REAL ESTATE MYTHS | CEDAR & STONE REALTY GROUP | MAY 2026

Where Bad Real Estate Advice Comes From

I want to tell you something I've noticed after twelve years of doing this work.

The most confident real estate opinions I hear are almost never from people who work in real estate.

They're from brothers-in-law who bought a house in 2009 and have been dining out on that story ever since. They're from coworkers who watched a lot of HGTV during the pandemic and came away with strong feelings about open floor plans and waterfall countertops. They're from parents who bought their first home in 1987 and whose advice, while loving and well-intentioned, reflects a market that no longer exists in any meaningful way.

And they're from the internet — which has a remarkable ability to present confident, specific, completely outdated information as current fact.

None of this is malicious. People share what they know. The problem is that real estate is genuinely local, genuinely current, and genuinely complicated — and most of the advice floating around out there is none of those three things.

What's true in the national market may not be true in the Portland metro. What was true in the Portland metro in 2022 is not necessarily true in 2026. What's true in Lake Oswego may not be true in Oregon City. The market is always moving, always nuanced, and always more specific than any headline or Thanksgiving table conversation can capture.

This week I'm going to dig into five of the most persistent real estate myths I hear from Portland-area buyers and sellers — the ones that cost people money, delay good decisions, and occasionally talk people out of opportunities they would have been very glad they took.

The goal isn't to make anyone feel bad for believing them. Most of them make intuitive sense on the surface. That's exactly what makes them so sticky — and so worth examining.

Facts beat feelings, especially with your biggest asset. Let's get into it.

— Stacey Cedar & Stone Realty Group | Serving the Portland Metro & Southwest Washington