Goodbye Portland, Hello LA.......for Now

July 26, 2019 5:49 PM

My sister wants to try living in LA for a year to pursue her very niche career in music supervision. However she loves Portland, where she's lived the last 10+ years, and doesn't want to lose her cute 1B apartment here in PDX if it doesn't work out. A thought she had was finding a housing swap type situation. Are there resources for this that aren't easily found by googling? Barring her finding an ideal housingswap, are there artists lofts (her partner is a bonafide artist) or other affordableish/out-of-the-box living situations she might consider? Tentative move date: October 2019

Also, I don't know enough about the neighborhoods there, but she mentioned friends recommending Los Feliz, Koreatown, Echo Park, Silver Lake, etc. So any housing recommendations that might be neighborhood specific, would be welcomed as well.

posted by pdxhiker to Home & Garden (2 answers total)

I recommend taking a look at La.Curbed's "What $XX rents in LA right now..." columns. Here's a recent one, for $1900. At the bottom there are links to others. They draw from current for-rent ads, so they'll give you an idea of what your money can get you here.
posted by BlahLaLa at 6:28 PM on July 26, 2019

What does her lease say? Even if it's a housing swap and not a sublet, the landlord might not be on board for this, unfortunately. If she can sublet, I think that might be easier than trying to find someone who wants to swap for the same period of time. There is definitely an imbalance in rent costs. The housesitting website that I use does sometimes have long stays (in fact, there's a posting on it right now for someone with a house in PDX who wants to swap with someone in LA for up to a year, though most people on there aren't trying to swap). It's called Trusted Housesitters and people are usually looking for pet care. Year-long listings are unusual, though. I used to live in Los Feliz and Silverlake and liked both. I appreciated the relative walkability and the fact that I was able to live near a subway line that goes downtown. If it's possible to avoid spending as much time as most people do in traffic there, obviously, that's better. (Side note: I spent a little time in Portland after living in LA and people drive very differently...eg LA drivers go well over the speed limit and very, very close to other cars on the freeway. It was hard for me to get used to the sedate pace in Portland, and she will probably feel the opposite).
posted by pinochiette at 7:28 AM on July 28, 2019