Portland is full of amazing restaurants, boutiques, movie theaters, and bookstores, but a lot of Portland residents look for more active and outdoorsy ways to appreciate their city. If you’re thinking about relocating to Portland and consider yourself a true lover of the outdoors, you should check out the Trails Club of Oregon, a Portland-area outdoors club that facilitates outdoor activities like hiking, water sports, backpacking, bicycling, camping, and trips throughout Oregon.
Northwest Portland’s Nob Hill neighborhood is ringing in the holidays this Saturday with open houses, sales and entertainment. Holidays in Nob Hill will take place throughout the day on Saturday, Dec. 10 on Northwest 21st and 23rd avenues. From 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., Santa will be at HomeStreet Bank, 22 N.W. 23rd Ave., and free photos will be taken. (more…)
If you’ve ever spent time looking for homes for sale in Portland, Oregon you’ve no doubt noticed the small metal rings attached to the sidewalks. The metal rings are a relic of Portland’s early history, when horses were the main method of transportation around the rose city. In the 1800′s, horse rings were embedded into the sidewalk concrete to help tie town your horse outside of houses and stores.
When you start looking at homes for sale in Portland, you’ll soon start noticing real estate opportunities in Portland that are great for work and living. The line between commercial real estate and residential real estate is blurred in Portland, where many districts are zoned for both purposes.
Here’s a fun tip for Portland-area activities this holiday season: Head to Oregon’s Museum of Science and Industry for Gunther von Hagens’ BODY WORLDS & The Brain. This special exhibit includes more than 200 authentic human specimens and highlights neuroscience, brain development and performance of the human body. Through respectful, aesthetic displays, this all-new exhibition invites intensive study and profound reflection on the power, beauty, and fragility of the human body.
One of our favorite things about the Portland Real Estate market is how near homes for sale in Portland are to neighborhood resources like supermarkets, cafes, and libraries. The Multnomah County Library system is one of the best in the world, no question, and every neighborhood has its own branch connected to the main library system. It’s the best of both worlds, really, because you can have a “local” small-town-feel library in your neighborhood connected to the huge catalog of books, movies, and music resources of one of the largest library systems in the country, with over two million books and other library materials.
Thinking of relocating to Portland? One of the big draws of buying a home in Portland is access to Portland professional sports like basketball and soccer. If you’re like me, the drawn-out NBA contract disagreement has put a pallor on your fall. With the end of the strike, Portlanders can look forward to heading back to the Rose Garden as soon as late December. Thanks to the NBA lockout, this year will boast a 66-game season, meaning only 16 fewer games than a normal 82-game grind, but in about a month-and-a-half shorter time span.
If you’re interested in North Portland real estate, there could be big changes in the works for one of the major streets through the neighborhood. The North Williams Avenue Traffic Operations Safety Project involves development on the City of Portland-designated “major city bikeway” of N Williams Ave as part of 2010’s Portland Bicycle Plan. Possible improvements presented by the Portland Bureau of Transportation include adjustments to make travel safer for the bus, for driving and parking, and for pedestrians.
If you’ve ever lived in a place where the tap water is less than appetizing, you’ll be amazed at the quality of Portland’s drinking water. I never take it for granted that I’m able to drink cool, delicious water straight out of my kitchen faucet, and it’s not a surprise to find out that Portland’s water is some of the highest-quality drinking water in the world.
At the McDonald Group, we love this time of year with all of the gorgeous colors in the trees, golden sunlight breaking through the dark clouds, and the swirling leaves that dance through the trees. For some people around the country, fall means getting ready to clear out the garden for the winter ahead, but a lot of people in Portland have found creative ways to keep their gardens growing all year long. Portland is full of great nurseries that want to get you planting in the fall. Fall is a great time to get started on Spring planting, and nursery employees are busy putting sale prices on plants to make way for Christmas decor.
Everyone knows the day after Thanksgiving–also known as Black Friday–is the busiest shopping day of the year, but you don’t have to spend it fighting for a parking space at the mall! Portland is filled with Mom-and-Pop shops that are stocked with. Looking for an alternate way to spend your Thanksgiving Weekend? Head out house-hunting! Now that the summer Portland real estate boom is over, there are some amazing deals in the Portland real estate market, kind of like those steeply discounted flat screen tvs and digital cameras on all the Black Friday ads. Contact the McDonald Group Portland real estate experts today to find homes for sale in Portland at prices that will keep you in the black this holiday season.
The quickly up-and-coming North Portland is full of homes for sale with true neighborhood feel–and in the spirit of the community and the holidays, a North Portland institution is offering a FREE thanksgiving meal! Head down to the 3rd annual Thanksgiving feast at North Mississippi’s tavern-in-a-food-cat-pod Prost!, with 100 pounds of free turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and cranberry sauce. Feel like giving a bit and contributing to the feast? Bring along a side or dessert to share! It’s all going down on Thursday, November 24 from 6 pm to 2:30 am at Prost! (4237 N. Mississippi Ave.)
Parts of Portland (especially high elevations like the Rose City Park Neighborhood and the Skyline Boulevard Area) received some light snowfall last week, adding an air of festive holiday anticipation to the preparations for Thanksgiving this week. Though Portland receives a bit of snow every winter (some years more than others), winter sports enthusiasts can feed their love of the winter weather within an hour of the city. This time of year, thousands of Portlanders take advantage of the close mountains, especially Mt. Hood (located just east of Portland) for some winter sports and snow adventures. Last year the La Niña weather patterns brought plenty of fresh powder, and this year the top ski resorts in the Mt. Hood area, including Timberline Lodge, Mt. Hood Skibowl, and Mt. Hood Meadows, are all gearing up for one of the most successful winter seasons ever. From the top-of-the-line season ski-packages to more affordable options like weekday and night specials and cross-country skiing, the Mt. Hood area is full of opportunities to spend the winter close to home while feeling worlds away.
In Portland, thanks to our urban growth boundaries that limit the urban sprawl of the city’s development, when one building goes down, another comes up. An 80-year old building in Southeast Portland is being demolished this week, and in its place an “urban subdivision” called Waverly Commons will pop up in its place. The new construction on SE Woodwarn St and 35th Avenue will be home to 18 custom homes and a common area on the 2 acre property.
One of the big factors in a healthy real estate market is the success of local small businesses. Especially in Portland, people are looking for homes for sale within walking distance of markets, restaurants, coffee shops, boutiques, and other small businesses that create community. Thanks to a new initiative released this week, Portland’s small businesses are in luck–there’s money from the city coming to assist redevelopment in the Small Business Development Program.