rmls.com is a great site to look for houses. as for neighborhood information, go to portlandmaps.com and enter in the address when you find a house you might like from RMLS. It will give you a large breakdown of all of the crime in the surrounding areas, and also break down where the nearest schools, parks, etc. are.
My recommendation is Beaverton. The city has houses in your price range, good schools for your kids, lots and lots of parks and fields (google THPRD), lots of bike and walking trials, dog parks, and a good community of involved mothers. The commute is about 30-45 minutes to downtown during rush hour. If you are considering Beaverton, the next thing is finding a house in the desired school district . . . and a lot of that depends on the age of your kids. If they are in grade school, then picking an area with a good grade and middle school is important. If they are going inot high school, then obviously you are looking at good high schools. The Murryhill area was mentioned and I think that is a great place to raise a family (safe to walk at day and night, peaceful, lots of families and plenty of stores that families use . .. alos Cooper Mountain is right around there). I prefer something a little closer to freeway accesss to zip around town (like going to the Rose Garden on the east side). There is the Heiton school district. I hear Tualatin is a nice place to live. Sherwood, Newberg, Willsonville are all further out.
might want to look at NW portland neighborhoods (bethany, off cornell road, etc) so you can park and ride the max pretty easily to downtown if you want. :MARIS61:
Bethany is one of my favorite areas (great homes, good schools and less than 15 min to downtown) . . . but don't think you can find a house for 300K. Love Lake Oswego too, but same problem. That damn Murryhill takes 20 mins just to get to the freeway . . . hard to beat the schools though.
parents have a rental property out there somewhere in Bethany area and its probably around 300k, maybe its more but its a big area with a large amount of different price levels.
Though it would be at the top range of your budget, Lake Oswego just made a list of "best" public schools in the U.S. where most of the rest of the towns on the list were multi-million dollar homes. Where is job located? you didn't say. You didn't say type of housing or size needed. If you want suburban living and the job is downtown your best bets are Lake Oswego and Beaverton. Both are decently run cities that are separate from Portland, outside of Multnomah County, have their own Police departments, have much lower crime rates and much better public schools. Lake Oswego is nicer and has the snobbier population to go with it. Beaverton has more income diversity and isn't as lilly white as L.O. with some Latino and Asian residents.
I know nothing about suburbia. Welcome to my NE Portland Neighborhood. http://www.movingtoportland.net/portland-neighborhoods/northeast/alameda
Ten years ago I moved to Murryhill. I nearly went insane dealing with the commute to downtown. Really, its not all that bad (though we took surface streets most mornings because the highways are worthless during rush hour). I complained to my family in LA, and they laughed. They deal with worse traffic tying to get to their gym class. After two years I moved back to town.
