Social media king BuzzFeed has offered up another little sprinkle of shareable Internet magic, posting a piece by the car company Buick in which six people are put in a room to discuss their favorite U.S. cities.

The catch was that they couldn’t name any cities in which they’d ever actually lived.

One of their favorites was none other than Portland.

Locals will undoubtedly write off the exercise as another case of web fodder in which out-of-towners are gushing over how quaint Portland is without ever really knowing the city.

And to be clear, it absolutely is.

But as that’s the whole point of the piece, it says something about what Portland’s reputation is among people elsewhere in the country (if all those top 10 lists and travel logs over the last five years haven’t said it enough already).

It’s also interesting to see where that reputation breaks with reality.

One of the six says: “This is a little embarrassing, but I’ve been watching a ton of ‘Murder, She Wrote’ and she lives in Maine solving crimes and it just seems like the life that I want. … I just imagine myself walking along the beach, looking at lighthouses, wearing fishermen sweaters and eating a ton of lobsters.”

(We’ll assume she knows there are no lighthouses in Portland and that ‘Murder, She Wrote’ was set up the coast a little ways, and that the BuzzFeed participant plans to use Portland as a home base for quaint, crime-solving day trips.)

Let’s look at some of the other things participants thought about Portland and how they compare with reality:

BuzzFeed’s Josh: “Portland also has so many brewpubs. Every bar makes their own beer. It’s a huge beer culture.”

Obviously, if you’re being literal, not every bar makes its own beer. But I think it’s fair to call Portland “a huge beer culture.” There are two tour companies in the city focused just on shuttling people around to try out all the craft beer options, if that tells you anything.

And there are a lot of great places to get great beer in Portland.

I think we can say this perception is pretty close to reality, all things considered.

BuzzFeed’s Courtney: “Portland is supposed to have a great city feel, and a lot of young people live there.”

I know what you’re probably thinking — Maine’s regularly cited as the oldest state in the country, so Courtney’s way off. Except she isn’t, really.

The median age in Portland is about 36 years old, about the same as the City That Never Sleeps, New York, and much, much younger than the statewide median age of about 44 years old.

With younger cities like Boston and Philadelphia — and even Bangor — up in the northeast as well, it might be a bit of an overstatement to say “a lot of young people live” here, but she’s not wildly off base.

BuzzFeed’s Josh: “The real estate in Portland is so cheap. $2,000 in Portland would get you a four-story home with a garage and a backyard.”

Again, if we’re being literal, a mortgage or rent payment of $2,000 per month won’t actually get you a four-story home with a garage and a backyard. But again, he’s not off by as much as you might think.

It’s really only that fourth story that puts the statement over the top — a quick scan of real estate listings finds that there are a handful of one- and two-story single family homes with small yards and even garages available for monthly mortgage payments of between $900-$1,500.

One four-bedroom, nearly 4,200-square-foot place on almost two and a half acres with a two-car garage is on the market for $575,000 — which would represent a monthly mortgage payment of $2,184 on a 30-year fixed loan.

None of those places are in the downtown, however, where competition for housing is much more intense. And whether those prices are “so cheap” depends on your perspective.

While $2,184 per month would be a dream payment for someone currently living in Manhattan — where a “middle class” income is considered by some to be over $200,000 — people in Portland don’t earn nearly as much on average.

If Josh actually moved to Portland to take advantage of that $2,184 mortgage payment, he’d also likely have to accept a median household income of less than $60,000.

Under that scenario, that big house with a backyard and garage would cost him 44 percent of his family’s income every month, a figure almost 50 percent higher than what financial advisers often say is the most you should be spending on housing, assuming you still want to be able to buy groceries and gas, etc.

If you’re curious, some of the other cities the six people in BuzzFeed’s piece cited as favorites included New Orleans, Seattle and Nashville. Read the entire list and what the participants said about each place by clicking here.