Google Moving into Portland Real Estate Downtown

When Google opens up its new office in Portland, Roman columns and carved bronze will suddenly become high-tech. The U.S. National Bank Building, an architectural landmark downtown, has been leased to the search engine giant.

While certain subsidiaries of Google have been in the city for the past five years, this Google outpost will be the first in the heart of the Silicon Forest. In making the announcement, the company issued a written statement saying “We know the new space… on Sixth Ave. will provide a great work environment for our expanding team and are looking forward to getting to know our neighbors even better.”

While there isn’t an official count of how many employees will be moving into the building, Portland Business Journal reports that there will be at least 100 to start out with.

That’ll be just a drop in the bucket to the thousands of people who commute to work in downtown Portland each day, which raises the question – where’s the best place in Portland to live if you work for Google or for any downtown business?

To aid your search, Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate has just released a new tool that allows users to search for properties based on commute times. You can enter the address of your place of work and your desired commute time, and it’ll take you to the next page, where you can use the box at left to enter other parameters like price and the number of bedrooms. Except…

Users are saying that the BH&G map is overly optimistic about drive times. It also doesn’t offer public transit options, which are plentiful. To get a better idea of commute times from any Portland home, first head over to PortlandRealEstateMapSearch.com, our real estate agent designed home search tool that lets you put in all your search parameters in one place. Once you have a particular property in mind, head over to Google (on your computer, not the one in downtown Portland!) and enter the address in their map search to get directions, with commute times, to just about anywhere.

Walk, bike, drive or ride – it’s all an option in Portland. You don’t have to be tech-saavy to figure out the best location for your new home, either. Just ask your Portland real estate agent! I criss-cross the city every day and can give you first-hand advice on commutes, or any other real estate question. Start your search online, but always end it by finding a buyer’s agent who will work for you – in any neighborhood you choose.