Pittsburgh revealed as most affordable city to buy a home (York: apartment, renters)

[CFP]

The salary you need to earn to buy a home in 27 major US cities | Daily Mail Online

A home buyer is San Francisco has to earn $142,448 to keep up with monthly payments of $3,323 for a median-priced house

Pittsburgh ranked the most affordable metro area requiring a salary of under $32,000

New York City, which has the highest mortgage rate at $4.22 per cent, was the fourth most unaffordable metro requiring homebuyers to earn $87,535

[bluecarebear]

Depending on location in Pittsburgh.

[selltheburgh]

I saw this and I was curious as to if it included all of Allegheny County or just the city? My guess is the whole county - whereas some inner city areas and suburbs are incorporated as one large district.

SF is just insane. Great walkable city. This week's weather here is the worst they get all year. But prices went from unaffordable to most to unaffordable to almost all. I have friends who make good money in tech and had to move 45 mins from SF to be able to afford a 3 bedroom bungalow fixer upper.

[theta_sigma]

Originally Posted by bluecarebear

Depending on location in Pittsburgh.

Well, duh. Where are people getting the impression that Pittsburgh was once upon a time some sort of communist utopia where there was no such thing as class and wealth? The tony areas of the East End have always been out of reach for all but the upper classes.

[bluecarebear]

Originally Posted by theta_sigma

Well, duh. Where are people getting the impression that Pittsburgh was once upon a time some sort of communist utopia where there was no such thing as class and wealth? The tony areas of the East End have always been out of reach for all but the upper classes.

Pittsburgh was like that when I first moved here. I remember a really cool duplex apartment for $750 in Lawrenceville. The same place would be at least twice that much now.

[doo dah]

http://www.city-data.com/forum/38748736-post13.html



The original page; the methodology

[UKyank]

Originally Posted by bluecarebear

Pittsburgh was like that when I first moved here. I remember a really cool duplex apartment for $750 in Lawrenceville. The same place would be at least twice that much now.

And Lawrenceville back then had a lot less compelling reasons for wanting to live there too so it makes sense that the price has increased.

[theta_sigma]

Originally Posted by bluecarebear

Pittsburgh was like that when I first moved here. I remember a really cool duplex apartment for $750 in Lawrenceville. The same place would be at least twice that much now.

The topic here is buying a home, not renting. Rents have increased all over the country because fewer people are buying and there is more pressure in the market.

A couple new neighborhoods in Pittsburgh have gentrified. But you wouldn't have been able to afford a house in Murdoch Farms 10 years ago any more than you would now. Shadyside, Highland Park, Squirrel Hill, Point Breeze, they have all been upper crusty and/or yuppie for decades. We bought our house 8 years ago and at that time the only non-slum east end neighborhoods we could even consider due to prices were Morningside, Stanton Heights and Swisshelm Park.

Ask anyone who bought a house during the bubble: homes in the vast majority of the city have not appreciated a whole heck of a lot.

[SteelCityRising]

I will say that a problem with Pittsburgh, though, is that most people's rents are much higher than most people's mortgages due to the rental shortage, so while it's true it's "much cheaper to buy than rent in Pittsburgh" it's also much more difficult for renters to scrape together the closing costs and down payment on their first home while OVERPAYING in rent, despite the fact that purchasing a home would actually be cheaper on a month-to-month basis once that barrier to entry has been cleared. My partner and I make much more combined than that $32,000 figure annually, yet we're not going to be able to buy our first home until 2016 or even 2017 potentially because of the money we've wasted on rent, coupled with student loans.

The sorts of houses I've been interested in buying would run me a total monthly payment of $400/month-$500/month, which I'd split in half with my partner. Currently we pay $700/month for a shabby apartment, and if we wanted to move elsewhere in the same neighborhood we'd have to shell out closer to $900/month for a 1-BR, further delaying my home purchase. In contrast, when I moved here just in 2010 I was paying $550/month for a nicer 1-BR and was told by long-timers in the neighborhood that was "a tad high for the neighborhood". Now just a few years later $900/month isn't even sneezed at, even for a studio.

Sure, the people on here who moved here from NoVA; DC; NYC; and San Francisco are thinking "$900/month for a studio?! What a bargain!!" Also bear in mind that the booming economy nationally has been benefiting everyone except for the working-class, whose wages have only risen to keep pace with inflation in recent years, so as median rents in my neighborhood have been steadily rising most people's incomes have been remaining flat. Most people I know are watching the stock market booming; seeing the wealthy get even wealthier; and are wondering "where's our raises?"

[gg]

Originally Posted by CFP

Pittsburgh ranked the most affordable metro area requiring a salary of under $32,000

To be honest, all this shows is the amount of poverty in our city limits. Lets face it, we have way more poverty than other cities like San Francisco. Heck, even NYC has way less poverty than just back in the 90's. Pittsburgh has not grown. Having this much poverty is such a drag on schools, infrastructure and more because there is no money. You can't tax the working people too much or they will flee to suburbs.