Are You Being Squeezed Out?
Are you feeling the squeeze of the Portland market? The following is an article that has compiled information over the years depicting what home buyers are feeling with the increase in price in close-in neighborhoods.
"Michael Andersen, an affordable housing advocate with Portland for Everyone, posted maps representing five years of rocketing housing prices that make once-affordable dwellings out of reach to most people.
In the 2012 map, a scattering of red dots indicate homes for sale priced at $400,000 and above. Maps for 2013 to 2016 show the steady increase in homes that are unaffordable to 63 percent of Portland residents, according to Andersen's research of the latest Census.
Andersen posted his information on Open:Housing, which invites solutions to high-cost housing. Along with the maps, he offered an example of an average-size house in his neighborhood, Southeast Portland's Montavilla.
The 1,700-square-foot house, built in 1949 on a 4,791-square-foot lot at 156 SE 75th Ave., sold last year for $247,500, which breaks down to monthly mortgage payments of $1,200. After a remodel, it's priced at $549,000 and the monthly payment more than doubles.
Housing activists with Portland for Everyone and others want to see smaller homes, duplexes, triplexes and backyard cottages filling urban lots. These types of dwelling, something in between an apartment building and a freestanding house, are sometimes called "missing middle-income housing."
Andersen offered renderings of how a lot for a single-dwelling home could be reconfigured to create living space for more people.
Not everyone supports this approach. Many in Portland are feeling angst about home demolitions, massive redevelopment, rising prices and heavy population growth.
Still, the city is rewriting its comprehensive plan and needs to decide on new rules for infill and multifamily housing.
Portland's Bureau of Planning and Sustainability is researching allowances for design and scale changes in single-dwelling neighborhoods to make way to legally convert a house into multiple units or add small accessory dwellings or cottages."
-- Janet Eastman for Oregonlive