i might relocate to Portland for work, and i was wondering if anyone can give me any pointers on where i would look for a home in the 250~300K range? i've got 2 little boys and my wife wants to make sure we stay in an area with good schools. i'm from SoCal but in the past 3 years i've lived in the midwest where housing is MUCH more affordable.

car: does Oregon check smog like CA does? how often is this required?

any place in the area with nice curvy roads to go for a nice sunday afternoon drive?

 

I will try to answer as many of these questions as I can.

It is common for people in the Portland area with children to not live in Portland - this is very evident due to the low enrollment in the Portland Public schools. The comment that is made is that the Portland Schools are poor. I have never really seen any data to support this claim. The people I work with that live in Portland and have children put their kids in private school. I think there are other people in our Oregon crew that can speak to the schools in the area better than I can.

Part of the area to look at is what area you work - in Portland, Beaverton/Hillsboro, Gresham, etc.

OR checks smog in several counties, but not all. This is required every 2 years. Since our cars use OBD2, they smog check by plugging into the OBD2 port. My experiance is that they do not climb under the car to check anything else.

There are many great roads in the area, we have managed to drive a lot of them on our group drives.

I hope this helps some.

 

Hi there...I just PM'd you with some information. I think that you will find our housing much more affordable than SoCal. And we have many great roads here to drive once we thaw out. Welcome to the Pacific Northwest, I'm sure you will love it here...I'm a little partial to it.

Are you from Hong Kong??? So am I, moved here in 1970.

Welcome

 

Hi Mingster!

Amy has the housing covered I'm sure.
Smog checks are only in the major metro area. Down here in the boonies we dont have any.

If you do move up here, we will be sure to show you all the curvy roads you can handle, especially if you end up moving in time to join in on the summer driving season.

 

It's not that far off. (glass half full)

 

3 months if all holds well and we get the snow out of the way NOW.

 

And the count down begins...

 

 

thanks for all the info guys! i'm actually living in Indianapolis right now (for the past 3 years). it's A LOT more affordable than SoCal, even with LA/Orange County's 40% drops in the past year. anyway, i'm still working with the company on the details and i wouldn't know if it'll be a done deal for a while.

i've also read online that beaverton/lake oswego areas have good public schools - not sure if i can afford private schools (in Indy K-12 good private schools go from 25K~32K/year/student, and that's A LOT of dough) - so i'm looking for a nice residential area to settle.

i sold my S long ago but i'm still active with board members on a local level. we've got a nice crew in Indy, and if i do relo to Portland for work i look forward to meeting you guys as well, and show off the '04 rex i got to replace the S (had our first baby in '04 so the S had to go). my rex has some, ahem, upgrades, so i'm pretty sure it won't pass a sniffer test CA does, but i'm not sure about OBDII plug in test...

another question: i heard there's no sales tax in OR? how about state/local taxes? i checked salary.com and looks like portland, OR is 17% more expensive to live than Indianapolis...hmm...

 

ah, another Q: if people who work in Portland don't live in Portland, where do they live? Seattle is too far away (3 hours?)

my wife is really rooting for portland because she's from seattle (a husky), but i've gotta look at the overall picture...of course west coast is a lot more convenient than the midwest...and then there's the coastal scenery...