Pittsburgh; Llivable or Leavable? (State College, Denver: apartments, rent , jobs)

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by Humanoid

... the reason why Case-Shiller is a better index to track right now can be found here:

Calculated Risk: House Prices: Comparing OFHEO vs. Case-Shiller

Case-Shiller is very good at what it does, but it has lots of limitations as well. Indeed, consider the upshot of that linked commentary:

"This suggests that one of main differences between OFHEO and Case-Shiller was that Case-Shiller included many non-agency homes financed with subprime loans. These homes saw more appreciation during the boom, and are now seeing larger price declines."

Case-Shiller is thus pretty useful if you want to understand the results of excessive lending in the subprime market, and that does in fact have important implications from, say, a national policy perspective (e.g., if you are thinking about banking regulations). To that extent I agree with the linked commentary: it is somewhat problematic the OFHEO index is being used by federal policymakers.

On the other hand, if you personally are not in the sorts of markets where a lot of homes were bought with subprime markets, Case-Shiller becomes less useful. And, of course, there are the other fundamental limits I have noted (Case-Shiller doesn't report below the MSA level, and then only for 20 MSAs; they exclude condos and new-builds; and so forth). Therefore, Case-Shiller will be far less useful to many individual home buyers and sellers.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by scrapp

So, then you are saying Pittsburgh's comparable cities are other interior post-industrial cities, rather than Boston, NYC, DC, etc.?

Well, as I noted in the other part of my post, Pittsburgh probably can be considered in the same broad class as other interior post-industrial cities as far as its economic history is concerned, but with respect to things like the length of its boom period, and also the sharpness of its bust, it is close to one end of the relevant range.

Also, I wouldn't quite say "rather than Boston, NYC, DC, etc.," because Pittsburgh has some attributes in common with those cities, and also some attributes which distinguishes it. Generally, deciding which cities are "comparable" is really going to depend on then purpose of the comparison. So if you start with different purposes, you will likely end up getting a different list of cities most comparable to Pittsburgh.

Incidentally, in this case I was originally using the term just to refer to MSAs of a roughly comparable size (in terms of population) or larger. For that purpose, cities all over the country will qualify as "comparable" to Pittsburgh. But again, once you start getting into more specific questions, then it depends on the nature of the question you are asking.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by fleetiebelle

I do it, and it's not as difficult as you'd think. And I bought a house two years ago.

When I was living off a grad student stipend, $35K would have been about three times what I was getting. And some of my fellow grad students were even saving a bit of money.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by scrapp

Is the median home in Boulder the same size and in the same shape as the median home in Pittsburgh? They may be quite different kinds of houses...

I'm not sure there are statistics like that available, but it just happens that we looked briefly at living in Boulder not long ago, so I checked out housing prices. I focused on Victorian and Craftsman homes in Boulder proper, which are indeed similar to most of the homes in the Pittsburgh neighborhoods I know best (basically the East End). And it turns out comparable homes were at least around twice as expensive in Boulder, more (sometimes much more) if you had a view.

[Katiana]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

When I was living off a grad student stipend, $35K would have been about three times what I was getting. And some of my fellow grad students were even saving a bit of money.

Well, yeah, my husband, too. But that was a *few* years ago. He saved money, too. My daughter is in grad school living on student loans, and they figure she needs $36K/yr. That includes tuition.

[londonbarcelona]

Originally Posted by scrapp

Is the median home in Boulder the same size and in the same shape as the median home in Pittsburgh? They may be quite different kinds of houses...

Thank you! My thoughts too!

The houses that are available here in the Phoenix area for those prices are new, gorgeous, and with pools! (Not to mention you don't have to shovel sunshine.)

The housing stock IS cheap in Pittsburgh, but I'd have to be hard pressed to to live in one.

There really is no comparison. I wouldn't have believed it myself until I moved out here. Oh wait, yes I would have, I live in San Antonio, Texas and loved it as much as Phoenix, AND the housing stock there is inexpensive also - AND they have an NBA team! (I happen to like Basketball more than Football......Heaven forbid!)

[Katiana]

Originally Posted by scrapp

Is the median home in Boulder the same size and in the same shape as the median home in Pittsburgh? They may be quite different kinds of houses...

They are indeed very different houses. Plus, Boulder is acutally a suburb of Denver, so you're actually looking at a small piece of the Denver housing market. Boulder is more upscale. Denver is a better comparison for Pittsburgh, as it's a metro-wide comparison. However, it's hard to make a comparison even so b/c of the many differences in the two. Friends of ours who have moved away say that for comparable housing, prices are more similar than what the medians tell you. One educated guess for that is that there are a lot of very old properties in Pittsburgh. I have a 1985 edition of the Places Rated Almanac which shows percentage of houses built before 1940. For Boulder-Longmont, it is 12.4%; Denver (metro) 14.4%; Pittsburgh (metro) 43.4%. Granted, this is very old data, but I haven't heard of any major tear-down/rebuilding in any of these cities. My newer edition does not give this data, nor could I find it on City-Data.

Anyway, the point is that $35K sounds low, nationwide, for an IT job, at least one requiring a degree. We have moved around the country some and DH has searched around the country more, and the salaries he has made and been offered have always been fairly comparable. I agree with Humanoid, if these jobs have been unfilled for 6 months, perhaps the offered salary is too low, for Pittsburgh.

[BrianTH]

For what it is worth, while I agree Boulder is upscale (and a university town), so are the neighborhoods in the East End to which I was comparing it (and those are also university areas). But I would also agree there really isn't a great analog to Boulder in the Pittsburgh region, since the main universities in the area are in the East End, as opposed to in a satellite town. Rather, Boulder reminds me more of another place I know well, Ann Arbor, MI, which is also a university town and has roughly the same relationship to Detroit as Boulder has to Denver (in terms of distance and comparative size).

But as a final thought, I think that actually largely cuts in favor of Pittsburgh, and thus my comparisons may well have understated the true multiple. That is because there are a lot of advantages to basically having what is a university town right inside the city, and thus in close proximity to the rest of the city's economic and cultural features.

[scrapp]

Originally Posted by subdivisions

On edit: I take it back about the larger thing - it is quite possible to buy 5-6 bedrooms in the city of Pittsburgh for under 100K. But you likely would have to be willing to put sweat equity into the property to make it modern. Similar houses in Boulder are likely to be much more up-to-date.

This I agree with. Even if you did fix it up, the property isn't likely to be in that "good" of an area of PGH.

I haven't been to Boulder, but I believe the point Katiana made about Boulder being an upscale suburb of Denver will also have bearing on the median costs (vs. PGH).

[subdivisions]

Originally Posted by scrapp

I haven't been to Boulder, but I believe the point Katiana made about Boulder being an upscale suburb of Denver will also have bearing on the median costs (vs. PGH).

Quite true. Which is why BrianTH compared it to the East End of Pittsburgh, and why I included median home costs for Denver metro in all of my posts.