Every Portland neighborhood brief, in one place — with what each one actually costs

shaan794

Oct 5

3 min read

Updated: 20 hours ago

The short version

Grand Union writes one decision brief per Portland neighborhood: what it costs, what is moving, and what to check before you write an offer. Every figure comes from Multnomah County recorded sales rather than a listing site.

This page is the index, and the only place the whole set sits in one table. It is grouped by entry price, because that is the question most buyers are actually asking.

Twenty-seven neighborhoods are on the board. Fourteen have a published brief; the rest are written and publishing between now and the end of December, and each link appears here as it goes live.

Source for every figure: Multnomah County recorded sales, September 2025 through August 2026, residential property classes and warranty deeds only. Pulled 14 September 2026; county recording lags closings by about three weeks, so the window effectively ends 24 August.

Under $425,000 — the lowest medians in the county

Neighborhood	Sales	Median	$/sq ft	6-month	Brief
Lents	178	$395,500	$328	−2.5%	in production
Hazelwood	218	$400,000	$278	+10.0%	Buying in Hazelwood
Centennial	181	$400,000	$300	+2.5%	Buying in Centennial
Powellhurst-Gilbert	242	$404,500	$289	+1.2%	Buying in Powellhurst-Gilbert
Mill Park	76	$407,500	$307	−6.0%	in production

$425,000 to $475,000 — where most entry-price buying actually happens

Neighborhood	Sales	Median	$/sq ft	6-month	Brief
Cully	153	$425,000	$359	+10.0%	in production
Brentwood-Darlington	197	$425,000	$358	+3.6%	Buying in Brentwood-Darlington
Parkrose Heights	71	$426,000	$314	−2.3%	in production
St. Johns	164	$430,950	$340	−1.4%	Buying in St. Johns
Pearl District	456	$433,750	$386	—	Buying in the Pearl District
Cathedral Park	61	$435,000	$307	+14.9%	in production
Madison South	60	$436,155	$322	+4.1%	in production
Wilkes	146	$441,800	$259	−4.6%	in production
Montavilla	225	$450,000	$352	—	Buying in Montavilla
Foster-Powell / Mt. Scott	83	$455,000	$366	—	Buying in Foster-Powell and Mt. Scott
Portsmouth	119	$458,000	$343	+6.7%	in production
Kenton	127	$465,000	$367	+3.8%	in production

The Pearl is the outlier in this group and worth reading carefully — it is a condo market, and a condo median behaves differently from a house median.

$475,000 to $650,000 — the move-up band

Neighborhood	Sales	Median	$/sq ft	6-month	Brief
Pleasant Valley	213	$497,840	$267	−9.1%	in production
Roseway	120	$520,363	$376	+1.0%	in production
South Portland	199	$540,000	$360	−1.8%	in production
Kerns	41	$550,000	$401	—	Buying in Kerns
Woodstock	131	$570,000	$379	+1.5%	in production
Sellwood-Moreland	161	$585,000	$402	—	Buying in Sellwood-Moreland
Rose City Park / Beaumont	120	$610,000	$378	—	Buying in Rose City Park and Beaumont
Alberta / Concordia	140	$635,000	$387	—	Buying in Alberta and Concordia

Above $700,000 — the established close-in neighborhoods

Neighborhood	Sales	Median	$/sq ft	6-month	Brief
Irvington	90	$877,500	$392	—	Buying in Irvington
Laurelhurst	64	$943,500	$420	—	Buying in Laurelhurst

Ladd's Addition sits inside Hosford-Abernethy and does not report as its own neighborhood in county records, so it has a brief but no separate figure.

How to read these numbers

Four things are worth knowing before you use any of them.

A median is not a price. It is the middle of what sold. Half the neighborhood sold for less. If your budget is at the median you are shopping the cheaper half, and that is a different set of houses than the listing photos suggest.

Price per square foot travels better than median. Two neighborhoods at the same median can be very different places — one selling small houses to people who want the street, the other selling large houses to people who want the space. The per-foot figure is what tells you which.

The six-month column is not appreciation. It measures the change in median sale price against the prior six months, which can move without any individual house gaining or losing value, because the mix of what sold changed. A dash means the comparison has not been run for that neighborhood yet — not that it was flat.

Below about sixty sales a year, direction stops meaning anything. A neighborhood that moved twenty homes can swing wildly on a handful of unusual ones. Where a brief has that problem, it says so rather than publishing a percentage it cannot stand behind.

What is still being written

Twenty-seven neighborhoods have a brief or one in production. Most of the city still does not. They are being written in order of transaction volume and entry price — the places where the most homes are actually changing hands at prices a first purchase can reach.

If you want a specific neighborhood covered sooner, say so. The order is a judgment, not a rule.

Address-level lookups are public: PortlandMaps.