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I'll make this as short as I can but apologize in advance if it goes long.
My wife is currently in school for a Dietetics & Nutrition degree in order to become a Registered Dietitian. She will be graduating in May of 2017 (so a little over a year). After graduation she has to apply for an internship and do that for 9 months to a year.
Right now our top places to apply at for the internship are OSU in Corvallis and Bastyr University in Kenmore, WA. I have been up in the northwest several times. Last year we drove from Nashville to see my friends in Port Angeles, WA and stopped for a day in Sisters, OR where we stayed with another friend. My wife fell in love with the area and so as it stands right now she's looking more at OSU than Kenmore, WA. I know that there is a good bit of difference between the east/west side of the Cascades and that doesn't really matter at the moment. We've been to both sides.
What I'm looking for is some honest local input on the place you guys think we'd fit best, at least in the short term for about a year. Right now if she gets the internship we need to be within an hour or just over from Portland, Salem and Corvallis. This is because the internship will have her in different places every few weeks. Here are a few things about us so you can maybe offer some tailored opinions.
I will be turning 33 at the time of the move and my wife will be turning 34. We both like overcast and cooler days. When we say cooler basically anything under 70 is good. Tennessee is just too stupid hot & humid most of the year for us. Also, we really are into the huge evergreens and places with a lot of trees of that sort. I know it's a trivial detail but we just like them. As I stated before she's doing Dietetics/Nutrition and I do freelance recording studio work. I also have the opportunity of possibly working part time with my friend at his guitar pedal company. He has a small shop in Albany and another at his home in Sisters. I know it's about 2 hours to Sisters from the Salem area and I'm good with a long drive several times a month. Honestly we're just looking for a safer place, friendly people and a place that's not congested with traffic and tons of people. Nashville traffic is getting up there with New York traffic these days! I know there are unfriendly people everywhere but I'm just speaking in general here. In my experience people were nicer in the PNW than here in the south. We're looking to avoid "downtown" areas and gravitate more towards quieter areas but not looking to be in the middle of nowhere either. Oh yeah, we don't have any kids right now so schools aren't an issue.
As for actual places to live our budget will probably be around $700-950 a month for rent. A 1 bedroom apartment, townhome or house would be good. I know that we won't get as much for our money out there as we do here but it's better than north Seattle money-wise.
Like I said we've spent some time there but not enough to experience every possible place. Thanks for any input you may have!
Salem is a pretty quiet city in general so being in a downtown area doesn't mean being in a loud area. We just aren't that big. The rental market is tight here so you won't have a lot of choices for rentals.
Since you both would have some commute time, I suggest avoiding west Salem so that you don't have to deal with getting over the bridge and through downtown. There are some nice townhouse rentals in south Salem called Woodscape Glen that have really good highway access and they are kind of tucked in nature a bit. I don't know what the rent is there, but location wise it would be good.
I spent a day in Salem one time and you're right it really isn't that bad as far as size goes. I'm just jaded from seeing the greater Nashville area boom in the last 2 years I guess. We'll look into the south area that you mentioned.
When you say you do freelance recording studio work, does that mean you can work from home and take contract work from anywhere in the world or does that mean you need to find employers that need recording studio work near where you would be living? If it's the second option, I would look very hard at the Portland/Salem job market to see if there's much demand for your skillset. For most fields, Portland is a tough job market for new transplants to break into.
And FYI, the PNW is generally not known for having friendlier people than the South. Up here people are superficially friendly but with the folks up here building anything other than casual acquaintance relationships can take a long time. For this reason many new transplants have a difficult time making friends here; more so than in other parts of the country.
When I say freelance I mean I work from home and have the ability to go mobile to record. I have heard that the PNW can be hard to make friends. The good thing is that I already have a couple within an hour or so and I don't mind long drives.
I have heard that the Portland area is hard to break into but right now I'm not worried about that since I can get files for mixing on the internet and travel to record.
Well, the Willamette Valley is certainly cooler/less humid than Nashville on the whole.
The area around Bastyr I think your budget would be extremely challenged.
The Salem rental market is tight, but the Seattle metro is crazy, esp. up in that corner. I had a job interview up there a few months ago that I cancelled just because I didn't think I could get an apartment if I got the job.
Whether one can get to 'Portland' within an hour really depends on where you're going in the city, and when. If she were working up near Adventist Hospital or out in Gresham and driving at rush, then it's going to run a fair bit over an hour most days. If she were working in Wilsonville, then sure, no real problem.
Yep, that's the whole reason we're leaning more toward Oregon than Washington. The price is crazy especially coming from here. Currently she drives an hour each way to MTSU 3 times a week so while it's not ideal she can do it if needed. I spent a week with a buddy a few years back in Albany and Corvallis and it was ok. It wasn't where we'd aspire to be by any means but I felt safer walking around there at night than the Nashville suburbs. We just have a crazy amount of violent crime here right now. While I've never seen any violence first hand plenty of my friends have had stuff happen but then again they live closer into the city than I do.
I try to have realistic expectations of places and not build it up too much in my head. I know every place has it's own crap that happens but right now we're both just sick of this area of the country. I guess we've traveled so much that maybe we haven't found the place we 100% love but we've found places we 100% don't want to live.
Any personal insight on Turner, OR? If we have to go with the Salem area then it looks like the south side may be a good choice for us. If we end up having to be towards Portland more then Wilsonville would be an option. It's just hard trying to find a middle ground when the base for the internship would be Corvallis but the work for the internship could be anywhere from Roseburg - Portland. Fun times eh'?
Thanks Bler144 for your thoughts on the subject. It may be a year away still but she has to make a decision to apply sooner than that.
My husband and I just moved here from the south. I was born and raised in Atlanta, GA and then lived in Greenville, SC for a while. My first visit to the PNW was last summer. My husband was offered a job in aviation software engineering after graduating from OSU's post bachelor's program. He moved out here in April of 2015 and my daughters and I followed that August. We have enjoyed our six months here, thus far. We moved here during Salem's heatwave. After living in the south for over 40 years, it did not affect me in the least. There was no humidity, like there is back home. To sound like a cliche, it's a dry heat. The house we purchased is in SE Salem. It was built in 2012 and did not have A/C. So, we had to endure a couple of months of very high temps in the house, but it was tolerable. Had we been back home in SC, it would have been dangerous and sickening for us. Just because there would have been humidity on top of the heat. The mornings were cool here and by 3 or 4 in the afternoon, it would get very hot. However, the house would slowly cool down once the sun set. Having the windows open was a must. We are having A/C installed this coming week and I'm very excited about that!
My husband is a mentor for OSU students in the post bachelors program. He has to go to Corvallis several times a year for meetings. It's not a long drive at all. He also has to go to Portland for any OSU events up there, and the drive is not bad for him. There is traffic on I-5, especially heading north towards Portland. You just have to plan ahead and give yourself extra time "just in case." After driving in Atlanta traffic for over 23 years, the traffic here is nothing to me. Lol!
Rent is very expensive in Portland. Salem is more affordable, at least it was for us - being a family of 4. The property tax is higher than we were used to back home in the south, so it was a shock to get that first tax bill for our home. It is nice though not having a state sales tax. What you see on the price tag is what you pay. My dad wants to move out here. He was looking at Turner (which is about 15 min. from where we live) and he was not happy with what was available. There was more available in Salem. From what we were told, Turner is an old logging town. It's a very small town with older housing. The SE part of Salem is really growing. We see houses going up around us. There are six on our street going up right now... There is also a new neighborhood being developed just behind our neighborhood. So, housing is booming here. We looked at one home back in June and it was sold within 6 hours of being listed. We put an offer on it and learned there were four other offers being considered. It was head spinning for us. We were not used to an aggressive market back in SC. We were fortunate to have an aggressive realtor here who worked hard to find us a good home. We gave her our specifications, price range, preferred schools, etc. and she went to work finding us a home. Luckily, we found one within a few days.
Good luck to you. I rarely run into southerners here, so it was nice to see that you're from Nashville! One thing I do miss here is Southern food. We have not been able to find a "meat and three" anywhere in Oregon. I keep begging my husband to let me open up a Southern restaurant here. Lol!
I'm sure being from ATL it was quite the culture shock. We're not looking to buy a house in the area but just rent. Once my wife is done with her internship we plan to move either to Bend/Sisters or up to the Olympic Peninsula. The Salem thing would just be for a year. I hear you on the heat thing. Some friends live in Marrietta and Acworth, GA and spending time with them in the summer is hellish, even more so than here. Nashville has a very aggressive market right now as well. The average home price in Metro Davidson county has increased $80,000 since 2011 or at least that's one figure I read. Everyone's moving in here for some reason. It's mostly people from NY, TX and southern California.
On the food thing however I think we might fit in a bit more in the NW. We eat plant based and I think the last time that I had a "meat and three" was around 8 years ago. I grew up eating at those places though when I was a kid so I do know what you mean when you say "southern food"
That was one thing my wife really did like in Sisters, OR was it seemed that there was a lot more vegetarian/vegan food options without the high price markup that we have here in TN. But then again we've heard the saying that if you want to go broke then open up a vegan restaurant in the south
Thanks everyone who contributed to this thread for your input. It's nice to hear other people's advice and stories. After years of traveling and touring you'd think it would be a walk in the park to up and move across the country. Somehow it seems a bit more ominous these days. Maybe it's because it's not just myself that I have to worry about now.
The sweet-spot for rent price is going to be in Monmouth and Independence. It's about the halfway point between Salem and Corvallis.
We lived in Independence for a couple years and loved it. There isn't a real grocery store in the area, but because I was working in Albany I would grab groceries and other necessities on my way home from work. You could do the same on your Corvallis trips.
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