Apartments on foot (Portland: apartment complexes, renter, condos)

[TrumPockets]

Finding information about apartments in the area seems to be pretty easy, with the abundance of property websites and Craigslist, but "buying off the rack" is expensive. (That's obviously been a much-discussed topic on this forum) It seems an average downtown studio is up around $1000/month, and two-bed apartments average about the same (maybe a little less) per bed. But since I'd rather live downtown (or close to it) in a non-house, I'm being a bit stubborn.

So is there a hidden market? The kind that you have to know people, or walk around to find*? Surely there are a lot of buildings downtown with two or three upstairs windows that are actually unadvertised apartments. Maybe they're condos, or owned and inhabited by the people who own the building or business below... I just wonder how many of them are available and perhaps cheaper than the similarly sized "store brand" apartments.


*I'd research this myself, but I'm 2000 miles away at the moment.

[oregonwoodsmoke]

I'm going to guess that if there are apartments above the stores that they are already occupied and not available.

If they are there and vacant, the landlord will advertise that they are available. This is a hot rental market. There is no reason for a landlord to leave an apartment vacant, hoping someone will walk by and ask for it.

I think it is pretty rare for apartments to be over stores. What is up there behind those windows is much more likely to be office space, and probably office space and maybe storage for the business that the rooms are over.

Sorry, but there is no secret process for a tenant from Michigan to obtain a super cheap rental in Portland. There is no big secret known to the locals for a local to find a cheap rental, because there are no cheap rentals.

[Minervah]

Having been a renter in Portland for several decades I can tell the OP from my experience that what he is looking for in the way of footwork doesn't exist. You rarely see signs on apartment buildings anywhere in Portland these days. If you do, they would be gone within ten minutes.

While there are large apartment buildings downtown, they aren't above stores. That was a long time ago. Those that haven't been torn down are offices or used for storage. Even if there were, they would be occupied and have long waiting lists with prospective tenants waiting to get into them.

It is true that it helps to know someone. That's how I got my last few apartments. Word of mouth is golden. Because I had friends living in apartment complexes and they knew when a neighbor was planning to move, they alerted both their landlords and me and I got the apartments. This often happens. My last landlord who owns about 6 properties often rents them out that way. It saves him the trouble of having to put an ad in CL for one day and having fifty responses to interview.

No, there is no easy way of getting around the rental situation in Portland if you don't have something going for you like knowing someone who knows someone. And even if you are lucky enough to catch a break, it's still not going to be cheap.

[pdwpdx]

It's all about luck, connections, and timing when finding housing in Portland. There simply isn't enough housing to go around. And once people find a good place, they tend to stay put for a long time (unless they get some ridiculous rent increase which is unfortunately becoming more and more common).