5 ms·

Here’s How Much Real Estate $1 Million Buys You in Every Major U.S. City

15 points by shravan 13y ago

shravan 13y ago
No surprise that SF is the most expensive.
- Terretta 13y ago
  It's not, Manhattan is.
bane 13y ago
I remember when we bought our current house in 2007. It was the top of the market and for fun we looked at what we could buy in different parts of the country for the same money. In NYC we found a listing for an empty lot. It was pretty bad looking. I think you might have been able to fit two compact cars side by side on it. SF wasn't much better, but at least had a dwelling of some kind on it. Detroid was...well you could have bought a street full of condemned houses. So we decided to look outside of cities and came across a listing in Arkansas. At first we didn't understand it because it was just an aerial photo of some greenery and some houses. Finally we realized, that was the listing, it was 150 acres with 5 buildings, one of them was a 2700 sq ft home, there were two guest homes and a 5 car garage and some other kind of large barn structure. The listing assured the potential buyer that the property was zoned in such a way it could be subdivided into lots "as small as 5 acres". The only way they could get a photo of it all was from the air.
rayiner 13y ago
This is dumb, because its in large part a measure of where city boundaries are drawn, as demonstrated by the New York example. The equivalent of SF isn't NYC, it's Manhattan. The city boundaries are just drawn such that NYC includes Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, and SF excludes the corresponding places in the Bay area (Oakland, etc). Looking at a city-wide average doesn't tell you much. DC also seems off, again because of the boundaries. The average excludes places in Arlington and Maryland that are spatially and in terms of density part of the city. The fact that Arlington is part of Virginia is a historical accident (was part of DC, taken back during Civil War). It doesn't reflect any real property of the city. Many places in Arlington are much quicker on the Metro to downtown than many places in DC.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
camillomiller 13y ago
If anyone's wondering, I did the math with Rome to add some international perspective. It sits right between SF and Boston: 1915 sq. feet.

15 points by shravan 13y ago

shravan 13y ago

No surprise that SF is the most expensive.

Terretta 13y ago
It's not, Manhattan is.

bane 13y ago

I remember when we bought our current house in 2007. It was the top of the market and for fun we looked at what we could buy in different parts of the country for the same money. In NYC we found a listing for an empty lot. It was pretty bad looking. I think you might have been able to fit two compact cars side by side on it. SF wasn't much better, but at least had a dwelling of some kind on it. Detroid was...well you could have bought a street full of condemned houses. So we decided to look outside of cities and came across a listing in Arkansas. At first we didn't understand it because it was just an aerial photo of some greenery and some houses. Finally we realized, that was the listing, it was 150 acres with 5 buildings, one of them was a 2700 sq ft home, there were two guest homes and a 5 car garage and some other kind of large barn structure. The listing assured the potential buyer that the property was zoned in such a way it could be subdivided into lots "as small as 5 acres". The only way they could get a photo of it all was from the air.

rayiner 13y ago

This is dumb, because its in large part a measure of where city boundaries are drawn, as demonstrated by the New York example. The equivalent of SF isn't NYC, it's Manhattan. The city boundaries are just drawn such that NYC includes Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, and SF excludes the corresponding places in the Bay area (Oakland, etc). Looking at a city-wide average doesn't tell you much. DC also seems off, again because of the boundaries. The average excludes places in Arlington and Maryland that are spatially and in terms of density part of the city. The fact that Arlington is part of Virginia is a historical accident (was part of DC, taken back during Civil War). It doesn't reflect any real property of the city. Many places in Arlington are much quicker on the Metro to downtown than many places in DC.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

camillomiller 13y ago

If anyone's wondering, I did the math with Rome to add some international perspective. It sits right between SF and Boston: 1915 sq. feet.