Lemur866 is totally correct. A lot of the issues that landlords are worried about can be traced to bouncing checks. I texted a picture of my bank statement (with account info blacked out) to the homeowner I rented from, and there were no more questions.
Look at a sublet for a month or two–while you find a longer term place. Here is the Portland Craigslist section with dogs OK and house or duplex as search criteria:
Put most of your stuff in a storage place.
Get quotes from http://www.uship.com for transportation.
Thanks for the pointer. I am just now ramping up my specific info-sources and this is one I only vaguely knew about (not having spent my rootless/student/starting years in the internet era…)
Yeah, I need to preserve my capital as much as I can, but it’s worth some expense to buy a quiet, stable year while I grow roots. I could squeeze into an apartment 30 miles out and commute and have to walk the dogs three times a day and all that… but if I can get a house+yard a little closer in and avoid all the petty hassles, it will make all the other problems a lot easier to deal with.
Exactly the plan. Unless I get a really capacious place, I will leave a lot of things in storage, possibly including the Mustang. Just so much easier. As it now looks like I won’t be in the best position to buy until I get my share of the house proceeds a year onwards, living small and quiet looks best.
Been meaning to add: I don’t even want to begin to think about knowing how to add up the stress index for all this. No, thanks, I don’t need any help with that. 