You never know when you’re living in a golden age, but you can sure see the next dark age coming. Case in point: Average apartment rent in Portland is $1,510, according to apartments.com, and it hasn’t changed by a single percentage point in the past year. Enjoy that smooth trend line while it lasts: The number of multifamily units built in Portland this year is the fewest since 2011 (“What Goes Up,” WW, Nov. 19). That disaster will take some time to hit your wallet, but today’s luxury apartments are tomorrow’s slightly dingy but reasonably priced units. In other words: The hike is near. Here’s what our readers had to say:
Rctid_taco, via Reddit: “It’s weird to me how many Portlanders don’t understand this. Twenty years ago, when housing in Portland was affordable, it’s not like we were all living in brand-new publicly financed Affordable Housing. The housing that was affordable was the half-century or older apartments that had often been built as the luxury apartments of their day.”
oGsMustacio, in reply: “Exactly. You don’t invest in building apartment buildings to not maximize your rents. The ‘luxury’ label is also really just a label. If you go look at some of these ‘luxury’ apartment buildings, like the ones in Slabtown, they’re really not that special. The layouts suck, there isn’t much square footage, you get four windows, the space isn’t really designed for the furniture you want (couch, TV, table) to fit in any reasonable way. They might have nice fixtures and amenities in the building that you’ll barely ever use, but the real ‘luxury’ is the location. It’s a desirable neighborhood. That’s why it’s expensive. The amenities and fixtures are a rounding error in the construction of these buildings.”…