Housing bubble?? (Portland, Beaverton, Beaver: homes, unemployment, buy)

[Cliftonpdx]

Originally Posted by vacuumbed

It's insane that these people are fighting over these old homes in Portland. The same money can get you a way nicer home and a lot more sun in Las Vegas. That said, PDX must be on a bubble. I'm not dogging Portland, I like Portland. I just don't think it's worth that.

It has more do do with people not wanting to sell or move, therefore available housing is much lower than the demand for housing.

[Minervah]

Originally Posted by oregonwoodsmoke

The only problem with that plan is that then you have to live in Las Vegas.

It's not a problem if you like Vegas though. Some people prefer the continual sunshine and more house for their money. I have a friend who was born and raised in Portland. She moved to Vegas about fifteen years ago and couldn't be happier.

She has a great job and lives in a fantastic apartment that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. She likes Vegas. It took some getting used to, sure, but all things considered, she is very happy where she is and wouldn't move back now if she were given the opportunity.

Living someplace you wouldn't choose to live is not always a problem. Sometimes it's a good choice. For them.

I feel no need to diss anyone's choice of location, to each their own. Here in Cleveland if I wanted, I could actually afford a very nice small house or condo if I chose to buy one. And living in Cleveland is no problem whatsoever just as living in Vegas would not be a problem for others.

[pdwpdx]

Portlanders are such snobs about other places. I've been to Vegas for reasons completely unrelated to gambling, and didn't mind it at all. I met fun people there, too. I'm really tired of this attitude of Portlanders that they think Portland is the greatest place in the world and look down on everywhere else.

[redguard57]

Las Vegas has upwards of 80 days of 100+ degree heat per year. There is no water - someday it will be in a serious water crisis and housing there will be worthless. It is surrounded by flat land. That's why it has cheap housing. It's an okay town... I've liked it well enough when I've spent time there although it would not be my first choice.

I've been pretty concerned about Portland housing prices myself. I'm seriously considering a job there - AND this job is the northwest area of town where housing appears to be quite pricey. It will pay about the same as my current job, but my current house payment is about 50% cheaper than an equivalent house in PDX.

The only thing that would make me move would be that it's a much bigger city than the one I live in now and my hope would be that my wife would be able to find a decent job. Currently she is having trouble finding decent work in our podunk / vacation town.

Originally Posted by vacuumbed

It's insane that these people are fighting over these old homes in Portland. The same money can get you a way nicer home and a lot more sun in Las Vegas. That said, PDX must be on a bubble. I'm not dogging Portland, I like Portland. I just don't think it's worth that.

What does Vegas have to do with anything?

It's not like I can just pick up and move to Vegas or whatever cheap location pops into someone's head.

Kansas is cheap too, but since my job is in Portland and not Kansas, that's completely irrelevant to me.

[Cliftonpdx]

Originally Posted by pdwpdx

Portlanders are such snobs about other places. I've been to Vegas for reasons completely unrelated to gambling, and didn't mind it at all. I met fun people there, too. I'm really tired of this attitude of Portlanders that they think Portland is the greatest place in the world and look down on everywhere else.

You could say that about most places, Portlanders aren't unique when it comes to living in this city over other places.

[thedownlow]

Originally Posted by pdwpdx

Portlanders are such snobs about other places. I've been to Vegas for reasons completely unrelated to gambling, and didn't mind it at all. I met fun people there, too. I'm really tired of this attitude of Portlanders that they think Portland is the greatest place in the world and look down on everywhere else.

Very true. Although I think Portland is starting to lose its appeal and will decline soon. As soon as the hipsters hear about a new place they will abandon Portland too.

[JonathanLB]

Originally Posted by CanuckInPortland

One newer trend though is that there's number of people moving to Portland aren't necessarily working in Portland, there's a lot of people who can just work remotely from any location these days and it's going to continue even more in the future. I mean I can work from home all week if I want, though I work twenty minutes from home, so I'm going to go to the office. But there's some other employees who only show up in person a few times a quarter and work from home the rest of the time. There's also retired people, independently wealthy people, investors and so on buying homes...

The other thing is that Portland isn't really building for the growth it's seeing right now, and the future growth estimates seem high, but they don't even need to be that high for prices to remain high. They're building right now to meet needs for past population growth not future growth since they stopped a lot of construction around the bubble bursting but the population continued to grow year-over-year. So prices are going to remain high and increase for the immediate future until growth slows. Houses in inner Portland will remain high because there's just a limited supply of older quality homes and they're not really adding new ones to the market(some are being demolished though)--and the prices there then drive up demand for the next more affordable area and so on as it ripples out into the rest of the metro. If the bubble does burst, it'll be the less desirable homes and the ones on the edge of the metro(except for nicer suburbs or Washington County) that will be the first to see price declines.

All of this is exactly right. Half of my condo building is retired people who don't care at all about the local economy. I'm not even part of that but I also don't care. I'm both independently wealthy and I work 100% remotely. I started my company in Los Angeles where my 2 employees are based and we are hiring a third in April. I'm the only one who lives out of the area but it's my company and I grew up here. I have people here ask, "Oh, video production?! Is there really enough of that in Portland??" I don't know and I don't care. We are a national company and I do very little work in either Portland or Los Angeles. I don't care about either market or economy any more than I care about any other city. Most of our work is exactly as you might expect of any national company - we do most of it in the biggest states. Texas and Florida are huge for us, CA is big but not as much LA proper, we have upcoming work in DC and Arlington plus Omaha and San Antonio.

I don't care what the OR economy is like as it doesn't affect my business. I guess if anything I wish it was worse because that's a huge appeal for me to move out of state. I can run my business from anywhere so if not for my GF and her family I would rather live in Vegas or Phoenix where the weather is 10x better and I can get twice the house for half as much. A good local economy hurts me it doesn't help me.

[JonathanLB]

Originally Posted by jjpop

In South Beaverton/Tigard there's a large new housing development going in. This is near the Progress Ridge area, southwest of SW Murray Blvd on Scholls Ferry Road (http://pamplinmedia.com/bvt/15-news/...ooper-mountain).

I live near Scholls Ferry and I can tell you in the 7 years that I've lived here the traffic has become insane. Sitting through 3 or 4 cycles of red lights is not my idea of a good time. And that new housing development isn't done yet. I'm not sure where the city governments think all of those people are going to work, but there is ZERO effort underway to add another lane to Scholls or Murray (or Hwy 217 for that matter). In order to add another lane to Scholls the properties on one side of the road or the other would need to be purchased, and with property values at or near record highs, that's not going to happen. Maybe they'll double-decker it .

All kidding aside though, it baffles me how these decisions can be made without considering traffic consequences.

Wow haha sorry meant to combine this. We just looked there!! Way too far out for us but we bought a home by the same builder in South Beaverton on Murray. Like I said though I work from home so really don't care much about traffic. I wake up at noon so I can do my errands when everyone else is working and go catch a movie at 10 pm on a Wednesday night. Traffic doesn't affect me much.

[JonathanLB]

Originally Posted by Yankeemama

Location, location... I will say it one more time...location.

And Vegas is a WAY better city than PDX. Sunny, warm, inexpensive, everything open 24 hours, favorable laws, no income taxes at all, I mean I can't think of literally anything that's better about OR. Boring rainy mediocre state.