WSJ -Housing recession to end 2009-11 but NOT for Buffalo (Niagara Falls: real estate, 2011)

[ocean2026]

See Tuesday's Wall St Journal. Sure Buffalo houses aren't dropping by $150k each because few houses are worth that much. WSJ says the housing recession for the nation will end somewhere between the end of 2009 up until 2011 but for Upstate NY, Western PA, and a couple of other places everything will continue to decline.

They site the older population - cold climate ( yes most want warm winters) and loss of jobs in general ( I cant remember if high taxes were in that story). They say there is no immigration in these areas and the steady outflow will continue.

Meanwhile I see a thread looking to blame Buffalo's woes on the building up of the suburbs- umm Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, San Francisco, LA and almost every city we know has built up suburbs - but they are doing just fine.

[mikesuicide]

What exactly does WSJ know about upstate NY? Our real estate prices are on the rise and have been for a few years, even today. Predictions are only as good as the pompus writer who authors them. We are in close proximity to an international border, right on the rim of a Great Lake, we have in our city, a national top ten neighborhood, national top ten arts community, national top ten honor school, thirty minutes from a natural wonder of the world just to name a short few. I predict people will tire of the nuances of the other places and come make snowballs.

[ocean2026]

What do they know? Well they know all the spin you wrote about the being on the lake - umm mike they have been on the lake for many years now as well as being near Niagara Falls - Buffalo has been near there for the last 50 or so years at least ? Now get this every year since 1946 Buffalo has lost population- even with Niagara falls even with the lake. WSJ knows what every demographer knows- these trends will continue sorry but probably 100 cities think they are in the top ten in art or whatever-- people move because of weather -taxes and crime.

Spin all you want - you can't and wont change it. I personally like the fact that Buffalo keeps losing people - it means they wont build ugly structures to mar the beauty of all the nice old buildings-- it means freeways designed for 500,000 people will be very drivable for only 270,000.

Here is one nice fact about Buffalo - its the #2 most driveable city in the US behind Corpus Christi according to the Dept Trans & A&M study. Now that is something to brag about because people hate long commutes - and they hate being stuck in traffic.

That's still not enough to buck the trend of people moving out - but it makes Buffalo a great place to visit.

[jjp185]

Ocean, There's a lot of immigration into Buffalo. Check out the lower West Side and Black Rock. Buffalo has its arts - beautiful architecture, many galleries, a theater scene that rivals bigger cities', live music everywhere, and the BPO to start. By the way, Buffalo reached peak population in the mid to late fifties - not in the fourties... lol A lot of Buffalonians left not because they wanted to, but because they couldn't find a job. That's because of an undiversified manufacturing economy in the area, which goes all the way back to when Niagara's power was everflowing, available, and cheap. This combined with the outsourcing of jobs overseas and other factors is what made jobs so scarce. It's not because Buffalo was spooky, trashy, or a horrible place to live. :/ Now that we're starting to get our economy back on track, I would bet that the city will show growth in the 2020, or even 2010 census. So stop being rude and bashing Buffalo... lol