You can renovate a house. You can't add a MAX stop.
Three neighborhoods in outer east Portland sold at effectively one price last year. Hazelwood's median was $400,000. Centennial's was $400,000. Mill Park's was $407,500 — seven and a half thousand dollars, top to bottom.
Then they went three different directions.
Neighborhood | Median | $/sq ft | 6-month |
|---|---|---|---|
Hazelwood | $400,000 | $278 | +10.0% |
Centennial | $400,000 | $300 | +2.5% |
Mill Park | $407,500 | $307 | −6.0% |
Multnomah County recorded sales, September 2025 to August 2026, residential classes and warranty deeds only, pulled 14 September 2026.
Hazelwood is up 10.0% over six months. Centennial is up 2.5%. Mill Park is down 6.0%. Same price, same side of town, same six months. So "outer east is cheap and rising" is wrong, and so is the opposite. The postcode explains nothing.
What two of them have, and the third doesn't
Hazelwood has Gateway Transit Center, where the MAX Blue, Green and Red lines meet. That is the only three-line interchange in Portland sitting at a $400,000 median.
Cully, also up 10.0%, has a different scarce thing: annexed late and platted rural, so the lots run deep with rear access — real land and a workable ADU at $359 a foot.
Mill Park has neither. Its price per foot sits right on Centennial's, so the softness reads as thinner demand rather than anything local breaking.
And the check on our own argument: Pleasant Valley has the cheapest square footage in the county at $267, and its prices are falling. Cheap on its own doesn't move. If the story were just "buy the inexpensive ones," Pleasant Valley would be the story. It isn't.
What it means, depending on where you sit
If you're buying. The lever is the walk, not the listing. Two houses at one price in Hazelwood are not the same asset if one is nine minutes from Gateway and one is twenty-five.
If you're selling. If your house is the one near the station or on the deep lot, that is the sentence the listing should lead with. It is the part a renovation can't manufacture.
If you're staying put. Nothing here says sell. It says the thing driving your number is fixed and physical, which means it is unusually easy to check for yourself.
Read the briefs: Hazelwood · Centennial · Pleasant Valley, the control
Three we're watching, on the same basis
Not a forecast and not a percentage. These are the places inside the entry band that hold something fixed and scarce, with the volume and the headroom to act on it.
Kenton — a MAX stop and a real main street, at the top of the band.
Cathedral Park — the same money as St. Johns at $33 less per square foot.
Portsmouth — the last north Portland neighborhood under $460,000.
We'll be wrong about at least one of those. Worth writing down anyway.
Seven recent closings, cheapest to dearest
Read the last column rather than the first: two houses in the same ZIP at $223 and $426 a foot, and a $1.21M house on Knott that costs less per foot than a $399,000 one on 139th.
Address | Price | $/sq ft | Beds / baths | Sq ft | Closed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
12132 SE Pardee St, Portland 97266 | $214,500 | $168 | 3 / 2 | 1,274 | 29 Jun 2026 |
14840 NE Couch St #7, Portland 97230 | $242,500 | $223 | 3 / 1.5 | 1,087 | 21 Jul 2026 |
144 NE 139th Ave, Portland 97230 | $399,000 | $426 | 3 / 1 | 936 | 30 Jun 2026 |
11464 SW 96th Ave, Tigard 97223 | $507,500 | $271 | 3 / 2.5 | 1,875 | 23 Jun 2026 |
832 N Emerson St, Portland 97217 | $555,000 | $262 | 3 / 2 | 2,116 | 27 Aug 2026 |
2848 NE 30th Ave, Portland 97212 | $930,000 | $381 | 4 / 2 | 2,439 | 30 Jul 2026 |
1621 NE Knott St, Portland 97212 | $1,210,000 | $266 | 5 / 3.5 | 4,553 | 19 Aug 2026 |
One thing with a date on it
Your Multnomah County statement is in the mail, and payment is due Monday 16 November 2026 — the usual 15th falls on a Sunday this year, so the next-business-day rule applies.
Before you think about appealing, the test takes a minute. Put Real Market Value and Assessed Value side by side. An appeal only changes your bill if it drives RMV below AV — and for most long-held Portland houses, RMV sits well above AV, which means an appeal cannot help whatever the RMV says. If the two are close, the petition deadline is 31 December.
The whole mechanism, including why a purchase does not reset the assessed value and how two houses at the same price can carry tax bills thousands of dollars apart: how Measure 5 and Measure 50 actually work.
This is the November 2026 edition of On the Block, Grand Union's monthly letter, published here after it went out to the list. Figures are Multnomah County recorded sales for the twelve months to late August 2026, pulled 14 September 2026. Nothing here is legal, tax or financial advice.
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