Portland

[Bill_A]

Is was searching for Portland investment property and came up with listings for La Center. Wondering about the area, the good, bad and the quality of the rental market.

[Chris____]

It certainly could be, assuming Battle Ground is also part of the metro area.  Technically, HUD considers the PDX metro area to be defined at the county level, and all of Clark county is included.  See:

http://www.huduser.org/portal/publications/PDF/CMAR_PortlandOR.pdf

La Center and Woodland are probably comparable.  From a political/economic standpoint, much of La Center's economy is reliant on the Indian casino.  For local coverage, you might check out The Columbian.   If you find statistics at the city level that include such things as median income, please follow up in this thread, as I would be interested as well.

I'm curious where they're getting their data from ,as 63k median household income seems very high.

http://www.homefacts.com/Washington/Clark-County/La-Center/communityinfo.html

[Bill_A]

Thanks Chris. Seems a bit risky to get involved with an investment that is reliant on one major industry to support the local economy. I'm guessing that La Center doesn't house many Portland commuters.

[Jase-Travis]

The rental market seems to be doing well in all areas around Portland / Vancouver. However, don't know that I would recommend LaCenter. I actually would recommend rentals more in the Camas/Vancouver area though. I've been working in the area housing market for nearly 15 years.