Channa Eberhart of the Signal Group in Portland backs that up. She says that research her company has done in various area neighborhoods show little vacancy. All the individual locational studies that we've done have shown full or nearly full occupancy. Lamont says affordable housing was one of the major issues of the late 80's. It could become an issue all over again.
Landlords are increasingly able to set terms and conditions for tenants.
They also can be very picky about who occupies their units. The owner of one place Lisa looked at told her just a year ago they were looking for a new tenant and only had six phone calls. This time they ran an ad for three days and got over seventy calls. Landlord Carlton Winslow echoes that experience. It's gotten so bad that I'm upset when I have a vacancy because I'm going to be spending more time answering the phone than anything else for several days.