4 ms·

These mid range cities are not as agreeable as you think. I live in one. Housing is very expensive W.R.T income now. The reason many of these places have cheap

These mid range cities are not as agreeable as you think. I live in one. Housing is very expensive W.R.T income now. The reason many of these places have cheap housing is largely because of abandoned neighborhoods, vacant lots, condemned housing, ancient housing which requires A TON of work...the neighborhoods people want to live in are pretty expensive still. Not to mention the old school mentality and opportunity cost. I left one of those old school firms. It was 8-5 everyday, no variation, no flex hours. No vacation in your first year. No comp time for travel. Expectation of working additional hours. Poor yearly raises, etc. Small job market = small network = less salary jumps.

refurb 6y ago
So it sounds like tradeoffs. Go to a big city, get a high salary, can't afford a house. Go to a medium size city, get a lower salary, can afford a house. I'm not surprised there is a utopian city where salaries are high and housing is cheap.
- bhupy 6y ago
  Yup, and there's a good breakdown here of the salary one must earn to be able to afford the median home: https://www.hsh.com/finance/mortgage/salary-home-buying-25-cities.html https://www.hsh.com/finance/mortgage/salary-home-buying-25-c... There are a lot of options for everyone, regardless of which trade-off one chooses to make.
  - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
    > Pittsburgh 3.70% -0.15% $149,830 +1.39% $835.21 $35,794.87 Yea if you want to live in a crap, run down neighborhood with a crappy school district and a house built a century ago that isn't code and will cost 50k to fix. I lived there - these statistics are nonsense. They don't tell the whole story.
    - bhupy 6y ago
      I don't think I've ever seen someone so confidently attempt to refute data via personal anecdote, so bravo for that. The median home is not always "crap, run down with a crappy school district". Yes, there exists a quality distribution, and the bottom quintile often has the worst quality, but that's true in every State and every Country. This data isn't groundbreaking either, Zillow shows a comparable median home value in Pittsburgh: https://www.zillow.com/pittsburgh-pa/home-values/ https://www.zillow.com/pittsburgh-pa/home-values/ Just eyeballing some CURRENT listings, you'll find: On Zillow: A 3BR house in a top 10 Pittsburgh school district (Greater Latrobe School District) for $179K https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/34-Loretta-St-Latrobe-PA-15650/10754158_zpid/ https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/34-Loretta-St-Latrobe-PA-... On Redfin: A 2BR house in a top 5 school district (Hampton Township district) for $130K https://www.redfin.com/PA/Allison-Park/2695-Ginger-Ln-15101/home/86414430 https://www.redfin.com/PA/Allison-Park/2695-Ginger-Ln-15101/... These are perfectly good homes in perfectly good school districts. Again, single data points only get you so far in an argument — but most importantly, the aggregate data corroborates it. Nobody claims that outliers don't exist, but we're talking about medians here.
      - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
        I honestly can't help it but laugh. LATROBE. Latrobe is an hour away from Pittsburgh. Population? 7,885 (2018). There is nothing near Latrobe but St Vincent College. There are very few jobs. Oh and the commute? You take 376 E through the Squirrel Hill Tunnels. Easily a 2 hour commute. Sounds fantastic! Great pick! Hampton is in Allison park which is a nice suburb. The median home price there is 295k. The house you selected is pretty small, 2 br, 1 bath, which makes a ton of sense - not a lot of young people looking for good jobs are going to want to live in a suburb with older people and families. > Again, single data points only get you so far in an argument — but most importantly, the aggregate data corroborates it. Nobody claims that outliers don't exist, but we're talking about medians here. But you cherry picked a value WELL BELOW THE MEDIAN IN HAMPTON. The median is 295k and rising fast. So tell me again, what cheap housing are you talking about? Oh btw, unless you're lucky and at a FAANG (which have fewer jobs here) you ain't making anywhere near 6. Go ahead, move to Braddock for that 50k house and breathe in the wonderful air from Clairton Coke Works and Edgar Thompson. I doubt you'd read that on zillow.
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  The tradeoffs aren't worth it. That's why people left Pittsburgh en masse and other cities have larger populations. Ultimately if it didn't make sense to go to big cities people would stop because of the costs - clearly the market says it's worth it. Not everyone wants to live in the midwest with terrible food options just so they can afford a house built in 1940 with knob and tube wiring. These costs are never considered because people just want to say things like "lol move" without considering why people just don't move.

refurb 6y ago

So it sounds like tradeoffs. Go to a big city, get a high salary, can't afford a house. Go to a medium size city, get a lower salary, can afford a house. I'm not surprised there is a utopian city where salaries are high and housing is cheap.

bhupy 6y ago
Yup, and there's a good breakdown here of the salary one must earn to be able to afford the median home: https://www.hsh.com/finance/mortgage/salary-home-buying-25-cities.html https://www.hsh.com/finance/mortgage/salary-home-buying-25-c... There are a lot of options for everyone, regardless of which trade-off one chooses to make.
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  > Pittsburgh 3.70% -0.15% $149,830 +1.39% $835.21 $35,794.87 Yea if you want to live in a crap, run down neighborhood with a crappy school district and a house built a century ago that isn't code and will cost 50k to fix. I lived there - these statistics are nonsense. They don't tell the whole story.
  - bhupy 6y ago
    I don't think I've ever seen someone so confidently attempt to refute data via personal anecdote, so bravo for that. The median home is not always "crap, run down with a crappy school district". Yes, there exists a quality distribution, and the bottom quintile often has the worst quality, but that's true in every State and every Country. This data isn't groundbreaking either, Zillow shows a comparable median home value in Pittsburgh: https://www.zillow.com/pittsburgh-pa/home-values/ https://www.zillow.com/pittsburgh-pa/home-values/ Just eyeballing some CURRENT listings, you'll find: On Zillow: A 3BR house in a top 10 Pittsburgh school district (Greater Latrobe School District) for $179K https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/34-Loretta-St-Latrobe-PA-15650/10754158_zpid/ https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/34-Loretta-St-Latrobe-PA-... On Redfin: A 2BR house in a top 5 school district (Hampton Township district) for $130K https://www.redfin.com/PA/Allison-Park/2695-Ginger-Ln-15101/home/86414430 https://www.redfin.com/PA/Allison-Park/2695-Ginger-Ln-15101/... These are perfectly good homes in perfectly good school districts. Again, single data points only get you so far in an argument — but most importantly, the aggregate data corroborates it. Nobody claims that outliers don't exist, but we're talking about medians here.
    - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
      I honestly can't help it but laugh. LATROBE. Latrobe is an hour away from Pittsburgh. Population? 7,885 (2018). There is nothing near Latrobe but St Vincent College. There are very few jobs. Oh and the commute? You take 376 E through the Squirrel Hill Tunnels. Easily a 2 hour commute. Sounds fantastic! Great pick! Hampton is in Allison park which is a nice suburb. The median home price there is 295k. The house you selected is pretty small, 2 br, 1 bath, which makes a ton of sense - not a lot of young people looking for good jobs are going to want to live in a suburb with older people and families. > Again, single data points only get you so far in an argument — but most importantly, the aggregate data corroborates it. Nobody claims that outliers don't exist, but we're talking about medians here. But you cherry picked a value WELL BELOW THE MEDIAN IN HAMPTON. The median is 295k and rising fast. So tell me again, what cheap housing are you talking about? Oh btw, unless you're lucky and at a FAANG (which have fewer jobs here) you ain't making anywhere near 6. Go ahead, move to Braddock for that 50k house and breathe in the wonderful air from Clairton Coke Works and Edgar Thompson. I doubt you'd read that on zillow.
ntsplnkv2 6y ago
The tradeoffs aren't worth it. That's why people left Pittsburgh en masse and other cities have larger populations. Ultimately if it didn't make sense to go to big cities people would stop because of the costs - clearly the market says it's worth it. Not everyone wants to live in the midwest with terrible food options just so they can afford a house built in 1940 with knob and tube wiring. These costs are never considered because people just want to say things like "lol move" without considering why people just don't move.