Portland Makes Bankrate’s “Bubble Blower” list

April 7th, 2006

Portland and Seattle are identified by Bankrate.com as two of the top 10 cities that should defy the national trend toward softening housing prices and demand. Their take? Portland (and Seattle) will see continued appreciation and demand due to undersupply and development restrictions.
Quoting Bankrate:

The overall news out of the Pacific Northwest isn’t great. The area lost jobs in the tech bust and is still recouping. But in terms of housing price appreciation, the thing these cities have going for them is a restriction in supply. Tight controls on development have prevented the normal progress of builders going farther out from the city core to find cheap land in the suburbs. Hence, demand stays high for available units. (Forbes Magazine lists Seattle as the most overpriced place to live in the country; Portland was third on the list.)

“Portland and Seattle have really benefited from California’s growth,” says Richard Gollis, principal of San Francisco-based real estate consultants The Concord Group. “Portland is starting to see the next generation of housing product, which is large-scale, high-density projects in downtown. The same thing is happening in Seattle. People who moved there 20 years ago for the tech market are older now and have a different lifestyle.”

The top 10 (really, it’s 12):

• Boise (ID)
• El Paso (TX)
• Albuquerque (NM)
• Seattle (WA)/Portland (OR)
• Salt Lake City (UT)
• Raleigh (NC)
• Philadelphia (PA)
• Atlanta (GA)
• Little Rock (AR)
• Cincinnati (OH)/Birmingham (AL)

Full story at Bankrate.com.

Bubble photo by Bohphoto.

Technorati Tags: real estate, bubble, appreciation, Portland, Bankrate

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Related posts:

1. Real Estate Phrase Makes 2006 Banned List of Words
2. More Portland Top 10 List Bliss
3. My Evening with the Bubble Bloggers

Entry Filed under: Market Activity