

No, there might be some cash-buyers, developers, and others looking to speculate on the increase in prices--there might be some foreigners among that group, but I haven't really seen anything like Vancouver yet(I'm from there and I'm second generation Chinese). Most buyers are from somewhere else, but more likely they're from the Bay Area, New York, Midwest, or Seattle.

[Mini-apple-less]

I'm not sure if they are foreign or not, but I greatly suspect that the hype about Colorado, Oregon and Washington over the past quarter century is an intentional orchestration of the real estate industry.

What's essentially happening, I think, is that California has become unaffordable for the average person, and since 1992 (my own family left in 1998 when I was 8) people have been leaving in droves despite natural births and immigration from Asia and Mexico making up for it. The nearby states have since become the new "Paradise" the real estate industry wants to sell to people, of course making the people who already live there, and especially their children, have a lower and lower standard of living.

Californians generally are averse to living anywhere with snow or high humidity (aside from Texas), so the other Western states have absorbed the vast majority of the Californian economic refugees, and I imagine as they run out of water faster than we do, more and more of them will come here. At least until equilibrium is reach and states like OR, WA, and CO are as expensive as California in ever way, and are suffering their own water shortages.

It really is very sad what is happening to the Western US. People have become overworked, nasty, the forests are dying from bugs and fires, it's becoming harder and harder to make a living here, and gangs are taking over as the police become more underfunded and people trust them less due to their own corruption. The West I knew as a kid probably won't exist 40-50 years from now, it will be like a giant overpriced Arizona all the way up to Canada.

Originally Posted by henry_george39

It 'appears' the US Pacific Northwest is caught up in a traditional real estate bubble.

It's bubble-ish. The market is overinflated but not to the extent that we're likely to see a serious crash.

If there's no true job growth or new businesses then Portland rents and housing should not be going up!

But there *is* job growth. More importantly, there's a lot of tech job growth. Educated, well-compensated people are calling Portland home. That makes life more difficult for people who don't have high incomes, as they get priced farther and farther from the core of the city.

When someone making 50k and someone making 100k both want to live in the same area, the 100k person wins every time because he can fork over more cash.

[58rhodes]

Originally Posted by JasonF

It's bubble-ish. The market is overinflated but not to the extent that we're likely to see a serious crash.
But there *is* job growth. More importantly, there's a lot of tech job growth. Educated, well-compensated people are calling Portland home. That makes life more difficult for people who don't have high incomes, as they get priced farther and farther from the core of the city.

When someone making 50k and someone making 100k both want to live in the same area, the 100k person wins every time because he can fork over more cash.

We will see how this pans out after the Intel layoffs

[henry_george39]

Originally Posted by JasonF

It's bubble-ish. The market is overinflated but not to the extent that we're likely to see a serious crash.
But there *is* job growth. More importantly, there's a lot of tech job growth. Educated, well-compensated people are calling Portland home. That makes life more difficult for people who don't have high incomes, as they get priced farther and farther from the core of the city.

When someone making 50k and someone making 100k both want to live in the same area, the 100k person wins every time because he can fork over more cash.

I read the comment from 58Rhohdes concerning Intel. Is Intel the largest employer in the area? Layoffs would cascade down the food- chain with suppliers. I've got a science background, and the tech company I'm considering might be effected. In which case, I could be looking for another job sooner than later.

In Ann Arbor, Mi several years back Pfizer shut down and there was a glut of "Pfizer homes" on the market for several years.

I'm aware the area is beautiful and I have lived in small mid-western towns (which makes Portland more appealing than say Los Angeles or Chicago.) I just seem to read negative opinions about the Portland area Job market.

Since I apparently mistakenly beleived housing costs were being driven up by foreign money this leaves local demand, California refugees, as well as bank bought properties (I hear Black-Stone group, a hedge fund, is one of the largest property owners in the country).

What tech companies can you point to for growth?

Thanks

[bler144]

Word in business circles has been that Blackstone significantly dialed back its acquisitions nationally in 2013/2014, and that most of the speculative money entering the market now is much smaller-time, right down to mom n' pop operations who think they can fix/flip.

I'm a bear on housing in the mid- to long-term, but I think it's premature to assume any modest Intel layoffs would have an impact on the larger market in the short term. I don't even think we know how many would be in Oregon, but it's probably a few hundred at most. Intel has been through rounds of layoffs in the recent past, but by and large their footprint in Oregon keeps growing.

[The Cactus Leaguer]

The commercial real estate market has also heated up over the past year. Many buildings all over (not just downtown and Kruse Way) have filled up and have no vacancies. Those are real businesses, not "speculative foreign investment".

[58rhodes]

Portland isnt very high on the list as being propped up by foreign money. Seattle on the other hand --well

[backdrifter]

According to my real estate agent, a lot of investors are buying into residential real estate in the Portland area, but it sounds like it is more domestic money than foreign money. It's nothing close to being like Vancouver, BC. At least not yet.