My background is heavy in finance, accounting and supply chain while Mike is an established architect who works for a one stop shop construction and design firm.

I am a licensed Architect out of Chicago, but do a lot of work in the suburbs, including  the Lombard, Villa Park, Elmhurst area.

There were also days when there were a few earlier appointments with architects or city planners things like that.

As someone who has spent the last 5-months cleaning up the mess for a client left by a large prominent property management company in Milwaukee, my suggestion is to talk to current and past clients.These companies have memberships in all of the right organizations, but they are literally ripping off their clients.What I found in the shoddy way they repaired things and what they charged their clients should be criminal.

. $500k may be a little light if you want to go inner Portland, but Newberg is close to you and they have some great new stuff in that price range.If you go this route not only will you not have to drive for dollars, waste money on direct mail (which all the owners are getting flooded with already in the area), not have to meet multiple architects, engineers, general contractors, and not have to oversee the project and wait another year for your Certificate of Occupancy to be issued, but your girlfriend will really appreciate a new house without the grind.Based on your previous posts, I imagine your objection is simply that what you want in a property no one has built.

We partner up with developers and architects in the type of project they are looking at, and provide a line item budget analysis of the construction costs. 

Locally we add an Architect, a Contractor, an Attorney and in some cases a Partner.

I have an architect drafting floor plans.  

I'm a licensed architect both in MD and DC with 15 years of commercial experience.

The AIA (American Institute of Architects) has lots of good examples of contracts.