Reviving this thread from the crypt. Yeah, this sums up my thoughts perfectly. The appeal of Portland is supposedly you get the good of a small town and the good of a city, but I actually think it’s the opposite. You get all the annoyances of urban life and few of the benefits.
Haha. Their best defense is “at least we’re not Sudan”? 
…and once I got to this line I realized I couldn’t take anything you said seriously in this rant. Come spend next winter in New England. You’ll love it, I promise.
Isn’t New England pretty drafty too? I like crisp snowy winters anyway, over the slug-worthy pseudo-winter we get here in the Northwest. I miss Montana snow!
So you’ve been bitching about Portland for over a year and yet you’re still here.
Make a kickstarter page and I’ll toss in $2 to get you somewhere else :dubious:
Nope, live in Eugene now but trying to leave the West period. Not sure exactly where, though. I’d go to Quebec if they’d take me, I’d probably have to brush up on my French though.
I agree. I just sold a condo downtown and I’m lucky to have sold it. They are selling, leasing, and renting the real estate to the highest bidder, and running out of bidders. It’s crazy that they are building more condos downtown, in somewhat isolated areas. I don’t see how they are going to sell the entire supply of units, and I definitely don’t see how the original owners will be able to re-sell, because the supply of QUALIFIED buyers is low and mortgages are actually hard to get. Very nice houses in the suburbs just languish on the market. Almost every eatery that I went to in my neighborhood went out of business during the 8 years I lived in my condo, and at least one of the best places still in business is just hanging on, even though it looks extremely busy–there’s just not much profit.
Zombies would still eat Voodoo donuts.
The average time on the market for a viable house is about 45 days, depending on the neighborhood, but a lot of houses sell in less than two weeks, usually cash deals from people retiring and moving here. It’s true that this is causing a spike in home prices and that a lot of long-time middle wage residents are unable to compete in the market. This will likely taper off before too long, according to real estate websites. There is a projected influx of something like a million people expected in the next 20 years or so, so the building boom is in keeping with that.
I don’t know what neighborhood you lived in, but restaurants are packed in most areas, especially on weekends. Even marginally good restaurants have lines, so it would seem that profits are just fine.
What a bizarre statement. Are you talking about Portland, Maine? Because Portland Oregon is experiencing a very hot market with rapidly climbing home values and some of the lowest inventory of homes for sale in a long while. If there were’t any qualified buyers, prices wouldn’t go up.
I really can’t weigh in personally on Portland, having only been through once, back in the '70s when I was a teenager. But I do have a friend, a native of Buffalo, NY, who, after years of thinking about it and saving up to do it, moved himself and his business to Portland in 2004. He lasted about six months and then it was back to Buffalo. Like the OP, he had been stricken with allergies and respiratory ills due to the constant damp and wet, and being that his business was restoring wood and plaster work in historic homes, between the dust from his work and the dampness in the atmosphere, he found himself struggling for breath.
He appreciated the ambiance of the city and its residents. But if you have a sensitive respiratory system, I’d imagine it really isn’t the right place for you.
How do you like Eugene, and where do you think you might go from there?
I’m assuming that by ‘qualified buyers’ he means those seeking a mortgage. They are often unable to compete for a house because of cash offers that are higher than the sale price. It isn’t sustainable. We bought our bungalow six years ago, and we could supposedly sell it in today’s market for 30% more than we paid for it. Even crappy little unimproved homes are selling in the mid-400 range in some areas. Rents are also going up rapidly, forcing low-income folks out into the remoter burbs.
No argument that higher prices mean fewer qualified buyers. But to extrapolate that to “owners can’t re-sell” and “houses languish on the market” isn’t borne out by the market today. When there aren’t enough qualified buyers, the inventory will go up. An inventory under 2 months is ridiculously small.
It certainly can change in the future. It seems impossible for the growth rate to continue, but you can look up or down the coast to SF and Seattle to see that much higher prices are possible. An economic crash could kill things, conditions might change, etc. But for now, houses are selling to people who live in them, or for cash to developers who fix them up and quickly flip them. It’s not like Las Vegas a few years ago where so many sales were to investors with 0% down mortgages. As you linked, projections are for significant growth in the area, so demand will likely remain high.
Maybe JLM1965 overpaid for his condo originally (if he lived there 8 years, he bought at the peak of the market in 2007). Maybe he lived in the South Waterfront, where they’re still figuring out the right balance of businesses after all the development in the last few years. Businesses downtown certainly do have less margin for error than elsewhere in the city and are thus more likely to fail. But arguing that no one is buying because of high prices, when the high prices are due to demand, is a bit Yogi Berra-ish.
Forget Voodoo Doughnut - give Michael’s Italian Beef a try.
Have you tried Canada? I hear it’s really nice. Plus they have free healthcare to take care of those respiratory issues you’ve been dealing with.
I just google’d Voodoo doughnuts - are those things real, or are we spoofing the techno-no nerds?
Aside from hee-hee, - it looks like cock-and-balls! - and it’s filled with cream, so when you “bite” (snicker, snicker) it, this “white stuff” come (hee hee) out of the Hee-hee…
We have gum drops (the colors of the Rainbow! for the GBLTQ folks, and marshmallows, and chocolate chips, and sprinkles…
Incredible. And the color scheme is just so really, really out-there!
‘Cultural Wasteland’ sounds about right…
Voodoo Doughnuts are for the tourists. But yes, all those doughnuts are real. I once got to explain what a Maple Blazer Blunt represented to a naive mom who served them at a kid’s birthday party.
Yeah, Blue Star is the real deal, at least if like me, you’ve got an expense account and are buying a giant box for a client.
I gave in and googled it too. Makes me glad I live in Krispy Kreme country.