What's With The Streetcars? (Cincinnati, Riverside: living in, price, move to)

[Yac]

I feel I need to remind everyone that while this indeed is a place where you can exchange opinions, these opinions should be on topic, not about other members.
Yac.

[Sarah Perry]

Originally Posted by Traveler87

...Your experience recently with how well a city should do is Lexington, Kentucky... right! If you consider that a personal attack, than cry me a river and grow up. And about the whole "provincial and ignorant", what do you want me to say? Every single post you talk about in the manner you do with Cincinnati reeks of ignorance... I would think as someone who literally complains in almost everyone of her posts, that you would leave and find greener pastures elsewhere.... You're assuming I am attacking you on some personal level, which couldn't be any further from the truth. You have had a problem with me and anyone else who has a different opinion than you, and I frankly don't care....

And here I was hoping for an apology! Oops! Nevermind!

[CinciFan]

Another step closer.

Digging On First Phase Of Streetcar To Begin Soon - Politics News Story - WLWT Cincinnati

[mike1003]

I am so sorry that I work in Cincinnati. My tax dollars are being flushed down the crapper

[Matthew Hall]

Not anymore than the taxes you pay somewhere else that pay for the roads and sewers to McMansions that are losing value everyday. My property in OTR has increased by a third in value in the last four years.

[kjbrill]

Originally Posted by Matthew Hall

Not anymore than the taxes you pay somewhere else that pay for the roads and sewers to McMansions that are losing value everyday. My property in OTR has increased by a third in value in the last four years.

How do you know, did they increase your tax assessment? Glad everything is working out for you. But the way I learned math, 1/3 of next to nothing is still next to nothing. As long as you keep bashing the suburbs I will keep knocking projects like the streetcar using public money to subsidize private investments.

[Matthew Hall]

Some honesty at last. No high principles here, just individual self-interest. We are all fighting for our interests, nothing more. Interstates subsidize private investment in former cornfields as do mortgage interest deductions and fannie mae repurchases of mortgages. If you are looking for something to attack, attack them. 30% of something is more than 100% of less than nothing, which is what has happened to property values in many suburban areas in the last 5 years. Yes, my tax assessment has gone up by a third in the last four years. I appealed it, but the sales of similar properties nearby led the them to reject my appeal. At least I know I can sell my property for much more than I paid. I bet the people in Mason or florence wish they could say the same.

[kjbrill]

Originally Posted by Matthew Hall

Some honesty at last. No high principles here, just individual self-interest. We are all fighting for our interests, nothing more. Interstates subsidize private investment in former cornfields as do mortgage interest deductions and fannie mae repurchases of mortgages. If you are looking for something to attack, attack them. 10% of something is more than 100% of nothing. Yes, my tax assessment has gone up by a third in the last four years. I appealed it, but the sales of similar properties nearby led the them to reject my appeal. At least I know I can sell my property for much more than I paid. I bet the people in Mason or florence wish they could say the same.

I am honestly glad your investment in OTR is proving to be a wise deal. But just knocking the suburbs as being the cause of all our ills is not justified. Like you, I thought the bubble period where suburban land and housing prices were going through the roof was just rediculous. There was no real justification for it, other than greed.

But place the greed where it belongs, with the banking and business interests which contributed to it. It would be nice to fault the individual homeowner, but let's face it they are not smart enough to forsee what is coming their way.

I am conservative enough so I am still about 400% in value over what I paid, about 150% in today's dollars. Anyone who knows me would expect that. I look at subdivisions close to me and I see foreclosure after foreclosure. The loss of those naive homeowners will be someone else's gain.

I totally agree Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac need to be done away with! But it needs to be a controlled effort. Begin with denying any bonus pay to their upper officers. How can you be paid a bonus for losing billions of dollars? Only in the US!.

But look at the expenditure on the Streetcar with the same view. I will be waiting to see what the expenditure per property in the final analysis will be. Of course I expect it to be camouflaged many times over.

[Matthew Hall]

The cost of the streetcar is pocket change compared to road spending in the area. Investment in cincinnati in the last five years has increased BECAUSE suburban real estate has collapsed. Banks and other real estate investors have been willing to invest in cincinnati BECAUSE the traditional suburban real estate investment business is no longer profitable to them. There is only so much captial interested in investing in any market at any given time. Cincinnati and many other american cities have actually been hurt by suburbanization as investors could take advantage of subsidization of suburban development that wasn't available to those who invested in already built areas. The better the suburbs do the worse the city does and vice versa because real estate investor choose between the two. They are just changing their calculations now. The market, and govn't subsidies giveth and the market and govn't subsidies taketh away. . . .

[insightofitall]

Look, Matthew, a lot of your posts are nothing but...well, complaining...yet you're not offering any ideas about what you think people should do. So come on....what do you think the people in the suburbs should do? What's your solution? Do you advocate we all move downtown?

What's on your mind, other than a bunch of bellyaching and negative jabs aimed at the suburbs? Why don't you go respond to my comments in post #227? Tell me how you would cram the 1.9 MILLION rest of us suburbanites into the core of Cincinnati.