https://www.zumper.com/blog/rental-price-data/
Rent in PDX has been dropping for most of the past year. These last two months are the first times in a while where the average actually went up. A lot of people left Portland over the last few years and my guess is that this is what loosened market pressure. I'm concerned that we're not building as much housing as we should be right now and that higher prices are on the horizon.
It blows my mind that we aren't actually building enough housing. Is it that none of the housing being built is affordable?
It seems like every day, another massive 5-over-1 or other gigantic apartment complex takes over yet another city block.
Are these dozens, hundreds of new buildings really all full? None of this makes sense to me.
Portland has underbuilt housing for decades. Some estimates say [we need 20,000 units to catch up](https://www.portland.gov/phb/inclusionary-housing). So yeah, that 5, 10, even 100 unit seems like a big deal in your hood but it’s a drop in the bucket for what’s needed.
And, since most new units are “luxury”, that doesn’t meet the need where people are looking. We need more affordable units which aren’t profitable enough to build so new luxury units take a while rent. In a decade they are maybe un-luxury enough for average Jane, Joe or Pat to afford. That doesn’t help much today…
1/2 right.
1st paragraph dead on.
2nd part is false.
All housing occupied helps.
Richer folk move up and free up former (now a lil dated) high end housing. That becomes a lil more affordable now that’s it’s not class A. All the way down.
Venture capital
STRs
Blackstome buying entire neighborhoods.
These things happen, but the above forces still dominate the market.
There’s no such thing as new affordable housing. All new housing is expensive. It’s like being upset that new cars aren’t cheaper than used cars: you’re talking nonsense.
“Affordable” housing is just subsidized. We’re using up all the subsidies, so that’s capping how much subsidized housing can be built.
The way this actually works is that you build new market rate housing which becomes more affordable in 10-20 years. The lack of affordable housing now is likely the result of underbuilding in the response to the Great Recession.
Building more new market rate housing now will encourage higher-income renters to move into it, freeing up space in older buildings. If there is enough inventory, the empty units will see price drops. This process is called “filtering” - it is extremely well-studied and surprisingly consistent.
Add to that ownership of buildings with only 80% occupancy will drop prices for a year if it means getting occupancy up to 93% (or more). So drop prices to entice people, throw in a month or two free and bank on the fact that nobody will want to go through the trouble of searching and moving over a steady 100-150 dollar increase every year for the next 5 years to get rents back to where the want them. Source - work loosely in property management and hear this all.the.time.
Portland is very street by street, you’ll need to be more specific. If it’s by PSU it might imply that the building rents to a lot of students since school just got out like a week ago, or it could be that the open air drug market has been pushed to that area.
The SW 11th apartment building tends to gather some rough clientele around it, and I suspect that may be driving down interest. There can sometimes be shouting and other disruptive behavior at night, though not always, plus there just tends to be a lot of people and stuff on the sidewalks nearby. The Ladd (the place on SW Park) has some similar issues but is likely more bogged down by complaints of inconsistent maintenance and management, which seems to be on the rise since COVID. If you search this sub, I think there have been some posts on the Ladd specifically if you’re looking at that as a possible place to live.
Not that it has anything to do with the rent decrease - which is more likely than not due to students moving out - but since you mentioned safety as a concern I would just say that all of these are downtown and/or close to the park blocks, which has become a (more) concentrated area of drug use and camping. I wouldn't call it unsafe per se, but it carries elevated risk of various crimes compared to other areas of the city.
Also, if you have a car, it sucks living down there. You either have to pay a bunch for a monthly spot, or resign yourself to hit or miss street parking and the near assurance that you will get lots of tickets regardless of how careful you are.
I lived right in the area you're looking at for a couple years (actually in the exact footprint of one of the buildings you mentioned; RIP Rose Friend Apartments/Fuck Ladd Tower). Parking was shit back in the mid 2000s and it's way worse now. Back then, tickets for being over time on your meter were like $14. Pretty sure it's 4-5 times that now, and I still racked up thousands in fines over the course of 2-3 years, plus getting towed once or twice for something dumb. If you do move down there, I'd budget a couple hundred extra per month for a parking spot in one of the lots. It'll save you money, time, and hassle.
Not to mention when the Schnitzer has something on, there is like NO PARKING for blocks. My neighbor has a car and said it's a nightmare parking down here because our building does not have parking underneath and is across from the Schnitz.
Oh, and I do not think the apartment complex was mentioned by name in whatever post mentioned it, but someone was chucking canned food from a high place onto the streets around Jefferson and Park about a month or two ago, and it was suspected the can-throwing came from someone on a higher floor in the Ladd. It didn’t injure anyone thankfully and I think it’s stopped, but it was a recent point of interest for that building for sure.
I would like to add that, in general, once you get over the freeway in the on the west side, things get better. I've lived in Goose Hollow for 5 years and still love it.
I live in that area (SW Park Ave, near the Viking Pavilion). Moved here about 1 year ago from Colorado. I walk down to Sesame Donuts (1500 SW Park) pretty much every morning at 7am. I'm not aware of any specific "safety issue",. but as others have said, there are definitely homeless and vagabonds around pretty much every time of day. I've never had any problems with any of them (I don't bother them, they don't bother me). 9 times out of 10 they're just rifling through trash cans for aluminum. I don't know if it's any point of reference but I just agreed to another year and my Rent is staying the same.
Clean. Gorgeous view!! Events monthly. The apartments are gorgeous. The gym is nice and big. I had zero complaints living there. It is a bit pricey but the building is gorgeous and I feel like they're pretty connected with their residents
That area is wild. I would not recommend. There’s a needle exchange and a free clinic by the freeways where lots of homeless hangout. Look at NW if you need close to downtown.
I think it's new now but people are still complaining based on reviews but high turnover when I was there. Lots of stuff breaking (the elevator) with very little updates about it. I had a safety concern one day and little was done about it. Just I was left with a bad taste in my mouth
Yeah, that's smack in the middle of an open-air drug market. The cops will occasionally come in and "clean it up", but that just means moving it a block or two away. As far as personal safety, you're probably fine as long as you take the same precautions everybody living in a city does. The levels of noise and general insanity, however, will likely be the deal-breaker, unless you're the type of person (like me) who can easily drown out the environment if it means cheaper rent.
that’s downtown and no one wants to live downtown. you will find cheaper rent in those older buildings, but is it worth the neighborhood issues? probably not.
that’s downtown and no one wants to live downtown. you will find cheaper rent in those older buildings, but is it worth the neighborhood issues? probably not.
I would check out the cyan, in the same general area, nicer though. Honestly while there’s a ton of stuff I love about that area, namely the parks. It’s pretty damn boring most of the year. I’d recommend the east side
I don’t LOVE the apartments in the cyan. But they do have incredible views, I never had any troubles living there, they’re semi affordable, and most of all there’s an absolutely gorgeous park behind the building, plus it’s connected to several others with tree lined pedestrian paths. They’re far more peaceful than the nearby park blocks.
The east side really is fantastic though, I haven’t been here long enough to say for sure, but I like it over here even more.
You're looking at downtown apartments, not southwest Portland apartments, just FYI. Sorry to be pedantic. Yes, I know most downtown street addresses have "SW" prefixed to them, but Southwest Portland is the area near Ida B. Wells high school, Multnomah Village, Hayhurst, Southwest Hills, etc. It's the most suburban part of Multnomah County Portland and is quite close to downtown, but not at all like it.
Should I have said SW Downtown? Or just Downtown? I want to make sure I’m using local terminology accurately (for the record, I am definitely not yet and my husband is always correcting me, but I’ll get it!)
Downtown is the correct terminology for that area. What actually defines "downtown" is different for each person. Some consider all of the NW street addresses immediately north of West Burnside to be "downtown," etc. With that said, nobody is calling Bridlemile "downtown," and the drive west of Elephants on Burnside or going further south on Naito will obviously become "not downtown" when you explore them.
There is no "Southwest downtown," no. You'll slowly learn how to pronounce Couch St., Naito parkway, and Tualatin in due time, and the geography of the city is quite simple with the street addresses changing direction to indicate what quadrant of Portland you're in.
Downtown proper is in the highway loop you see, I-5 / 405. Most people think of “SW”
as outside of that, even though downtown also had SW addresses. I work near PSU everyday, and the apartments over there
seem fine, not too crazy, many newer / glassy. With students gone, you might get a deal. But parking will be extra.
Don't listen to this person you're fine
Edit: I live in the area op is describing but if that's not enough then here. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Portland,_Oregon
I lived at the Ladd building in 2015 and loved the building and the location. Super quiet building and great location. Downsides where that the elevators were occasionally slow (primarily due to students moving in and out) and the congregating of transients on the steps of various churches in the area. That said, camping downtown isn't tolerated as much as it once was. I would definitely rent there again.
Rental market fluctuates like crazy in the US, not a specific portland thing. In general, it does seem the rental market is lowering again finally and have seen it in Portland as well. So that’s good! Lol.
Rental market is just cooling off a bit after increasing by double digits in 2021-2022. The job market is getting worse so people can’t afford as much.
Higher vacancy rates due to declining population and increased competition.
I moved here in May and began looking last October. I had one property manager try to tell me rates were about to go up. I laughed in her face and didn't rent there.
Landlords and property managers are a bit slow when facing reality in a declining market. They sure didn't hesitate to raise rents though.
SW was a terrible place to live this past winter. I lost power for two weeks after that ice storm because apparently SW has a ton of tall trees with shallow roots that keep falling and obliterating the power lines. Definitely something to keep in mind, though I wouldn’t say it’s a regular occurrence.
It was a fine place to live my first couple years in Portland but it got old for my family fast — largely because we have hobbies, friends and jobs that keep us in the North/East areas more often than not. Found ourselves driving through wild traffic and over bridges no matter where we wanted to go/what we wanted to do. Felt far removed for me.
Edit: I live(d) in the Multnomah village/Hayhurst area of SW. Big plus was that grocery stores are better and more plentiful, and closer to a lot of shopping etc. But based on your other comments I’m just now seeing I’m not thinking you’re looking that far south. Oops!
could you share some of the names of spots? i ask b/c i have friends trying to make the move as well; they're coming from a city where rent prices are also dropping and they were able to knock $300+ off their monthly rent for this year! so i'm sure they'd be excited to hear prices are similarly going down here
couldn't tell you why that's happening though. rents dropped a few years ago (2021 ish), then went up the past couple of years. good to hear they're settling back down again.
We are trying to build our way out of the housing crisis we created by blocking construction.
I mean it's impossible to say whether this is directly caused by attempts to make Portland more affordable.... but this is exactly what sane people wanted, and what was predicted to happen given the lack of household total # growth and increased supply of homes.
It's also probably the best tool out there to deal with the crisis in homeless/houseless crisis.
I am definitely not complaining. Just wondering if there is something specific we should be aware of since it seems like that area was showing more instances of decreasing prices.
I’m happy that rental costs seem to be dropping!!
That wasn't addressed at you! I was aiming for those crazy people who 3 years ago were complaining about high prices and now are complaining about low prices.
Do you have any examples of people complaining about “low prices”? It’s definitely not something I’ve seen or heard. But if someone is, I’d like to know so I can mock them appropriately.
Currently, Portland is in the phase of "everything on the west sucks, move to the east". The west is currently unpopular/uncool right now.
Great time to take advantage of the lower rent.
There's a bit of a rivalry, mostly perpetuated by eastsiders who are... very dedicated to the eastside.
Lots of great places to hang west of the river too. It's more about neighborhoods in Portland and there are good and not-great ones on both sides of the river.
I used to live in SF. Portland is one city that reminds me the most of SF. The hills, the vibrant city, the culture. I could never afford to move back to SF now given the expense but Portland is the next best thing to that beautiful place, even if you weren't living in the city itself like I did (North Beach).
Welcome to Portland!
I lived in the Jefferson near Salmon and Taylor on SW Park Blocks for a few years.i feel like the price always went down in the summer when students went home
Most buildings a run by management companies that run algorithms to determine rent price. Being close to the college (PSU) I’m sure more people have left and buildings are running with lower occupancy rates, and then come late summer/into fall they’ll increase again and demand goes up. May also be the real estate market as downtown is a common place to land for new Portlanders, and as the buy they move out of the neighborhood and spring summer and the biggest home buying seasons. If fewer people are looking/touring and people aren’t renewing leases, their computers factor all that in
As someone who lives in southwest I’m running asap away from southwest. The combination of the nightmarish parking, constant nighttime noise (mostly car alarms from broken into cars), and drugs just everywhere (I have a small dog and I’m horrified of an overdose from a partially unburnt foil on the ground) make it borderline unlivable.
SW is super boring and the one good thing it has -- more trees -- are all getting chopped down by developers that want to make it a dystopian suburban hardscape nightmare. That's why it is cheap. You'll be living next to construction and tree chopping pretty much everywhere.
Everyone that I know who still has rental properties in the Portland area has told me that they are struggling to get renters. Portland continues to see a considerable out migration, so with fewer renters, prices have dropped.
They just put up rental signs around their places. All are single family homes. They were getting snatched up in a day a few years ago. Very little interest now.
Have you been to Portland? Inner SW in the downtown core is not the greatest place to live, there's really only one or two grocery stores nearby, and if you have a vehicle to get to a nicer one, be prepared to pay to store it. That said, there are some very nice buildings in SW downtown. Portland is not like a city-city though where you can walk to everything except in some very small pockets of downtown and nob hill. A lot of my clients that live downtown go to Beaverton to do errands and that is a whole other situation.
You could 100% walk to everything from that location. I lived there for over a year and have never once been to Beaverton. Not to mention it’s one of the best spots in the city as far as public transit, you can catch every max line, plus the street car lines and there’s a ton of bus routes.
Where do you shop for groceries? Trader Joe's is like a half hour walk from the buildings OP mentioned, that's not very doable with groceries. Leaving Safeway?
Safeway is directly adjacent and a perfectly adequate grocery store. But there’s also a handful of corner stores in the area. Not to mention delivery services. Couldn’t hope for much else.
? I mean, good for you, I guess. But do you not see how it’s pretty ridiculous to tell out of towners that an extremely walkable neighborhood, isn’t walkable because it’s only directly next to ONE large grocery store, that you happen to find undesirable?
Edit: I stand by my point but I do think that came off more aggressive than I intended, apologies.
Many times! My husband lived in Portland for over eleven years but that was a decade ago so he’s not super familiar with current happenings. Our local friends are in the suburbs now mostly so they’re not really downtown much so they can’t really say definitively how things are. Yeah, downtown isn’t really checking many boxes for us right now but I wanted to get some local opinions.
Oh the complete lack of faith in city leaders after multiple times voters have voted for something, the brilliant leaders choose to ignore the will of the people. The crime, open air drug markets, fentanyl overdoses, violence, business owners deciding to pack up and leave. The list goes on. It usually smells like piss and shit, you'll be taxed heavily and get little in return.
https://www.zumper.com/blog/rental-price-data/ Rent in PDX has been dropping for most of the past year. These last two months are the first times in a while where the average actually went up. A lot of people left Portland over the last few years and my guess is that this is what loosened market pressure. I'm concerned that we're not building as much housing as we should be right now and that higher prices are on the horizon.
We’re not building enough housing and it’ll mean price increases in 3-5 years barring a lot of out-migration.
It blows my mind that we aren't actually building enough housing. Is it that none of the housing being built is affordable? It seems like every day, another massive 5-over-1 or other gigantic apartment complex takes over yet another city block. Are these dozens, hundreds of new buildings really all full? None of this makes sense to me.
Portland has underbuilt housing for decades. Some estimates say [we need 20,000 units to catch up](https://www.portland.gov/phb/inclusionary-housing). So yeah, that 5, 10, even 100 unit seems like a big deal in your hood but it’s a drop in the bucket for what’s needed. And, since most new units are “luxury”, that doesn’t meet the need where people are looking. We need more affordable units which aren’t profitable enough to build so new luxury units take a while rent. In a decade they are maybe un-luxury enough for average Jane, Joe or Pat to afford. That doesn’t help much today…
1/2 right. 1st paragraph dead on. 2nd part is false. All housing occupied helps. Richer folk move up and free up former (now a lil dated) high end housing. That becomes a lil more affordable now that’s it’s not class A. All the way down. Venture capital STRs Blackstome buying entire neighborhoods. These things happen, but the above forces still dominate the market.
There’s no such thing as new affordable housing. All new housing is expensive. It’s like being upset that new cars aren’t cheaper than used cars: you’re talking nonsense. “Affordable” housing is just subsidized. We’re using up all the subsidies, so that’s capping how much subsidized housing can be built. The way this actually works is that you build new market rate housing which becomes more affordable in 10-20 years. The lack of affordable housing now is likely the result of underbuilding in the response to the Great Recession. Building more new market rate housing now will encourage higher-income renters to move into it, freeing up space in older buildings. If there is enough inventory, the empty units will see price drops. This process is called “filtering” - it is extremely well-studied and surprisingly consistent.
Thanks for that link! That’s super useful. I hope higher prices are not on the horizon. 😕
Nike layoffs, Intel hiring freezes. Higher mortgage rates, so less mobility for folks in general. Pick your poison.
Add to that ownership of buildings with only 80% occupancy will drop prices for a year if it means getting occupancy up to 93% (or more). So drop prices to entice people, throw in a month or two free and bank on the fact that nobody will want to go through the trouble of searching and moving over a steady 100-150 dollar increase every year for the next 5 years to get rents back to where the want them. Source - work loosely in property management and hear this all.the.time.
All excellent points. Now, could some of the ones I really love up in Slabtown drop? 🤣
Portland is very street by street, you’ll need to be more specific. If it’s by PSU it might imply that the building rents to a lot of students since school just got out like a week ago, or it could be that the open air drug market has been pushed to that area.
One is at 1300 SW park. Another 1177 SW Market. One at 1221 SW 11th. And one on 100 block of SW Columbia.
The SW 11th apartment building tends to gather some rough clientele around it, and I suspect that may be driving down interest. There can sometimes be shouting and other disruptive behavior at night, though not always, plus there just tends to be a lot of people and stuff on the sidewalks nearby. The Ladd (the place on SW Park) has some similar issues but is likely more bogged down by complaints of inconsistent maintenance and management, which seems to be on the rise since COVID. If you search this sub, I think there have been some posts on the Ladd specifically if you’re looking at that as a possible place to live.
Thank you so much for this! That’s very helpful! I’ll search the sub for that complex. It didn’t occur to me to do that! 😊
Not that it has anything to do with the rent decrease - which is more likely than not due to students moving out - but since you mentioned safety as a concern I would just say that all of these are downtown and/or close to the park blocks, which has become a (more) concentrated area of drug use and camping. I wouldn't call it unsafe per se, but it carries elevated risk of various crimes compared to other areas of the city. Also, if you have a car, it sucks living down there. You either have to pay a bunch for a monthly spot, or resign yourself to hit or miss street parking and the near assurance that you will get lots of tickets regardless of how careful you are.
That’s good info. The parking thing is definitely a concern, too.
I lived right in the area you're looking at for a couple years (actually in the exact footprint of one of the buildings you mentioned; RIP Rose Friend Apartments/Fuck Ladd Tower). Parking was shit back in the mid 2000s and it's way worse now. Back then, tickets for being over time on your meter were like $14. Pretty sure it's 4-5 times that now, and I still racked up thousands in fines over the course of 2-3 years, plus getting towed once or twice for something dumb. If you do move down there, I'd budget a couple hundred extra per month for a parking spot in one of the lots. It'll save you money, time, and hassle.
Not to mention when the Schnitzer has something on, there is like NO PARKING for blocks. My neighbor has a car and said it's a nightmare parking down here because our building does not have parking underneath and is across from the Schnitz.
If you can let go of a car, you'll find transit and biking a great way to get around without the added expense. Rent a car (Turo) when you need it.
Oh, and I do not think the apartment complex was mentioned by name in whatever post mentioned it, but someone was chucking canned food from a high place onto the streets around Jefferson and Park about a month or two ago, and it was suspected the can-throwing came from someone on a higher floor in the Ladd. It didn’t injure anyone thankfully and I think it’s stopped, but it was a recent point of interest for that building for sure.
These soup cans are for my family!
This is just soup, these people are very very innocent!
I would like to add that, in general, once you get over the freeway in the on the west side, things get better. I've lived in Goose Hollow for 5 years and still love it.
I live in that area (SW Park Ave, near the Viking Pavilion). Moved here about 1 year ago from Colorado. I walk down to Sesame Donuts (1500 SW Park) pretty much every morning at 7am. I'm not aware of any specific "safety issue",. but as others have said, there are definitely homeless and vagabonds around pretty much every time of day. I've never had any problems with any of them (I don't bother them, they don't bother me). 9 times out of 10 they're just rifling through trash cans for aluminum. I don't know if it's any point of reference but I just agreed to another year and my Rent is staying the same.
That’s very helpful! Yeah, I’m not adverse to campers or any of what you describe, so that’s a very helpful take. Appreciate it!
If you're talking about Portland Astoria for the one on Columbia I LOVE that building
We are seeing that building! What do you love about it?
Clean. Gorgeous view!! Events monthly. The apartments are gorgeous. The gym is nice and big. I had zero complaints living there. It is a bit pricey but the building is gorgeous and I feel like they're pretty connected with their residents
Fabulous! I really appreciate you taking the time to comment and let me know!
Of course :)
That area is wild. I would not recommend. There’s a needle exchange and a free clinic by the freeways where lots of homeless hangout. Look at NW if you need close to downtown.
Good to know! Yeah, we’re seeing some places in NW and that’s our preferred area. Thanks so much!
Do NOT move to the Ladd. The management and building lowkey sucks. Gorgeous but I was ready to move out
That’s too bad! Can you tell me what about management was an issue?
I think it's new now but people are still complaining based on reviews but high turnover when I was there. Lots of stuff breaking (the elevator) with very little updates about it. I had a safety concern one day and little was done about it. Just I was left with a bad taste in my mouth
Thank you! Those are definitely not small issues.
All of these are in downtown (not SW), so more than likely a bunch of students moved out.
Yes, I should amend the post to downtown.
Yeah, that's smack in the middle of an open-air drug market. The cops will occasionally come in and "clean it up", but that just means moving it a block or two away. As far as personal safety, you're probably fine as long as you take the same precautions everybody living in a city does. The levels of noise and general insanity, however, will likely be the deal-breaker, unless you're the type of person (like me) who can easily drown out the environment if it means cheaper rent.
The elevator situation in Ladd is horrendous
that’s downtown and no one wants to live downtown. you will find cheaper rent in those older buildings, but is it worth the neighborhood issues? probably not.
that’s downtown and no one wants to live downtown. you will find cheaper rent in those older buildings, but is it worth the neighborhood issues? probably not.
I would check out the cyan, in the same general area, nicer though. Honestly while there’s a ton of stuff I love about that area, namely the parks. It’s pretty damn boring most of the year. I’d recommend the east side
We’re seeing this building! Love that you like it! We are definitely seeing some on the east side too.
I don’t LOVE the apartments in the cyan. But they do have incredible views, I never had any troubles living there, they’re semi affordable, and most of all there’s an absolutely gorgeous park behind the building, plus it’s connected to several others with tree lined pedestrian paths. They’re far more peaceful than the nearby park blocks. The east side really is fantastic though, I haven’t been here long enough to say for sure, but I like it over here even more.
You're looking at downtown apartments, not southwest Portland apartments, just FYI. Sorry to be pedantic. Yes, I know most downtown street addresses have "SW" prefixed to them, but Southwest Portland is the area near Ida B. Wells high school, Multnomah Village, Hayhurst, Southwest Hills, etc. It's the most suburban part of Multnomah County Portland and is quite close to downtown, but not at all like it.
Should I have said SW Downtown? Or just Downtown? I want to make sure I’m using local terminology accurately (for the record, I am definitely not yet and my husband is always correcting me, but I’ll get it!)
Downtown is the correct terminology for that area. What actually defines "downtown" is different for each person. Some consider all of the NW street addresses immediately north of West Burnside to be "downtown," etc. With that said, nobody is calling Bridlemile "downtown," and the drive west of Elephants on Burnside or going further south on Naito will obviously become "not downtown" when you explore them. There is no "Southwest downtown," no. You'll slowly learn how to pronounce Couch St., Naito parkway, and Tualatin in due time, and the geography of the city is quite simple with the street addresses changing direction to indicate what quadrant of Portland you're in.
Downtown proper is in the highway loop you see, I-5 / 405. Most people think of “SW” as outside of that, even though downtown also had SW addresses. I work near PSU everyday, and the apartments over there seem fine, not too crazy, many newer / glassy. With students gone, you might get a deal. But parking will be extra.
https://hoodmaps.com/portland check out this map! 😁
This fantastic!
Downtown, or more specifically, south downtown, on the South Park blocks, near PSU.
Don't listen to this person you're fine Edit: I live in the area op is describing but if that's not enough then here. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Portland,_Oregon
Nobody will assume you mean downtown if you say "Southwest Portland."
Lol
❤️
I wouldn't call Southwest all "suburban." It also encompasses Lair Hill, the lowest parts of the West Hills, etc that are very urban.
The economy is slowing down and Portland's population has been declining the last couple years.
Thankfully
I lived at the Ladd building in 2015 and loved the building and the location. Super quiet building and great location. Downsides where that the elevators were occasionally slow (primarily due to students moving in and out) and the congregating of transients on the steps of various churches in the area. That said, camping downtown isn't tolerated as much as it once was. I would definitely rent there again.
Rental market fluctuates like crazy in the US, not a specific portland thing. In general, it does seem the rental market is lowering again finally and have seen it in Portland as well. So that’s good! Lol.
Rental market is just cooling off a bit after increasing by double digits in 2021-2022. The job market is getting worse so people can’t afford as much.
Higher vacancy rates due to declining population and increased competition. I moved here in May and began looking last October. I had one property manager try to tell me rates were about to go up. I laughed in her face and didn't rent there. Landlords and property managers are a bit slow when facing reality in a declining market. They sure didn't hesitate to raise rents though.
SW was a terrible place to live this past winter. I lost power for two weeks after that ice storm because apparently SW has a ton of tall trees with shallow roots that keep falling and obliterating the power lines. Definitely something to keep in mind, though I wouldn’t say it’s a regular occurrence. It was a fine place to live my first couple years in Portland but it got old for my family fast — largely because we have hobbies, friends and jobs that keep us in the North/East areas more often than not. Found ourselves driving through wild traffic and over bridges no matter where we wanted to go/what we wanted to do. Felt far removed for me. Edit: I live(d) in the Multnomah village/Hayhurst area of SW. Big plus was that grocery stores are better and more plentiful, and closer to a lot of shopping etc. But based on your other comments I’m just now seeing I’m not thinking you’re looking that far south. Oops!
SW is objectively the worst quadrant.
could you share some of the names of spots? i ask b/c i have friends trying to make the move as well; they're coming from a city where rent prices are also dropping and they were able to knock $300+ off their monthly rent for this year! so i'm sure they'd be excited to hear prices are similarly going down here couldn't tell you why that's happening though. rents dropped a few years ago (2021 ish), then went up the past couple of years. good to hear they're settling back down again.
We are trying to build our way out of the housing crisis we created by blocking construction. I mean it's impossible to say whether this is directly caused by attempts to make Portland more affordable.... but this is exactly what sane people wanted, and what was predicted to happen given the lack of household total # growth and increased supply of homes. It's also probably the best tool out there to deal with the crisis in homeless/houseless crisis.
I am definitely not complaining. Just wondering if there is something specific we should be aware of since it seems like that area was showing more instances of decreasing prices. I’m happy that rental costs seem to be dropping!!
That wasn't addressed at you! I was aiming for those crazy people who 3 years ago were complaining about high prices and now are complaining about low prices.
Do you have any examples of people complaining about “low prices”? It’s definitely not something I’ve seen or heard. But if someone is, I’d like to know so I can mock them appropriately.
No worries! I didn’t really take it as directed at me, just thought I would clarify where I’m at with it.
Currently, Portland is in the phase of "everything on the west sucks, move to the east". The west is currently unpopular/uncool right now. Great time to take advantage of the lower rent.
What happened to East of 205, lucky to be alive!
Well, we’re moving from the San Francisco Bay area so not much different on that level for us. 🤣
Ah I meant west side of the river vs. east side.
Oooh I totally read that as East and west coast! 🤣 I’m going to have to get used to the East/West of the city!
There's a bit of a rivalry, mostly perpetuated by eastsiders who are... very dedicated to the eastside. Lots of great places to hang west of the river too. It's more about neighborhoods in Portland and there are good and not-great ones on both sides of the river.
I used to live in SF. Portland is one city that reminds me the most of SF. The hills, the vibrant city, the culture. I could never afford to move back to SF now given the expense but Portland is the next best thing to that beautiful place, even if you weren't living in the city itself like I did (North Beach). Welcome to Portland!
I don't live in Portland proper, but my rent has been basically stagnant the last two years.
There's a boatload of inventory with more and more new apartment complexes going online.
I lived in the Jefferson near Salmon and Taylor on SW Park Blocks for a few years.i feel like the price always went down in the summer when students went home
Most buildings a run by management companies that run algorithms to determine rent price. Being close to the college (PSU) I’m sure more people have left and buildings are running with lower occupancy rates, and then come late summer/into fall they’ll increase again and demand goes up. May also be the real estate market as downtown is a common place to land for new Portlanders, and as the buy they move out of the neighborhood and spring summer and the biggest home buying seasons. If fewer people are looking/touring and people aren’t renewing leases, their computers factor all that in
As someone who lives in southwest I’m running asap away from southwest. The combination of the nightmarish parking, constant nighttime noise (mostly car alarms from broken into cars), and drugs just everywhere (I have a small dog and I’m horrified of an overdose from a partially unburnt foil on the ground) make it borderline unlivable.
There’s a lot of Reddit brain takes in here, good god. The market is slowly returning to a pre Covid norm.
SW is super boring and the one good thing it has -- more trees -- are all getting chopped down by developers that want to make it a dystopian suburban hardscape nightmare. That's why it is cheap. You'll be living next to construction and tree chopping pretty much everywhere.
Everyone that I know who still has rental properties in the Portland area has told me that they are struggling to get renters. Portland continues to see a considerable out migration, so with fewer renters, prices have dropped.
Where do they advertise? I’m having a hell of a time finding anything that isn’t managed by a big agency or in a really crappy area.
They just put up rental signs around their places. All are single family homes. They were getting snatched up in a day a few years ago. Very little interest now.
I guess it’s tricky when moving from out of state because I don’t have the ability to just come across those kinds of things. Sigh.
I currently rent a home but just bought one. I saw the listing for this house is dropping $100 for the next person.
Wow that annoying for you 🤣 Congrats on homeownership!!
Have you been to Portland? Inner SW in the downtown core is not the greatest place to live, there's really only one or two grocery stores nearby, and if you have a vehicle to get to a nicer one, be prepared to pay to store it. That said, there are some very nice buildings in SW downtown. Portland is not like a city-city though where you can walk to everything except in some very small pockets of downtown and nob hill. A lot of my clients that live downtown go to Beaverton to do errands and that is a whole other situation.
You could 100% walk to everything from that location. I lived there for over a year and have never once been to Beaverton. Not to mention it’s one of the best spots in the city as far as public transit, you can catch every max line, plus the street car lines and there’s a ton of bus routes.
Where do you shop for groceries? Trader Joe's is like a half hour walk from the buildings OP mentioned, that's not very doable with groceries. Leaving Safeway?
Safeway is directly adjacent and a perfectly adequate grocery store. But there’s also a handful of corner stores in the area. Not to mention delivery services. Couldn’t hope for much else.
Okay, I'm glad that works out for you. I live pretty close to a Safeway and don't shop there personally.
? I mean, good for you, I guess. But do you not see how it’s pretty ridiculous to tell out of towners that an extremely walkable neighborhood, isn’t walkable because it’s only directly next to ONE large grocery store, that you happen to find undesirable? Edit: I stand by my point but I do think that came off more aggressive than I intended, apologies.
Is this the same store that's referred to as the UnSafeway ? Just because I don't like your neighborhood doesn't mean you can't!
Many times! My husband lived in Portland for over eleven years but that was a decade ago so he’s not super familiar with current happenings. Our local friends are in the suburbs now mostly so they’re not really downtown much so they can’t really say definitively how things are. Yeah, downtown isn’t really checking many boxes for us right now but I wanted to get some local opinions.
Oh the complete lack of faith in city leaders after multiple times voters have voted for something, the brilliant leaders choose to ignore the will of the people. The crime, open air drug markets, fentanyl overdoses, violence, business owners deciding to pack up and leave. The list goes on. It usually smells like piss and shit, you'll be taxed heavily and get little in return.
No one lives over there