Portland, Oregon

The towers that set the tone of the core, and who holds them. A price is the price a document states, on the date it states — not an estimate of what the building is worth now.

The most valuable ground in the city, and what the public record says about it.

At this scale the significant owner is rarely a trust or a fund: it is one or two local holding companies, a family in its second or third generation, and often the land around the town rather than the buildings in it.

Portland's largest landholders are public. The City of Portland holds about 7,600 acres across some 3,080 tax lots — mostly parks and natural areas, plus Bull Run water and Rose Quarter land — and the Port of Portland 6,500 acres, most of it Portland International Airport and the Columbia River industrial land. Metro holds 2,760 acres of natural areas, cemeteries and the closed St Johns landfill. Totals sum Portland-addressed Multnomah tax lots by owner-name variants in the City's taxlot service on 13 Oct 2026; acres are the assessor's lot areas, values the assessor's land market values. Exempt public land carries a $0 total. Lots an owner holds under other name variants are missed.

New-home building in this market: the volume, and the firms behind it. Ownership of a builder matters as much as its volume — a private-equity platform and a family firm behave differently.

Portland builds new homes as infill. In 2025 the City permitted 1,223 new units: 703 single-family houses, 22 units in 11 duplexes, 12 in three- and four-unit buildings, and 486 in 13 buildings of five or more units (Census Bureau) — a small apartment pipeline by recent standards. The national public builders are absent inside the City; their Multnomah County lots are in Gresham and Troutdale. No Portland builder league table exists. Figures below count tax lots built 2023–2026 still held in a builder's name (homes not yet sold), or, for the national builders, lots held in the county, from the City's taxlot service on 13 Oct 2026. Sponsors behind local LLCs are not named on the record.

The commercial side, counted separately from housing: who holds the office, retail and industrial floor area.

Downtown Portland's towers mostly sit in single-purpose LLCs whose sponsors no record opened here names, and several have changed hands since 2023 at a fraction of earlier prices: Big Pink, PacWest, Montgomery Park, the Commonwealth Building. Listed REITs are few: American Assets Trust holds Lloyd District and downtown office and apartments, and Prologis the industrial land along the Columbia. The largest private holder by value is a local firm, Weston Investment Co. Roll figures are Portland-addressed Multnomah lots; REIT figures are as each 10-K states them.

Claims this page would have made if a source could be opened. They are left out rather than guessed.

1. Regional Taxlots map service (Public/Taxlots, layer 0): OWNER1-3, owner mailing address, site address, property code, year built, building sq ft, floors, land/building/total market value (market-value year shown as 2023 for Multnomah lots), last SALEDATE and SALEPRICE, acres; queried 13 Oct 2026 — City of Portland, Bureau of Technology Services (PortlandMaps) · openA
2. Metadata: Taxlots (Taxlots_pdx) — weekly update from Multnomah County assessor data; last source update 21 Sep 2026; use constraints — City of Portland, Corporate GIS · openA
3. BDS Property map service (Public/BDS_Property, layer 0): owner name and mailing address per property, including condominium unit accounts; queried 13 Oct 2026 — City of Portland, Bureau of Development Services (PortlandMaps) · openA
4. ORS chapter 93 — ORS 93.030: instruments conveying fee title 'shall state on the face of the instruments the true and actual consideration paid for the transfer, stated in terms of dollars' — Oregon State Legislature · openA
5. ORS chapter 306 — ORS 306.815: cities and counties 'shall not impose ... a tax or fee upon the transfer of a fee estate in real property'; (4) exempts a tax 'in effect and operative on March 31, 1997' — Oregon State Legislature · openA
6. Recording Fees — deeds $86 first page + $5 each additional; copies $3.75; certified $3.75 location + $3.75 certification fee — Multnomah County, Division of Assessment, Recording & Taxation · openA
7. Tax, Property, Marriage and Military Discharge Records — certified copies $3.75; deed index 1855–current and recorded documents 1955–current on public terminals — Multnomah County, Recording & Customer Service · openA
8. Property Search Tools and Maps — MultcoPropTax.com 'free "guest" login' for ownership, values and taxes; MultcoRecords.com recorded documents since Feb 2002; PortlandMaps listed as City-maintained — Multnomah County, DART · openA
9. Property Records Websites — MultcoPropTax.com and MultcoRecords.com described as 'our subscription websites'; free at the Multnomah Building counter — Multnomah County, DART · openA
10. Application to purchase data files from Multnomah County — ORIONOut (general property data county-wide, 310,537 records) $200; Land $75; Improvements $300; Monthly Sales (previous 4 weeks, 633 records) $75 — Multnomah County, DART · openA
11. 2026 Sales Ratio Study Sales Lists (sales by property ID, instrument number, sale date, sale price, prior-year value; residential, condominium, office, store, warehouse lists) — Multnomah County, DART · openA
12. Multnomah Public Access (MultcoPropTax.com) — disclaimer page: 'I Agree' with 'Please verify Captcha before clicking I Agree' — Multnomah County (Tyler Technologies) · openA
13. PortlandMaps Development — API reference: 'A key is required for API access' (client keys force matching of hostnames in HTTP_REFERER; rate-limited) — City of Portland (PortlandMaps) · openA
14. 'Big Pink Has a New Owner' — purchased the U.S. Bancorp Tower for about $45 million, all cash, from Unico Properties and UBS; last sold for $372.5M in 2015 — Willamette Week (Oregon Journalism Project) · openB
15. 'PacWest Center Sells for $55.7 Million to Out-of-State Buyer' — buyer Fountainhead Development, Fairbanks (per Portland Business Journal); Lincoln Property Co. entity paid $161.5M in 2007 'according to county records' — Willamette Week · openB
16. KBS Growth & Income REIT Form 8-K, 24 Jul 2023 — Item 2.01, foreclosure of the Commonwealth Building, Portland: valued at less than $47.8M outstanding debt; sold at public auction 18 Jul 2023 to a buyer affiliated with Metropolitan Life Insurance Company — KBS Growth & Income REIT, Inc. (SEC EDGAR) · openA
17. American Assets Trust Form 10-K for 2025 — property tables: First & Main (362,633 sq ft, 74.9% leased), Lloyd Portfolio (568,270 sq ft, 84.1%), Hassalo on Eighth retail (44,236 sq ft) and multifamily (657 units); Oregon 3 properties, 975,139 sq ft — American Assets Trust, Inc. (SEC EDGAR) · openA
18. Prologis Form 10-K for 2025 — Schedule III: Portland market, 41 operating buildings, gross carrying amount $660.65M; 2 development properties — Prologis, Inc. (SEC EDGAR) · openA
19. D.R. Horton Form 10-K FY2025, Exhibit 21.1 — subsidiaries incl. 'D.R. Horton, Inc. - Portland' (Delaware) — D.R. Horton, Inc. (SEC EDGAR) · openA
20. Taylor Morrison Form 10-K for 2025, Exhibit 21.1 — 'Taylor Morrison Northwest, LLC (f/k/a Polygon WLH LLC)' (Delaware) — Taylor Morrison Home Corporation (SEC EDGAR) · openA
21. Lennar Form 10-K FY2025, Exhibit 21 — 'Lennar Northwest, LLC DE' — Lennar Corporation (SEC EDGAR) · openA
22. Building Permits Survey, places in the West Region, 2025 annual (we2512y.txt) — Portland, OR, FIPS place 59000 — U.S. Census Bureau · openA
23. RLIS Discovery catalogue search — 'Taxlots (Public)' and related layers: 'made available under the RLIS Open Database End User License Agreement' — Metro Data Resource Center · openA