Portlanders spend too much on mortgages. How two Burnside homeowners make it work

Zach Victor has been on and off the homeownership and equity-building train for the last decade.
Victor, 33, owned a condo in Seattle prior to moving to Portland a month before the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020. He sold the Seattle property at a profit and rented an apartment in Portland.
But he later plowed the profits into a 20% down payment on the $534,000 home he purchased in 2023 at East Burnside and Northeast 53rd Avenue, in the North Tabor neighborhood, out past leaf-canopied Laurelhurst Park.
His experience illustrates, in a few ways, how and why young Portlanders are having to stretch their budgets to buy homes.
Thanks to a well-paid job with an East Coast startup, Victor is relatively well off, making far more than the median Portland household or neighbors in his census tract. Yet like many area homeowners, he still crosses over an affordability threshold once considered gospel.
A Multnomah County household earning the median income would spend 44% of their paycheck on house payments, according to the Atlanta Fed’s homeownership affordability monitor, down from a 2022 high of 55% but nowhere close to the recommended 30%.
Once homeowners cross that threshold, they find it more difficult to pay for other expenses including student loans, credit cards, car payments and food, said Domonic Purviance, an Atlanta Fed subject matter expert.
“The bottom line: if you’re spending more than 30% on housing, that means that you just don’t have as much disposable income to handle the other life expenses,” Purviance said.
Even as the broader market has cooled since the COVID-19 frenzy, homes remain unaffordable to many. The Oregonian/OregonLive pulled data at the census tract level on Burnside Street, along the 12 miles from Southwest Barnes Street to Southeast 162nd Avenue, to understand how neighborhood incomes stack up against median home prices.
Financial planners say that as a rule of thumb, buyers can generally afford a home that is 3 to 5 times their annual income, and should keep it on the low end of that scale to make payments manageable.
Home prices in the corridor almost always exceed that ratio, often by large margins, the newsroom found.
Prices in West Coast cities like Portland are expensive relative to peers across the nation because of a dearth of new single-family construction since the 2008 recession, high land costs, urban growth boundary policies that limit new construction, and state and local policies that disincentivize new construction, even though policymakers have been easing those policies in the past decade.
A recent Bankrate analysis ranked the Portland area the 11th worst U.S. metro for homebuyer affordability because some 90% of homes remained unaffordable to locals. It defined affordability as yearly housing costs not surpassing 30% of gross income.
That mirrors findings from public policy firm ECOnorthwest, conducted at the newsroom’s request, that show a Portland household earning a median family income of $121,400 cannot afford to buy in the Burnside corridor without overextending themselves past the 30% threshold, except in pockets east of Interstate 205.
So when young people like Victor buy, they’re taking on more debt and straining themselves in new and uncomfortable ways to accommodate the monthly payment.
Working remotely for a New York therapy startup, Victor earns around $175,000 annually, more than double the median income of about $72,000 in his census tract. Of that, he takes home about $8,000 a month after taxes and retirement deductions.
His property taxes, insurance and mortgage — the loan bears an interest rate of 6.49% — run about $3,800 a month. To put that in perspective, if he’d purchased the home two years earlier, when rates were hovering around 3%, his monthly payment would be closer to $2,600.
Those rate increases, without a corresponding decline in home prices, have pushed homeownership out of reach for many first-time buyers, even those with solid incomes.
Victor can afford his place because he’s taken on a roommate, who covers $1,155 in his monthly costs.
“My roommate is a friend of a friend, so that made it affordable, but also it’s a very friendly, nice, chill setup,” Victor said.
Victor said he probably could have bought his home without proceeds from his condo, but that would have required him to sell off other investments. And he doesn’t feel comfortable tying up all his net worth in his home. In his view, homes should be primarily for shelter, not wealth generation, he said.
“Your house can’t simultaneously be the place where you house people and this incredible investment vehicle that always gets more valuable over time,” he said.
That may be true. Appreciation in Portland’s housing market has cooled considerably since low interest rates fueled a pandemic boom in home sales and values. The median Portland-area home cost $600,000 in 2022 and rose only slightly to $605,000 in 2025, according to the Regional Multiple Listing Service. More inventory is coming onto the market as sellers adjust their expectations of high profits and buyers inch back in, said Jeff Tucker, a principal economist with Windermere Real Estate.
“That affordability problem stopped getting worse for a few years … but it’s still a very unaffordable market for first-time homebuyers,” Tucker said.
Yet the simple act of making a monthly payment and building equity in a home, versus paying rent, is a kind of forced savings mechanism that makes a household’s primary residence the second-largest asset for most Americans, behind their retirement accounts. Home equity made up 30.9% of U.S. household wealth in 2023, the Census Bureau reported, while retirement savings accounted for 33.7%. U.S. homeowners saw their equity rise to a median $201,000 in 2022 as home prices surged, according to the latest Federal Reserve data.
The accumulation of home equity contributes to the statistic that the median U.S. homeowner has a net worth — or assets minus debts — 48 times that of a comparable tenant. Specifically, according to census data, the median American homeowner logged wealth totaling $439,300 in 2023, compared to the median renter’s $9,100.
Victor said he hopes to refinance his mortgage if rates fall enough to lower his payment. Friends of his bought homes with pandemic-low interest rates of around 2%, a figure he said he doesn’t expect to see again. He said if they choose to move, they’d get less house for the same money.
“I would be stoked for anything under 5%,” he said.
Indeed, persistently high interest rates are causing other issues for existing homeowners.
Natalie Miranda-Miller and her husband envisioned their 1950s ranch-style house in Hazelwood as a starter home where they’d stay for maybe a decade.
Nearly six years in, they’ve resigned themselves to the idea it might be their forever home.
Their neighborhood sits on the eastern edge of Burnside, where TriMet MAX tracks split the middle of the street, exaggerating its wide feel. The couple bought in Hazelwood for $391,000 in 2020, taking a $371,450 mortgage at 2.99%.
As planned, the home has since generated significant equity for the couple, money they could plow into another home if they decided to trade up. Property records and online real estate websites say the home is worth as much as $464,000.
But mortgage rates have doubled since 2020, and though they recently dipped below 6% for the first time since 2022, there are few signs they’ll drop significantly.
“I feel locked in,” said Miranda-Miller, 43.
Many Portlanders find themselves in a similar situation, shackled by “golden handcuffs” because they’d get much less house for their money if they moved, or suffer a higher monthly payment for a comparable home.
The average Oregon homeowner with outstanding mortgage debt has an interest rate of 4.1% and pays just over $2,000 on their monthly principal, interest and escrow, according to the latest federal data. (The numbers are not available at a city level.) That discourages many owners from moving at a time when rates have remained around 6%, constraining inventory for would-be buyers.
In Portland and nationwide, homeowners who bought at low rates are often only moving if forced by a major life event such as a new job, said the Atlanta Fed’s Purviance.
Otherwise, after locking in a good rate, he said, “there’s no reason for you to ever sell.”
Getting by on Burnside
This 12-mile corridor reveals the price of Portland’s housing crisis
Miranda-Miller and her husband were renters until 2020, when they decided to take the financial plunge and put in eight offers on homes before coming upon a winner in Hazelwood, she said. It sits close to the Glendoveer Golf Course and Nature Trail, where Miranda-Miller enjoys taking walks.
The couple lives in what she described as a nontraditional setup. They rent the basement to a friend who is saving up for his own home, Miranda-Miller said, which provides another income source to defray the monthly mortgage and rising utility bills. But they don’t plan on renting to a stranger once he moves out.
“We will lose that income,” she said.
Miranda-Miller said she’s grateful to own the ranch house but would eventually like the flexibility to relocate. A motorcycle was stolen from the yard, she said. And it’d be nice to live closer to her brother in Beaverton.
“If I could pick up my home and move it elsewhere,” she said, “I would keep this same home.”
This story is Part 2 of Getting by on Burnside, an ongoing series from The Oregonian/OregonLive that uses Burnside Street – the only road that extends uninterrupted from the city’s eastern to western limits – to explain the facets of Portland’s housing crunch.
Coming Wednesday
Getting by on Burnside, Part 3: A developer’s on-again-off-again relationship with an East Burnside lot shows why Portland apartment construction is flagging.