What Portlanders Think About Their Neighborhoods

Many out-of-towners that contact me to talk about the Portland real estate market often ask about the ‘best neighborhoods’ — for resale values, for education, and most often for a general sense of community or livability.

These questions can create a slippery slope for a licensee (i.e. Realtor(R)). Due to Fair Housing laws (and good common sense) we can’t steer clients away from certain neighborhoods because of racial mix, or draw conclusions for a client based on crime rates, demographic profiles, etc.

It’s one reason why I appreciate the City of Portland biannual Resident Survey about issues of neighborhoods and livability. It can fill in blanks for some of the questions that I can’t ethically or legally speak about.

I talked about it a couple years ago, but now the 2007 Survey is available.

The survey measures Portlander’s livability views on city services, development, traffic, infrastructure, and government oversight. There’s plenty of detail — sorted by neighborhood or by survey question.

The survey doesn’t measure ‘vibe’, but for a quick overview, check out the general satisfaction scale for all Portland neighborhoods. As I noted a couple years ago, the dissatisfaction tends to rise as you head east, but you can draw your own conclusions.

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

Add comment March 21st, 2008