I am moving in 3 weeks, should i visit first?

[SunJoaquin]

Gillslikeafish ~

Live in Vancouver. The commute from there to the Portland-Metro is a royal pain. You can always drive right across the bridge to enjoy anything in Portland for fun and recreation.

[thedrizzlemonster]

Holy Lord People! The guy wants to live Portland already!

Listen Gillslikeafish, there's a couple neighborhoods that will probably fit the bill of what you're looking for. The first one that pops into my head is Kenton. This little neighborhood is right on the Max yellow line for easy access into dowtown pdx and is one of the closest portland neighborhoods to Vancouver and great acces to I-5 to boot. Google it and I'm sure you'll come up with lots of info about it. It's not the glitsy-est neighborhood in pdx but I'm sure that when you visit you'll see that it fits the bill for what you're looking for. Kenton has gotten more trendy and expensive recently but it still maintains a fair diversity (coming from Oakland you may appreciate that). A couple other neighborhoods close by would be arbor lodge and possibly Boise.

Many parts fo North Portland work because you wont be competing with Vancouver commuters coming into Portland as you would if you were living south of downtown pdx. For all of the reasons that people mentioned here, there really isn't as many people doing the "reverse commute" that you'll be doing. I'm not saying there isn't traffic but not nearly as bad as if you were going the other way.

Good luck and PM me for other questions. I have been involved with Portland RE for many years and if you give me some more clues as to what you are looking for, I might be able to help you out.

[HonuMan]

It sounds to me like the OP should try living in Portland and commuting to Vancouver. If that works for him, great. If he grows weary of the commute, and he discovers that Vancouver isn't so awful, after all, then he and his family can move to Vancouver.