5 ms·
I think even in the US nobody really buys a house (with land) in the city, but in the suburbs. Big difference and much more similar to the 1 hour drive discusse
by etatoby 10y ago
I think even in the US nobody really buys a house (with land) in the city, but in the suburbs. Big difference and much more similar to the 1 hour drive discussed above.
- tptacek 10y agoMost of Chicago, the third-largest city in the US, is single-family houses with yards. For that matter, when I lived in San Francisco back in 99-2001, I had a yard.
- ams6110 10y agoThe standard Chicago city lot is only about 25' wide though. The houses are very close together, with a tiny front yard and a slightly large back yard but only a narrow strip on either side.
- tptacek 10y agoThat's a big part of what makes them not suburban. I like the narrow lots. Why would I need more than the typical Chicago lot?
- godzillabrennus 10y agoHe only thing I don't like is that I feel like I live in a bowling alley because all the homes are long and narrow.
- wglb 10y agoAntenna towers.
- willu 10y agoLess lawn care. :-) That said, there are large pockets on the northwest side that have lot sizes comparable with some near suburbs.
- dmix 10y agoToronto was/is like this too. It's a pretty big city similar to Chicago. All of the houses are >$1 million now in Toronto proper. Now the only thing being built are hundreds of cookie cutter condos right in the downtown core. So many were built in recent years that the price of condos actually went down for the first time in forever while house prices continued to rise.
- tptacek 10y agoYou can get a decent house in a nice neighborhood on the north side of Chicago for around 200k.
- jordanb 10y agoAs a person who's currently dealing with the market in Chicago I can say your data is out of date. Bungalows in virtually any decent north side neighborhood are more like 250-300k. The only exception is Belmont-Cragin which is so inaccessible it might as well be a suburb. That being said, yeah, Chicago real-estate is still affordable for the middle class. I think Toronto is in a bubble (or somehow experiencing severely constricted supply) simply looking at the price of housing versus salaries in the region.
- tptacek 10y agoMy sister just last year bought a house in Jefferson Park for around that, and her neighbor's house just went up for less than 200. I'm sure it's not the best house in the world, but it's a nice neighborhood walking distance from a blue line station.
- jordanb 10y agoI don't know about the particulars of their places. The only properties I've seen in Jeff Park for that cheap have been Bank Owned, in need of serious rehab, or have some other mitigating issue like being on a short lot.
- mortehu 10y agoBut by European standards, Chicago is a small city of about 100,000 people surrounded by an enormous commuter town.
- kasey_junk 10y agoWhich standards would those be?
- kuschku 10y agoThe standards of the "City" ending where you go from city style buildings (multiple people per building, density high enough that it’s fully walkable, etc) to suburban or rural style buildings (seperate, one or two family homes, unusable by foot)
- tptacek 10y agoChicago is one of the most walkable cities in the country. Moreover, the stuff people actually want to go to --- the various bar and restaurant districts, &c --- are in the residential north side of the city, not downtown, which basically shuts down at 6PM. Almost every neighborhood in the city has a mix of freestanding single family homes, townhouses and 3-flats, and dense apartment buildings.
- bbarn 10y agoAre most other big cities like the loop after business hours? I'm always shocked at how deserted it is on weekends, and evenings aside from the odd theatre traffic.
- kuschku 10y agoMost big cities after business hours are full of life, full of people out going to bars, clubs, other events, etc. If you go outside in the downtown of most 200k+ cities, on any normal day, you’ll find lots of people there. On the other hand, the residential suburbs will be dead.