Suburbia is not always sexy, but it is very cost-effective for residents and it provides options for people that want or need them. Houston gets flak for its m

Suburbia is not always sexy, but it is very cost-effective for residents and it provides options for people that want or need them. Houston gets flak for its miles of suburbs, but if you want to live in a nice wooded neighborhood right in the middle there are a number to choose from: Bellaire, West University Place, Memorial, Hunter's Creek Village, and of course River Oaks. Just be prepared to shell out 3-4x as much as you'd need to out in a suburb. Make that 4-10x for River Oaks. Suburbia exists in places like Houston for two reasons: (1) there's space for it; (2) the vast majority of people don't believe in paying upwards of a million dollars (or more) for a house even if they can afford it. They'd prefer to commute than blow that kind of money just to not commute. The interesting problem that places like San Francisco and NYC face is that there simply aren't cheap suburbs. You've got a lot of people making a whole heck of a lot of money, but they have to be geographically located right in that particular place to continue making that money. There are so many of them that the prices skyrocket even outside the city proper. In the end, almost ironically, that money ends up losing a lot of its value because through competition with one another they all end up pushing housing prices to their limits.