Apr
29
2008
Does Your Home do the Walk?
By Charles TurnerFun website that one of our clients found and shared. They are moving from a home with a walkscore of 15 to making an offer on a home with a score of 80.
What is Walk Score? We help homebuyers, renters, and real estate agents find houses and apartments in great neighborhoods. Walk Score shows you a map of what’s nearby and calculates a Walk Score for any property. Buying a house in a walkable neighborhood is good for your health and good for the environment.
Assuming you lived at the City of Portland Bureau of Development Services at 1900 SW 4th St., you’d have a walkscore of 88.
Hey – that’s a really cool site! I wonder which client you got the idea from?
Thanks for the link. That looks like a great site. I always plug addresses of places I’m looking at into Trimet.org. Their trip planner works really well.
hmmmm, sounds like just one more thing sellers can use to further delude themselves into thinking they are justified in their listing prices on their overvalued properties. I can hear it now, “sure I bought this duplex 2 years ago for 150,000 and didn’t make any improvement but I’m going to now ask 240,000 for it, because look at this great walk score I have…”
Amen Tyler!
Anyone see the latest S&P Case-Shiller numbers? Sellers will need more than a great walk score.
I have to admit that after living in the Buckman area for 8 years it is a wonderful feeling to leave the car parked for days. You don’t know what a hassle driving is until you don’t do it for a while. Just walk out your door and down to the store….of course, you can’t get 4 bags of groceries but who cares, walk back in a few days, say hi to the neighbors along the way…I miss my walkable hood:O(
Thanks for posting the link Charles. I love the concept. I have two grandmothers in their 90s. One lived on in rural/suburban areas her whole life and never walked past the mailbox. The other always lived in the city and walked to shops or to the train station (rarely owned a car). Unscientific I know, but the former is constantly in the hospital and barely has the energy to get out of bed today while the latter can still tear up the city streets until I’m winded.
Personally, I have walked or biked to work for nine out of the last ten years. The only way this was possible was by RENTING. If my job moved, I had the flexibility to move. Last time I changed jobs, I was able to move from 7 blocks from my old place of work to 1 block of my new place of work one week into my two weeks notice (and commute back for the last week). The cost was one weekend and probably not much more than a homebuyer would pay for a home inspeciton.
A note about spending more to live close to hip places to hip place to eat. I live in a seemingly unpedestrian friendly neighborhood in Beaverton. However, I live within a quarter mile of my bank, my doctor, my office, several bars, the grocery store and the Max. So I don’t mind driving occasionally driving for a coffee or dinner when I never get stuck in traffic or have to figure out how to get to work in the snow (once I ski’d to work).
ALL of Beaverton is pedestrian unfriendly.
The tragically hip diss the burbs. How predictable.
What I love about ‘inner” Portland is the diversity. You have your earnest white NPR-listening yuppies in the Northeast, your white bohemian artists in training in SE, your white 80s throwback yuppies in NW and the white we-want-to-be-like-the-burbs homesteaders in SW.
All standing around their Neil Kelley kitchens congratulating each other on their sustainable practices and devotion to…..diversity.
hahaha, I love it Naysayer. I have been in Portland since January of 1995. I have lived in Goose Hollow, NW 21st and Glisan, 18th and SW Morrison (while they were constructing the west side lightrail!) and 8 years in Buckman. I have now been in Forest Heights for a year and thought how will I survive. Well, now that I have ventured out of the ‘inner’ core I have come to realize, dang, you can get a lot of house and yard for 250K in the burbs and you don’t even have to go that far out! Plus, there are some great little neighborhood hangouts to satiate my coffee and socializing needs, even in Beaverton, Tiffany. And yes, there are sidewalks and walkable neighborhoods.
It’s gonna be quite an adventure when we go to buy in a year or so.
“What I love about ‘inner” Portland is the diversity. You have your earnest white NPR-listening yuppies in the Northeast, your white bohemian artists in training in SE, your white 80s throwback yuppies in NW and the white we-want-to-be-like-the-burbs homesteaders in SW.”
Stunningly tragically predictably bitter stereotypes. Well done (Yawn). You must have come up with them standing around your melamime kitchen cabinets staring at the wood paneling and cracked linoleum, congratulating yourself for being a part of any group, because you’re just too smart, and oh such an individual.
Tiffany – I think about your comment every day while I’m enjoying my relaxing walk home from work in Beaverton. In fact much more relaxing than walks in my previous close in SE neighborhood where the sidewalks were obstructed by a “diversity” of overgrown bushes, mudpuddles, compost and broken down Volkswagens. Guess my hippie neighbors were so busy to working overtime at the coffee shop to payoff their Option ARM that they didn’t have time for landscaping.r
Naysayer – right on…
http://community.livejournal.com/damnportlanders/9136972.html