everything has pros and cons right even living in Vancouver Washington in this video that's what we're talking about stay [Music] tuned welcome or welcome back to living in the Pacific Northwest with hird I'm hird and I am a certified relocation luxury realtor in the Northwest I'm licensed in both Oregon and Washington and cover pretty much all of the Portland metro area so whether you're looking in the Portland area and the Oregon suburbs or you're looking in Southwest Washington I would be more than happy to help you so whether you want to buy sell or invest
shoot me a text at 36818 4438 you can also book a zoom with me in the description below so let's Jump Right In this is going to be a information filled video but a concise video so we're going to start with the pros now the first pro for living in Vancouver Washington is the beauty it is such a beautiful place to live the outdoors one of the things for Me growing Up in Southern California I was used to very like Round Hills trees but not not a ton and tons and tons of development and really
just dry conditions basically the desert and up here it does get rain but in exchange for that it is just an absolutely beautiful place to live even when you're just within the city of Vancouver there are an abundance of trees and flowers in nature and there's a few waterfalls if you know where to look the Columbia river is there there's just such diversity in the beauty and so I really feel like here it the beauty of the outdoors and just the beauty of this area is baked into everyday life and it still has a smaller
town sub Suburban feeli so it feels maybe large if you're coming from somewhere like Wyoming but quite small if you're coming from places that are big Metro areas whether that's along the west coast or even the East Coast the second biggest Pro that I found living in Vancouver Washington is the people people here are so friendly and neighborly I recently had a client who was visiting for the first time and they were talking about how they couldn't believe how friendly everyone was everywhere they went whether they went to breakfast or the grocery store or the
gas station like everyone was just so friendly and they were like so genuinely surprised and they were like I hope that this trend continues because it's so distinctly different from where we're from and it really made an impression on them how friendly people are so you've heard of southern hospitality I call what we have here Southwest Washington Hospitality it is such such a beautiful thing I love the people here they're really quality people and you'll find as you make connections here if you put yourself out a little bit if you make the effort to meet
people people tend to be very open to newcomers meaning that they're not clickish they're not very closed off and so you'll likely get invited to do other things if you you know start to take up your your interests and go and maybe that's playing board games with people or hiking with people that are like you maybe you have young ones so you could do you know hiking with toddlers or something like that there's there's literally groups for every interest and it's so meaningful the connections it is definitely not superficial which is something that you may
experience where you live number three is that living in Vancouver Washington the biggest Pro to me is kind of a quality of life hack so you've got this hack when it comes to taxes because you can live in Washington and you won't have any state income tax but you can shop in Oregon and pay no sales tax when you're there and you're pretty much 15 to 20 minutes from the airport no matter where you are in Vancouver you have access to the mountains the coast Portland so kind of like choose your adventure whatever experience you're
looking to have you can it can be had within about an hour and a half drive in any direction you can get to the desert you can get to the airport you can get to like wine country you can get to skiing I mean it is to me so well positioned and it increases our quality of life here so I feel like that's a little hack about this area but the Secret's getting out and then the fourth Pro is development and we really have this increase in development because of the first three pros that we
covered it's a beautiful place the people are great and it offers a great quality of life and now developers and Savvy people are starting to realize that this is such a gem of an area within the United States so the pro to having more development is that it allows for more housing and for more people to enjoy living in our wonderful area and it gives us things like the Vancouver Waterfront it gives us less reasons to go into Portland which is a pro for a lot of people who live here there is not a a
need to go into Portland especially as Vancouver has developed and will continue to develop there will just be more of everything that you need um I'm aware in PR some developments that are coming to the area that I can't speak about just yet but I do have some inside information and I can say that if you're moving here you will be excited to know these things and hear about some of the exciting new things that are going to happen within Vancouver so those are four Pros now let's talk a little bit about cons I have
three cons that I think are worth noting so that you are not coming to Vancouver thinking everything is sunshine and rainbows which I mean it's a Northwest so I know you're going to expect some gray but that's actually not a con that we have to share with you today because it really depends on where you're coming from my husband's from Philadelphia the weather for him is a pro especially compared to Southern California where we lived before we moved up here I had a client who was from Chicago and she was stoked about the weather she
was like I don't have any more harsh Winters that's great so it really depends on where you're coming from if you're coming from somewhere like Arizona and you like the heat then the weather could be a con but it's definitely not Universal so I did want to touch on that so the number one con I think is spillover from Portland there are some things that just by proximity even though we are separated by the Columbia River and the state line there are some things that spill over from Portland just as a result of proximity so
some of those things include property crime we have higher property crime than normal and I'm not saying that it's all because of Portland I mean every area has some level of crime so our property crime is slightly higher than the national average but our violent crime is less than the national average so when we were looking to relocate here that's one of the things that I noted and for me it was I would rather have my property at risk than my personal safety at risk and you know there's things that you can do to mitigate
and prevent that but I will say that crime is not something that I think about on a daily or even weekly basis I might hear something that comes up in the Colombian and I'm like oh oh that's interesting or oh that's unfortunate that that happened but it's not something that I think permeates our daily life and I know someone asked question about that in a comment recently so I hope this answers it the other thing you'll see that's kind of a spillover from Portland but again I mean any City any Metropolitan city that you go
to in the US is going to have their own challenges with people who are unhoused and so you do see some tent encampments around certain parts of Vancouver but again I mean does it affect my daily life no I usually notice it when I'm driving by now if they were there was a tent encampment on my front lawn or you know right behind my backyard or in the path of walking my children to school then like that would that would affect me more but you know depending on where you live I mean I would say
for the majority of people in Vancouver it doesn't affect their day-to-day life and if you live in Vancouver I'd love to hear your perspective on crime and encampments and you know just see what do you think about the spillover from Portland how has it affected your life or what have you seen that indicates that there is some spillover from some of the cons in Portland over to Vancouver the number two con is development so there's definitely a positive side to development but that also comes with some cons or at a cost so the first thing
would be obviously there's less open space so a good example of this is the Columbia Palisades that is at the very southern part of Southeast 192nd AB in the intersection of Highway 14 but the way I look at it is that it used to be a quarry from what Quarry I always struggle saying that word what a rock quarry a rock quarry Quarry quar you say and I mean that's not like beautiful open space that's not like somewhere that people are walking through it's it's industrial and so I think that the Columbia Palisades is a
much better benefit to the community than the Quarry is from an open space and Beauty perspective and it allows people to enjoy it because there will be restaurants and development that will allow people whether that's like restaurants retail there's going to be apartments and condos there and I think it's going to be a great development but that can be a con if there's less open space and tying into that is an increase in traffic so when we moved here 6 years ago wow time flies there was a certain appeal and ease to getting around the
city but as more people come and there's more development and there's more dense development that can increase traffic so that would be a con and then the last thing to me like as part of the con of development is just that the city can lose some of its charm so some of the reasons that we love Vancouver that people who've been here their whole lives love Vancouver as it's more developed you know it changes the character of the city can change so and that brings us to the last con which is affordability and this is
again highly relative just like the weather depends on where you come from if you come from somewhere very affordable like the Midwest or you know parts of Florida and Georgia it may seem like you are getting less for your money from a housing perspective here and from some other things like the cost of food maybe but specifically about housing affordability when we moved here in 2018 the median sale price was around 360,000 today in 2024 that Medium price is in the mid fivs because we have such low inventor it balances more so I've seen 585
is sometimes the medium price depending on the month most recently in April of 2024 it was 535 and so the cost of housing has gone up significantly and that can be a con what's really happened is I think going back to the development side developers have found what they see as Vancouver as this Hidden Gem this place that you know big money in Chicago and New York and Los Angeles like didn't really know about but people are starting to know about it example of that is the Vancouver Innovation Center that is on um in east
Vancouver it's a big 200 acre development that's being developed by um a New York development company I've met the the guys who are doing that and I think they're going to do a great job on it they've really fallen in love with Vancouver and I think they want to to deliver something to our community that is going to be a benefit and that people are going to enjoy for a long time to come so I would definitely say that investors and Savvy people like yourself that are watching this channel if you're thinking about relocating have
really you know cat's out of the bag or is getting out of the bag and I guess I would just say that this is really the beginning I think that Vancouver could easily become like Belleview I think it's somewhere where we can support being a suburb of Portland just as much business and industry and job opportunities and people in development as Belleview so I could see Vancouver becoming like Belleview Washington which is a suburb of Seattle but has probably 40 high-rise buildings there and you know big business and lots of jobs and I mean the
real estate gosh what the real estate has done over the last 20 to 40 years is insane and I think that Vancouver could easily become a its own version of Bellevue because we are that suburb of Portland and we have the benefits that can support that kind of development that kind of um industry the kind of job opportunities and we are the southernmost part along the I5 Corridor that has no state income tax and that is a unique positioning to our area so in closing there are definitely pros and cons to living in Vancouver Washington
I hope this video gave you an idea of what some of those pros and cons are and makes you feel more excited about moving here or relocating here or maybe it tells you you know what this really is the place for me I need to look somewhere else and either way I feel like that accomplishes the goal of this video if you are considering a move here you know you might not be sure or you might be moving next month for a job relocation wherever you are in the process I would be happy to talk
to you that's one of the things that I really stand for on this channel and within our team the bird's eye team is that we want to be different than what we experienced moving here and so we want to give people the time a day that we didn't get and we just want to be that resource for you that friend in the Northwest to help you with all of your real estate needs so please feel free to reach out my team and I would be happy to support you if you have any questions drop them
in the comments below make sure to like this video on your way out and I will catch you guys next time ciao oh [Music]
