A prospective client of mine, whose husband works for the US Government in an overseas capacity, contacted me many months ago to begin sorting out if they’d move to the Seattle area or the Portland, OR area. While I think both are great cities with their own features and benefits there is a distinct difference between the two when it comes to considerations of a financial nature.
One is that WA doesn’t have a state income tax – Oregon does.
Oregon doesn’t have sales tax – but WA does.
Portland’s prices on houses are also still behind those in Seattle and while that makes them more affordable it may also reflect on the more cyclical nature of the economy of Portland. Puget Sound has a more diverse set of manufacturing, trading, and white collar industry. But, with all that said, my client wants to know about a lot of stuff that, to be quite frank, is outside the expertise of a real estate agent – no matter how *fabulous and smart* I may think I am. 🙂
So, I directed her to the following websites. These are useful in that they help to do comparisons of all the United States in a number of categories so that you can narrow down what is important to you and choose the place that will best fit your situation. For some people going into retirement it will be a tax issue, or a combination of taxes and estate planning.
http://www.drs.wa.gov/default.htm
http://www.retirementliving.com/RLtaxes.html
The links above will take you to these sites and I’m sure there will be many more that can be found. If you have a site you’d like to tell me about, please post it here in the comments section. The nice thing about these sites is that they can be useful for investors as well, especially for anyone considering purchasing property outside their own state of residence.
