Searching for a Home to Buy

Find Open Houses to Visit

Portland Realtors® hold their “Open Houses” on Sunday afternoon.  Check our page of  Open Houses This Week and select those homes you want to visit.

You can also visit the Regional Market Listing Service website. You can narrow your search by filing in the parameters. Note the field “Check for Open House” at the bottom of the form. Hit the “Search” button and you’ll get a list of homes that match your selection criteria. Click on the actual listing to determine the date and time a home will be opened to the public for viewing. If you searching for open houses in Portland only, select “Multnomah” in the county box and “Portland” in the city box. The site covers all homes for sale in the metro area as well as other counties and cities in Oregon

Visit a Portland Neighborhood

First, download and print a map (PDF format) of the Portland Neighborhoods. This will help you with directions and orientation. Here are some of the neighborhoods you may want to consider visiting:

  • Southwest Portland Neighborhoods: Arlington Heights, Bridlemile, Council Crest, Hillsdale, Portland Heights, Multnomah Village, Terwilliger-Corbett-Lair Hill, and Sylvan Heights.
  • Northwest Portland Neighborhoods: Pearl District, Northwest, Hillside, Willamette Heights, and Forest Park/Forest Heights.
  • Northeast Portland Neighborhoods: Alameda, Irvington, Beaumont-Wilshire, Grant Park, Hollywood, Laurelhurst, and Rose City Park.
  • Southeast Portland Neighborhoods: Eastmoreland, Hosford-Abernethy (Ladd’s Addition is part of this neighborhood), Laurelhurst, Mount Tabor, Sellwood-Moreland, and Sunnyside (aka Hawthorne).

Many of the neighborhood profiles pages on this site have walking tour guides.

Portland Monthly Magazine Online Real Estate

In their April issue every year, the Portland Monthly magazine features neighborhoods. It has a ton of information about neighborhoods. The drawback is that the information is no longer available online. You have to purchase a copy of the magazine either at most news stamds when it comes out in March or at their website. Also you can purchase a subscription as they have a annual issues on schools, doctors, and other items of interest if you live in Portland or considering a move to Portland.

To help those in the housing market, the magazine combines all the data from about 120 neighborhoods and communities in the Portland metro area. Include are housing prices, school ratings, demographics, crime statistics, parks, commuting information, and services.

Portland Monthly Magazine also has a wealth of data about public schools in the metro area to include both Oregon and Washington. It also has information about private schools.

App:  House Hunter

House Hunter is a good choice for anyone serious about buying a home because it can help users evaluate multiple houses more easily.

House Hunter offers a detailed list of roughly 80 house features, along with an easy method for scoring each. It also lets homeowners add their own features to that list, in case an indoor pool or a backyard Jacuzzi is a priority. You then rank each feature’s importance, on a scale from 1 to 10. After a house visit, you evaluate those features individually and the app assigns an overall score to the home.

Your comments and photos can be stored inside the app. House Hunter includes a mortgage calculator, too. Users can e-mail their ratings to a real estate agent or a family member, for instance.

A more limited Lite version is also worth considering.

Cost: $3.99 for iPhone.

Apps:  Windermere Real Estate

The Windermere Search App for iPhone enables home buyers to search for properties by MLS number, address, and GPS-based location. It also offers the ability to receive email updates, create driving tours, search for open houses, and save favorite searches/properties using myWindermere.

This free app, available for iPhones with iOS version 5 or higher, has many features including:

  • GPS based Nearby Listings & Nearby Open Houses
  • Google Points of Interest near you and near a specific property
  • Property search by location
  • Agent and Office Search

Those with a myWindermere account also have access to:

  • Driving Tours
  • My Favorites
  • My Saved Searches
  • My Agent
  • Listing Details with all the information available on the website as well as “More Like This” which shows similar listings.

Cost:  Free for the iPhone.