Just looked around Monmouth, Independence area. Not terrible. We may be able to swing 450 at the very top. Our dream WAS, to move to Florence. In one year the houses comparable to ours here went away, or went UP 60- 100K. And, Florence is fighting the D-Craptic-from- caili wave.Yeah, I'm not sure where they get the "$300,000-$400,000 average/median" home prices from. the other article above for how much a monthly payment is in Potland seems to point to a more realistic average price of $540,000+...
But it's also possible they're including the costs of condos for sale . There's an interesting listing for Monmouth that shows an "8 bedroom 4 bathroom" multi-family building for $675,000ish; it sounds like a 4 plex of 2 beds/1 baths apartments and sounds like the rental company wanted to get rid of it