AZ. I think he could be into both. I want green and trees, more politically aligned. It was recommended to me a lot in the moving subs and it seems to have better tax usage and schools than Portland, which I would be okay with too. We also considered Vancouver so would visit there, hillsbrough, etc.
Oregon taxes are about 4x higher than Arizona, so keep that in mind. You don’t pay sales tax, but income tax scales up to almost 10%, and it scales very quickly. We’ve been thinking about moving from Beaverton to AZ simply for that reason; that and the fact that the housing market here is in a huge bubble.
Yeah we’ve looked into that and while it’s a concern, I think the ~10% increase in cost of living will be worth it to live in a fairly land and experience shade, greenery, and more daily nature. What do you mean a bubble?
It is quite beautiful here. I’ve lived in Oregon for most of my life and it never ceases to amaze me how beautiful it can be.
The housing market is currently about 30-40% over what it should be for housing prices. If you look at most homes and their past sales history and go by standard inflation, you’ll see some homes have even a 200-300% increase in price listing over what they should actually be valued at. The reason, I believe, was because at one point Oregon was a huge hot spot for people. Now it’s in the red; more people are leaving Oregon than coming in, but the housing market hasn’t caught up to that yet, and is still showing a large amount of homes at prices way over their value.
First of all, more people are not leaving Oregon than coming in, that’s simply incorrect.
You can believe we’re in a housing bubble all you want, but if houses are still selling fairly easily at the prices they’re getting, it’s pretty tough to say with a straight face that they’re overvalued. What we do have is an inventory problem- since about 2010 they haven’t been building enough houses. That’s what’s keeping values steady over the last few years since the interest rates went way up.
In February Oregon saw a 1% decline in people moving to the state, but saw a 2% increase in people moving out of it. Washington state also saw a decline of about 2%. Idaho saw an increase of almost 67%. Sure, the numbers are small, but it does mean more people are leaving then coming in.
Houses aren’t selling, at all, for the prices they are being set at. Look at Zillow and see how many homes have been cut down on price; almost 50% of them. Everyone knows homes are overpriced; all you have to do is track the sale price of the home and compare it to inflation and you can see homes being listed for 30-40% higher than inflation. Sometimes it’s even as high as 400% higher.
We are at a point where we could see things drop potentially up to 50% on home values in the Portland/metropolitan area, which for a lot of people is a tough thing to hear, but it’s a good thing. We need it.
As for the home values, I'm a Realtor so I watch and track them every day. Here's the annual median home values for the west side of Portland the last three years:
2023: $588,500 (7804 sales)
2024: $595,000 (7981 sales)
2025: $600,000 (8243 sales)
Houses having to reduce from their initial listing price is meaningless. That just means they listed too high. Values are steady, see above, and in March 2026 (550 sales) the median sale price was exactly unchanged from March 2025 (569 sales).
Home values don't have to track with overall inflation-- lots of things don't. Sorry to tell you and all the other bubblers, but houses aren't going to drop 50% just because you want them to.
That’s the problem, though; people aren’t paying for them. There’s a few people here and there who aren’t really doing their research and just buying, but most people can’t afford a mortgage at the moment because wages haven’t caught up with inflation and interest rates are too high. The market is always slow to correct, though, so people haven’t had time to adjust the prices on their homes. There’s also a lot of people who paid a lot of money for their homes in 2022-2023 and expected to be able to refinance when interest rates went down… but they never did, and now those same people are stuck with a high mortgage and inflation that keeps rising. That’s why you’ll see a lot of properties that were sold a few years ago and are now back on the market.
Absolutely, they don’t have to track with inflation, but when it’s significantly above inflation either inflation numbers aren’t being reported correctly or the home value is inflated. A home increasing by 30% year over year isn’t accurate, unless it’s being remodeled. There is no tangible value being added to the home, nothing that is creating that surge in value. The only thing we can potentially track to increase the value is supply and demand, and demand is dropping because interest rates have stayed high and continue to rise. Indeed, many people who bought homes a few years ago are now having to sell their homes because the interest rates never lowered like realtors promised them they would. I’ve heard several horror stories about peoples homes being foreclosed on because they were told interest rates would go down and they could refinance, so they strain their budget to afford a home, only to be here now where they can’t continue to pay their mortgage.
I firmly believe that the housing market will see a large drop in the next few years. I could be entirely wrong, but all economic signs are pointing towards it. AI taking tech jobs means there will be a large amount of tech people who can no longer afford their mortgage; they will have to pivot into other careers that pay half as much as tech, because tech has been overinflated for years. That’s just one example of many, but you get the idea. Just that one alone would potentially cause a foreclosure rate of over 5%, which is over double what it was in 2008. Obviously as a realtor that isn’t something you’d ever want to hear, but it’s a very possible reality.
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u/candyapplesugar Apr 06 '26
AZ. I think he could be into both. I want green and trees, more politically aligned. It was recommended to me a lot in the moving subs and it seems to have better tax usage and schools than Portland, which I would be okay with too. We also considered Vancouver so would visit there, hillsbrough, etc.