I'm really starting to think moving here was a massive mistake.

[u/Demifiend101]

It was this, Huston Texas or north Carolina. I was just so sick and tired of living in a poverty state (WV) and wanted to make way more money.

Now I'm making 3600 a month, but the housing market is so competitive and high market I might as well be making 1200 back in the mountain state.

It's a complete god damn nightmare, currently staying in a motel that's costing me 2000$ a month just because I can't get in anywhere no matter how hard I try or applications I fill.

Applications which all have 50-80$ background checks. I've spent will over 1000$ in less than a month filling out those things.

Huston has a population of over 2.7 MILLION, and you can get a place there for just 600 a month still.

Where did it all go wrong here?

[u/[deleted]]

You just don’t know how much shittier it is to find housing in Oregon until you make the move.

Or just read the local reddits(even the forums at city-data.com can have good info )of places you're considering before( as opposed to after) acting on a whim. Otherwise, it's just rolling the dice and praying to make a major move without doing some very serious intel first.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

That’s what most people do. That’s low the supply is.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

So most people who packup and do moves(coast to coast, no less) do so without knowing the housing situation of the place their moving to? When even a cursory search would inform them reasonably well enough? If true, which I doubt, it would indicate a hell of lot of rather stupid people are making moves they probably shouldn't be doing. However, just because that's what the you and the OP did, doesn't translate into what most people do.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I landed a place to live before I moved here after being extremely diligent. Knowing the generic stuff that you are talking about won’t make you understand the market. You discover the ins and outs when you are living in the environment.

Since housing is available in North Carolina (at least till Covid I guess) you don’t think or experience even half the things that you’ll experience in Oregon.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Ok, so you landed a place after being extremely diligent. Great. Doesn't sound like a rebuttle to what I said. Understanding the market doesn't mean you need to become a real-estate expert, just knowing that "generic stuff" would be a giant first step. People who wind up shocked at what they find apon getting here, likely couldn't even be bothered to do that.

You discover the ins and outs when you are living in the environment

Or alternatively by paying attention to those who relate their own experiences on places like this sub so maybe, just maybe, you learn before you leap. Now, that would take perhaps a bit of time(a few weeks? months?) of following and asking questions, but in the end wouldn't that be better than finding out later you made a mistake and whining about it on the same forum you should have been learning from before making the major move. How much work would it have taken to figure out that finding housing in Oregon is going to be perhaps a tad more difficult than NC?

Personally, doesn't bother me a whit, it's not my money and time wasted in the attempt. People will do what they will and learn( maybe ) from their mistakes. Hardly constitutes a trajedy.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

It’s not a tad harder, it is out of this world harder. But yes spending 6 months really trying to understand what your living standards would have been like would have helped him. In other states you can make leaps of faith and wind up with your own place. In Oregon you’ll have a rented bedroom, or roommates doing that.

In Oregon you pay much more for much less in every single way possible.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Ok, life is hard sometimes and everyone makes stupid, avoidable mistakes sometimes. Unless one is especially anal or slow it doesn't take six months to find out that the place you'd like to move to has a difficult housing market. One could find that possibility out in a few hours of research(just reading this sub could do it,a literal shit ton of posts on the subject) and if needing further confirmation observe over some period of time, weeks/months at ones discretion. This isn't rocket science, it's called "due diligence". People who cast caution to the wind making wild "leaps of faith" when moving to different states deserve whatever poor outcome they get(hopefully they do it solo and don't drag along a family). We're not going to agree, which is fine. To you the OP's plight is due to simple bad luck, to me it's due to an abysmal lack of research/planning.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I never said that the OPs situation is due to luck. Clearly it is from a lack of planning or understanding the scarcity.

I was just saying that Oregon is very different from other markets, in ways that isn’t obvious to see until you get here.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I was just saying that Oregon is very different from other markets, in ways that isn’t obvious to see until you get here.

Ok, so you're saying that spending some time reading this sub that almost daily details what others are going through wouldn't have been "obvious" enough to clue him or anyone else in as to how hard it might be to get housing here? Maybe I just have higher powers of perception that merely average mortals lack.... or maybe these people making long distance moves don't find /r/Eugene till AFTER they get here and then it's only to tell their sad stories. Amazing and sad, if that is really the case.

I never said that the OPs situation is due to luck.

I was going off this: "In other states you can make leaps of faith and wind up with your own place." isn't suggesting that luck is involved??? Or maybe it is truly up to a higher power. LOL

BTW: How about providing some salient examples of what makes this market SO different from other markets that could not have been gleaned by following this sub or similar?

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Lap of faith = Relocate somewhere without having everything already set up for you; such as having a job, relocation expenses covered, some savings and already having a permanent place to stay.

Stuff that’s unique to low supply markets like Oregon:

• Lower quality apartments at significantly higher rental costs.
• Extreme sense of urgency and anxiety to find somewhere to live if you happen to be re-entering the market.
• The prevalence of slumlord/crappy management companies that maintenance dodge. Somehow this doesn’t affect demand for their apartments.
• Small population rural towns having housing costs higher than 100k+ cities on the east coast (note I didn’t say largest east coast cities). The rural housing costs are not significantly cheaper than any given urban city close to it.
• Application fee profiteering, which is still systematically abused here. When you move you know that you are losing a significant chunk of money out of the gate.
• Pressure to sign rental agreements without seeing the apartment.
• The amount of 35+ adults living with parents, roommates, or in single bedrooms.
• Prevalence of high extra fees for pets. I see why “emotional support” is such a big thing here.
• Cost itemization for possible damage expenses on moving is taken way too seriously here as a reason nibble at your deposit.
• High bar earning requirements regardless of apartment quality.