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My wife & I are seriously considering moving out of the San Francisco area when our lease runs out in a few months, probably to the Pacific Northwest. In the last few years our housing costs in SF have just gone up and up, and we need to cut it back down for our financial sanity.
Based on preliminary research it looks like we can save about the same amount of money by going out to the Bay Area suburbs where we have nothing but a BART station and a long commute... or by getting an awesome walk/transit-friendly downtown apartment in Portland.
I guess I'm helping to gentrify someone else's city while I'm whinging about gentrification at home, but hey... ;)
We've also looked at Seattle but it's running more expensive, and Portland is just *so pleasant*; every time I've visited it I've marked down places I want to come back to in case I ever move there... and that time may be coming.
In the meantime, any recommendations on pre-move research other than watching lots of Portlandia reruns? ;)
Based on preliminary research it looks like we can save about the same amount of money by going out to the Bay Area suburbs where we have nothing but a BART station and a long commute... or by getting an awesome walk/transit-friendly downtown apartment in Portland.
I guess I'm helping to gentrify someone else's city while I'm whinging about gentrification at home, but hey... ;)
We've also looked at Seattle but it's running more expensive, and Portland is just *so pleasant*; every time I've visited it I've marked down places I want to come back to in case I ever move there... and that time may be coming.
In the meantime, any recommendations on pre-move research other than watching lots of Portlandia reruns? ;)
Douglas Perkins, uıɐɾ ʞ ʇɐɯɐs, Christopher Allan Webber, jrobb and 1 others likes this.
jrobertson, jrobertson, jrobertson, jrobertson and 4 others shared this.
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Not buying yet, need to get consumer debt cleaned up before I sink money into real estate! :) Plus it's nice to have a couple years to poke around town before we decide where to settle.
Been thinking about moving to Portland myself—what were your favorite parts of town? You use a Wiki to keep track of this, right? ;-)
uıɐɾ ʞ ʇɐɯɐs at 2015-04-29T02:09:28Z
Claes Wallin (韋嘉誠), Douglas Perkins likes this.
I've actually been using a Google Doc shared between me and my wife for jotting down notes. Sssh, don't tell anybody we're using proprietary collaboration software! ;)
[Actually it's kinda neat, you can store & share a custom Google Map in Google Drive as well now. Good for keeping track of potential apartments and what businesses are in the area.]
[Actually it's kinda neat, you can store & share a custom Google Map in Google Drive as well now. Good for keeping track of potential apartments and what businesses are in the area.]
As far as parts of town -- I've mostly poked around downtown/northwest/pearl district, on the west side of the river where transit's really good. Been to a few restaurants on the other side of the river, and of course the convention center is on the east side but there's nothing fun near it. ;)
I remember the first time I visited Portland (for OSCON I think, some years back) I was struck by how *clean* it was compared to San Francisco... Wide streets good for cars but still very walk- and bike-friendly, and I really like the light rail. (Unfortunately they no longer have a free transit zone downtown, they started charging a couple years ago to make up budget shortfalls.)
I remember the first time I visited Portland (for OSCON I think, some years back) I was struck by how *clean* it was compared to San Francisco... Wide streets good for cars but still very walk- and bike-friendly, and I really like the light rail. (Unfortunately they no longer have a free transit zone downtown, they started charging a couple years ago to make up budget shortfalls.)