Quote Originally Posted by White Peacock View Post
I bought my house for $90k; rent on the same house would probably be about $400/month more than what I'm paying for mortgage/insurance/taxes, and it's a reasonable ~1575 square feet, with a den and an office with built-in library shelves (the chief selling point for me), as well as a 550sf detached garage. The catch? Not in a hip part of town, so I'm not having to pay the hipster tax premium. It's well worth the trade-off, since it's not like I'm beyond a quick commute to all the places I like to go in the city, and I can afford to do these things because I didn't overpay on a house.


Skwillz: regarding your "coasters" comment, that's a process that's referred to by Oregonians as Californication. Californians have migrated en masse to Oregon in waves for a few decades now, since Portland is traditionally the most affordable major city on the West Coast, and every time a new wave comes in, things tend to go to Hell in Oregon (especially Portland). It's kind of at critical mass in PDX right now, in terms of the housing and real estate market. Rent is skyrocketing, going up on a consistent basis, and buying a house is near impossible for the Portland natives now with Californians selling their million dollar homes and throwing more cash at Portland listings, often sight unseen, to create bidding wars that can push the sale price of a place to tens, or even hundreds of thousands more than the original list price.

Something similar has happened/is happening in Denver, Austin, and I suspect it's starting to happen here. We'll see if that momentum continues with the economic downturn the state has taken. An oil bust may be a blessing in disguise if it reduces our attractiveness to the droves of imports that have the potential to drive the locals out of the housing market.
You are clearly a well-educated, erudite poster. I'm glad you're here.
(The built-in library shelves would have sold me too!)