What is the market like there?

Insanity. When I was out looking a few weeks back, my realtor got a call from another realtor who had just closed on a house for $402k, which had been listed at $365k. Lots of people getting blown out by all-cash offers. Every house you look at, the sale history shows it was bought in 2014 for $172k and it's on the market for $300k, a lot of that sort of thing. I looked at basically a dilapidated shack that was $300k because it was near the New Seasons on NE 33rd.

I waited until I had a full 20% to get in the market, turns out I should have bought earlier because the 20% isn't going to help me now anyway given the all-cash offers out there. From what I have heard, a lot of this is due to foreign capital looking for a value store. But I also think this will just continue and get worse, as people in the Bay area look at the quality of life in Portland, compare housing prices, and conclude (rightly IMO) that the move is a no-brainer.

And in the future this will look totally reasonable. The full house prices you quote are what houses in the Bay Area routinely sell for OVER list price. When I started looking in 2012, the average sale price in my area was $900k, and now it's $1.7m.

St Johns. Lents. Milwaukie. East Portland. SW Portland (Markham, Terwilliger, Multnomah Village)

There's some good deals out there still but yeah.. in the same boat as you. I'm working on compiling historical pricing on a neighborhood basis so I can focus my attention on areas that haven't been seeing 10%+/yr gains. West Hills, for instance, homes have been appreciating only about 3%/yr. Of course those were way out of my budget to begin with...

Prices have gone up something like 20% in the last year. Houses are going for $10-20k over asking in cash within days of being listed.