Say Bye-Bye to the Big(ger) Cities

que Da1 rant on public transportation benefits

 

My question is who are buying the homes in these cities? Or does everyone rent?

 

Damn. People spend way too big a portion of their income on having a bigger, better home.

 

The question for some of the place is not portion, it would be all of your income is not enough to buy a median priced home. Anyway, how big is too big?

 

Wow! The difference in the cost of housing between Houston and the city I live in, Austin, is striking. There's a link at the end of the article that shows all the cities surveyed. I'm glad we bought our pad in Austin 20 years ago! Here it is:

 

in these liberal enclaves, you either have two houses (super rich) or two jobs (poors). There's increasingly no in-between...

 

Another one:

 

I think the conundrum is that high concentrations of professionals necessitate all kinds of retail and personal service jobs, so young people and minorities will always go to the city regardless of pricing. And immigrants aren't going to migrate to or even have heard of most smaller cities. Big cities are more likely to have colleges too, I think there's too much working in their favor.

 

Big banks/investment funds and foreign nationals, namely Chinese investors.

There's also your typical speculator but the above two are skewing the bubble...

 

Lots of reasons for this, but America's skyrocketing population is a factor, gentrification can only "help" so much.

 

And it is unfortunate that those "liberal enclaves" are the nice cities in the US also.

 

Time to move to smaller cities.

 

I always find Houston housing "affordability" to be quite deceiving. You can not find a house in the city for $200k...no chance.

This is an example of a 200k house in the heights http://search.har.com/engine/812-N-18th-St-Houston-TX-77008_HAR67550364.htm

Sure this is 200k asking price, but the only potential buyer would be a developer who would turn it into a 600k town home...as seen in the listing advertising the development around it and not the house itself.

Zoning surely has driven down the average price, but it is just because it creates islands of desirable areas and deserts elsewhere.

 

They have 630 sf single home house??

 

Shouldn't the article specify that it is unaffordable to NEW buyers? Take for example the $148K down payment for LA. If you have been owning a home in SoCal for about 10 years or more, your home equity will most likely be a lot higher than that, which makes the down payment very affordable. Relatively, a homeowner in Houston would have accrued $40K in home equity. The real estate market for every city is all relative based on the average rate of appreciation.

It's not rocket science but just like stocks, it's all about supply and demand. Bigger cities have more available jobs, hence more populated and the demand for homes becomes higher.

 

Bull. I bought my house in Clear Lake (Houston address) for $121k in 2005. If you only look inside the loop, you will find lots of expensive property, but inside the loop is not the only place to buy a home in Houston.

 

I've only ever rented in Houston, so, I have no idea about home prices.

But a 2005 purchase is your rebuttal?

 

There is something really wrong with that list. There is no way the median home price in Sacramento is more than NYC.

 

You can vote for Houston officials in Clear Lake? Interesting...

Anyways, it is still deceiving. These areas where you may be able to find a house for 200k or less are only a part of the statistic because of the mass annexing Houston has done. In reality most people would not consider these parts of town "Houston" as they were independent areas struggling to survive as a municipality that eventually succumbed to the bigger governing body.