Portland Or real estate

[Justis Davidson]

Hey all! I am a beginner still soaking up as much info before I pull the trigger on my first property. I live in the PNW and I was curious to know if anyone has had any good finds in the Portland/Vancouver Area!

[Kurt Lane]

No offense meant to @Jay Hinrichs or @Nathan Gesner but when someone comes onto these forums asking for advice I think it's more helpful for us to be providing them with useful information on the market and fewer personal impressions about crime and homelessness. Those are anecdotal impressions of Portland, but the actual reality is that Portland and the surrounding metro is an incredibly strong rental market with the bonus of long-term appreciation. I've owned rentals in Portland and Detroit, Michigan (another supposedly tough market) for almost 10 years in addition to owning a property management company in Portland. We manage a mix of mid to high-end SFHs, 2-4 plexes, and apartment complexes up to 20 units. We've seen on-time rent payments between 95-98% over the past 2 years, high-demand (we had an apartment go up last week with 25 applications and a SFH the week before with 22), and overall a great tenant base. In addition, the City Council has just announced that they're rolling back the most onerous provision of the FAIR Ordinances (removing the requirement for owners to create depreciation schedules).

I work with a number of first-time investors and getting started is all about with a great agent - like @Brad Hammond - and zeroing in on micro-market you want to focus on. Get organized, have your financing locked-in, and learn how to evaluate potential deals based on your preferred outcomes. Ignore all of the macro noise because you're really just looking for ONE DEAL. If you have flexibility on where you want to invest you might decide Portland isn't the best fit, but I hear very little doom & gloom from those of us that work in the market day-in, day-out.