By Living Room Realty, March 26, 2024
In 2016 my husband and I bought a 3 bedroom one bath house in Lents. Having moved from the San Francisco Bay area in 2014 we spent a long time exploring the city, learning what neighborhoods we liked and like many wished we could get into Sellwood, Irvington or Alberta arts. Our finances weren’t as big as our aspirations and we found ourselves relying on our realtor to help us find alternative neighborhoods that offered what we needed/ wanted in our first home.
Our goals were:
Walkability and good transit links (we sold our car to save for a house!)
1000 sq ft or larger
2 bedrooms+
Fenced yard with enough room for chickens
Off street parking
Functional kitchen with dishwasher
At the time our budget was $275K…. and back then we felt like that was ALOT. We looked at a lot of neighborhoods but the HARDEST thing to find on our list, and also the most essential thing, was a neighborhood with good transportation links. In a twist of fate we ended up finding our home while perusing open houses over the big heat wave in July. We offered asking seller pay closing and our offer was accepted!!
In 2018 we sold that home for a whopping $60K profit and we ended up turning that profit into new careers, businesses, a trip around the world and a complete overhaul of our lives… but that’s a story for another time. What wows me the most about that house it has continued to go up in value at an alarming clip when other neighborhoods in the city have struggled with slow growth and even decline in the face of recent interest rate hikes and financial uncertainty. The reason being?
Lents is actually one of the best neighborhoods in Portland.
Here me out- there are realtors and long time Portlanders reading this thinking that I am totally full of it. But what they don’t realize is while they were busy praising Sellwood and driving up prices in Alberta Arts Lents has been slowly transforming more and more into an ideal neighborhood for first time buyers and young families. This is largely due to its close proximity to the 205 and its one of very few Portland Neighborhoods with a Max Stop that’s very central and accessible.
Lents has all the components of an amazing neighborhood.
- Walkability
- Great food (we have SO many killer restaurants, Flipside Bar, Zoiglhaus, Bella’s Italian Bakery, JC Rice and Noodle to name a few!)
- Lents Park is one of the largest parks in the city, it has walking trails, soccer fields, a community garden, it’s the home of the Portland Pickles!
- An involved community neighborhood Assoc but not the kind you have to pay an HOA for.
- Diverse volume of housing architecture. My house was built in 1912, my neighbors house was built in 1960, and several new builds are dotted throughout the community at rates people can afford.
- Affordability- you can buy a SINGLE FAMILY home in Lents for under $400K, the median house price in Portland right now is $515K- that’s of all housing, not just Single Family.
- GROWTH – In fact since 2000 the city of Portland has invested $207 million into improving Lents. And if we base the current value of my first house here Single Family homes have increased by nearly 25% in the last decade alone!
I often compare Lents to my friends back home in San Francisco to “The Mission district 10 years ago.” It’s only a matter of time before Lents becomes like the neighborhoods before it – South Tabor, Montavilla, Foster Powell and even Portland’s most expensive neighborhood Sellwood as a leader in popularity for hopeful home buyers. I highly recommend you snag yourself a piece of it before that happens.
Sorcha Porter is a real estate agent licensed in OR and WA and specializes in Short Term Rentals. She is the cohost of “The Laddercast” and owner of Oregon Guest Experience Management.
