Priced out of the city! (Pittsburgh, Allentown: wood floors, 2015, apartment)

[PreservationPioneer]

Originally Posted by grep

Other posters have pretty much said it. Additional neighborhoods to consider might be south side slopes, south fineview, Duquesne, western Wilkinsburg.... but Beechview, Brookline, Greenfield, and Troy Hill are all good suggestions. There are also odd areas like "the run" where houses come up for sale only occasionally but are often good deals. Cast a wide net and wait.

I think this is the first time Duquesne has been recommended to anyone on this board.

[PreservationPioneer]

Originally Posted by BarqCider

well being born and raised in the suburbs of DC, finding a house less than 200k is not even remotely possible. Condos? possible. sfh? not a chance.

so to me any house under 300k IS cheap, but 75k? that is astounding from my perspective.

I think in Pittsburgh, a lot of people pay cash for things, and mortgaging yourself to your limit is probably more of a DC thing.

[PreservationPioneer]

Originally Posted by T. Damon

OMG- Shadyside, Squirrel Hill and Oakland are some of the most beautiful urban neighborhoods I've seen in my life

Meh. I think of the War Streets or Allegheny West when I think of beautiful urban neighborhoods in Pittsburgh. Squirrel Hill seems downright suburban to me. Oakland is all chopped up by the universities and hospitals, and the Victorian housing is botched by slum landlords. Shadyside has some beautiful streets, but so many other streets with block after block of ugly 1960s box apartment buildings.

is the city still that cheap!? I need to move there quick before the rest of the country discovers you.

Too late. lol

[Q-tip motha]

Originally Posted by Hopes

The high cost of living in DC and San Diego are making you both feel this way about housing prices in Pittsburgh. When you get here, please pay what the houses are worth here. Don't overinflate our housing prices by paying too much. I wish Pittsburgh wasn't getting all of this press. I'd rather the rest of the country didn't find us. Our low cost of living is ONLY because of our low housing prices. When they go up, it will be just as expensive to live here as elsewhere---actually more expensive because our utilities and food price are higher.

True.

Blows my mind that people are STILL paying that much for a home after the housing market collapsed, and STILL don't realize that the place they're getting isn't worth that much.

I understand why they're impressed with the lower cost of the Pittsburgh metro housing market and that isn't to say that the OP's expectations are realistic, but if you're option is to drop half a million on a 3 bedroom split level or rent...just rent for christsakes.

[SteelCityRising]

OP, I'm sort of in the same boat you're in. I moved to Pittsburgh in 2010 and accidentally "stumbled" upon Polish Hill. I saw pictures of my apartment on CraigsList and fell in love with the unit first and told myself "I'll make the neighborhood work" as my landlady embarrassingly apologized for the abandoned rowhomes rotting away across Brereton Street from me, thinking they would turn me off instead of intrigue me. After living in the Northern Virginia suburbs of DC the thought of paying $550/month for a 1-BR apartment in the heart of the city instead of well over $1,000/month to live in an undesirable 1970s-era suburb was too good of an opportunity to pass up. Since moving here I've been intensively studying the local real estate market, and while the metro area overall doesn't have a bubble by any means, the East End over just the past 3-5 years has seen rather rapid housing price appreciation to the point where a "bubble" may occur here in the 2020s if current trends continue.

We're comfortably paying $700/month in rent now and could afford more. Our main problem? With student loans, car payments, rent, etc. it's been very difficult to save up for a down payment and closing costs on a home in this part of town, as it seems like by the time we get close to our goal of homeownership with our savings housing prices rise just above what we've been able to save, setting us back to square one. I just had several thousand dollars saved and had found our perfect dream home---a little brick rowhome on the corner of two alleys in East Deutschtown. It sold for just $30,000 before I could save the remainder needed to cover closing costs, leaving me in tears for days. I then had to deplete my savings to cover the cost of a down payment on a new car when my Honda Civic died, so perhaps it was for the better.

Some on this sub-forum are being rude to you because they're upper-middle-class and have never had to worry about paying for anything. Hopes is the only one who seems to understand the plight of those who live here, live responsibly, yet don't earn as much as most of the newcomers who work for Google, UPMC, CMU, etc. Someone relocating here from a much more expensive area is going to say "$200,000? That's dirt cheap!" in regards to a home priced at $200,000 that is truly only worth $150,000 while those living here and earning lower wages couldn't dream of affording such an "expensive" home relative to local earnings. Naturally sellers are profit-motivated and will market their homes to all of these professional transplants moving here with much more equity after selling their own homes in inflated housing markets for $500,000+ instead of the locals who have a fraction of the buying power, and I don't blame them.

With that being said I'll also agree with Tirade (although she could have been less rude about it) in that you'll need to compromise. Right now the neighborhoods we're targeting are all city neighborhoods (we likewise have no desire to leave the city limits due to our love of urbanity), but instead of looking for trendier neighborhoods where you can walk to things we're looking for neighborhoods that are at least stable, have minimal violent crime, and have the "bones" of being a better neighborhood someday. Such neighborhoods on our radar include Elliott, West End Village, Crafton Heights, Esplen, East Allegheny, Spring Garden, Spring Hill, Troy Hill, Brighton Heights, Brightwood, Observatory Hill, Garfield, Hazelwood, Larimer, Upper Manchester, Upper Lawrenceville, Allentown, Arlington, Mt. Washington, and Beechview/Brookline (although both of these seem to be increasingly outside of our price range, which is also under $75,000).

I'm not on here whining "I can't afford Shadyside. Pittsburgh sucks. WAHHHHH!!!" I'm on here freaking out because with each passing year the pool of neighborhoods those of us who want to enter the housing market on a budget becomes progressively narrower and narrower, leaving me to worry that by the time we're able to buy (Spring 2015) there won't be anything left. Hell, when I moved here in 2010 my own Polish Hill would have been a contender. In just three years housing prices here have soared meteorically, and we don't even have a business district. I just worry how many more years will it be before my above list of neighborhoods affordable to entry-level homebuyers is extinct. Does anyone else worry about this?

[Q-tip motha]

Originally Posted by sskink

Trying not to be judgmental here, but it's kinda tough.

A $75K mortgage comes out to around $500/month.

You're a couple w/o kids.

Maybe it's time for one of you to get a better job?

It will be a little more than that. Our mortgage for our 50k home with taxes, insurance, and the whole package at 3.2% comes out to $450/month

[pman]

are there still abandoned homes on your block?

[aw_now_what]

Originally Posted by Devout Urbanist

If housing prices go up in Pittsburgh it will be because of increased demand, meaning more people wanting to live here. To me, that's a good thing, since one of the biggest drawbacks to this place is the fact that it has about half as many people as Baltimore. The largest city in PA has well over a million people. This city was not built for 300,000 people. It was built to house about 600,000 people. An influx of new blood is absolutely necessary to increase the overall quality of this generally creepy half-abandoned rinky-dink town, but it means higher housing prices. I say so be it. If the city wants to keep housing prices affordable for middle and lower income people as more people move here it can simply build more housing. It's not like there's not enough space.

People who quote the 600,000 peak population may not understand how different Pittsburgh was in those days. Families had a lot more kids - having five kids was not uncommon - and people lived more crowded. There are a lot of houses in areas like the Central North Side, Lawrenceville, South Side, Deutschtown, Friendship, etc., that were built as single-family, being used as three apartments for three families not single folks when that 600,000 peak happened, and are now single family again, with smaller families than ever before. There are buildings all over and adjacent to Brereton Avenue (Polish Hill) that once housed dozens of immigrants each, but now have only a few people in them. Add to that the areas that have been "clear-cut" with most or all housing removed: Chateau, Lower Hill, area around the Heinz plant, East Street Valley, area around the Prison on the North Side, parts of the South Side, Hazelwood and Lawrenceville that were cleared for mill expansion, and many other pockets. Don't forget the thinning out of the building stock by public demolition of deteriorated houses. And finally, families rarely have maids or boarders living with them, and several decades ago single adults rarely lived in their own apartments. That contributed to larger household size too.

It's great that Pittsburgh's population loss has stopped and may be reversing, but having 600,000 people again would have us living like sardines.

[speagles84]

Originally Posted by aw_now_what

People who quote the 600,000 peak population may not understand how different Pittsburgh was in those days. Families had a lot more kids - having five kids was not uncommon - and people lived more crowded. There are a lot of houses in areas like the Central North Side, Lawrenceville, South Side, Deutschtown, Friendship, etc., that were built as single-family, being used as three apartments for three families not single folks when that 600,000 peak happened, and are now single family again, with smaller families than ever before. There are buildings all over and adjacent to Brereton Avenue (Polish Hill) that once housed dozens of immigrants each, but now have only a few people in them. Add to that the areas that have been "clear-cut" with most or all housing removed: Chateau, Lower Hill, area around the Heinz plant, East Street Valley, area around the Prison on the North Side, parts of the South Side, Hazelwood and Lawrenceville that were cleared for mill expansion, and many other pockets. Don't forget the thinning out of the building stock by public demolition of deteriorated houses. And finally, families rarely have maids or boarders living with them, and several decades ago single adults rarely lived in their own apartments. That contributed to larger household size too.

It's great that Pittsburgh's population loss has stopped and may be reversing, but having 600,000 people again would have us living like sardines.

Also areas that are now considered ghettos were packed as dense as Oakland and Shadyside, aka most of the Hill District, East Liberty, Homewood, Knoxville, Allentown, etc. I honestly believe we could fit 450,000 comfortably again one day. It would have a lot to do with smart urban planning, building up main corridors and adding better public transit on these routes, but we'll see if that happens.

Back to the OP. You can also add neighborhoods south of the city itself to your list. Dormont is very lively and has rail transit into Downtown. Its wedged between the city and Mount Lebanon, which is an urban suburb and very lively. I'd also add Bellevue and Avalon, although they are a little farther from the city itself.

[selltheburgh]

Originally Posted by PreservationPioneer

I think in Pittsburgh, a lot of people pay cash for things, and mortgaging yourself to your limit is probably more of a DC thing.

I rarely see cash sales except for investors who pay "cash" but really are using equity in another property, or extremely wealthy people. Even people with 100k in the bank and six figure incomes finance their home. Also parents buying for their kids to live in. Dumping their best egg early. That's not too common either.