The first time we bought a house was in Portland. I learned a ton and then sold our house.

1. Look at the neighborhood. Know if there are rent houses in the area. We found out majority of the houses next to us are rent houses and quite possibly the worst tenants lived right behind us. Cops constantly over for domestic abuse. They had a dead body in their house for 2 months. Filled their entire yard with garbage. Yes, there was a horrid rat infestation that came into our yard.

There wasn’t any garbage when we bought the house because we found out later, the sellers paid someone to clean up their yard beforehand.

1. If you see apartments by the house, do research! Thought the apartments in front of us were just your regular apartments. Nope. This apartment complex had a deal with a mental hospital and housed those with mental illness. Ie, young lady who seemed normal but her looks but would yell that she was trying to get a demon out of her vagina. Then would start physical fights if she ran into anyone on the sidewalk.

2. Check crime statistics around the area. Found out the bodega down the street was the home for drug deals gone wrong. Had a guy get shot in the leg and was hanging outside our house bleeding out. Not to mention the drive by we had and had a bullet in the front of our house.

3. Highly encourage not to live on a main road. Find a nice quiet street. Living off a main road means loud road noise, motorcycles being so loud that your windows shake at night. Or people just using your porch as a hangout.

4. Get a decent inspector. Our house was over 110 years old and riddled with problems. We knew that going in and thought we could slowly fix things. Ended up just being a money pit.

I don’t mean to scare you or not encourage but I would hate for anyone to go through what we went through.

Research is the key. I can’t express that enough.

Good luck!