Raleigh 2nd best city for bargain house hunters (Cleveland: middle-class, best cities)

[ceili723]

From Forbes magazine, February 8, 2008...

"Raleigh is another market that has been driven by job growth. Like much of the Southeast, the expanding economy here has kept people moneyed enough to make home payments. According to RealtyTrac, there is only one foreclosure per 319 households, one of the lower rates in the country. The inventory of homes available is slightly lower than Salt Lake City (No. 1 on our list), at 14,764, despite Raleigh's larger population of 408,985 people."

Best Cities For Bargain House-Hunters - Forbes.com

I'm from the Northeast, and there seems to be an impression there that you can get real estate here for re-tahhhh-dud prices (my mother was thinking $40K for a condo.) In my zip code, it's more like $200K+. Well, you pay for what you get, and for the money, I don't think you can get a better overall deal than here.

[DanielChang]

200k+ for a townhome? Wow you must live in North Raleigh or somethin'

[MovingFromNewJersey]

We're planning to move in NC within 2 years or so. I was looking online at the home prices and was shocked at how low they are. For the amount of rooms/bathrooms and the newness of the homes in NC, they would be way more expensive here in New Jersey so much so that I probably couldn't afford them.

[scin383]

Low? the home prices here to me are pretty much outrageous compared to where Im from. the last time I checked (about 2 years ago) Down here what you'd pay like 150k for would go for about 70,80k in Pittsburgh, where I grew up. I dont know why that is or if im missing some factor that makes such a difference in price but I remember being amazed how expensive housing was down here in a side by side comparison (neighborhood, bedrooms, size, amenities, etc). Maybe its the growth of the city, maybe its the weather here, the type of industry here thing, I dunno...all i know is your housing dollar seems to go further there than here. Not a real estate guy though, just a cheap person who likes to try to stretch a buck lol

but yeah, compared to like 200k for a condo, down here the prices are much much cheaper from what Ive seen

[Waterboy526]

Pittsburgh is not like other areas of the NE where the prices went through the roof. Pittsburgh does not have the same kind of jobs that other areas of the NE have so that's why the real estate values have been really low, just like Buffalo, Erie, Cleveland, etc.

As far as housing prices go here, I think they are just about right on. In DC and NY they went through the roof (even compared to the higher salaries). I think they have stayed nice and steady here. Sure some houses might be overpriced, but there are still single family houses that can be had for $125-$150k...although you might have to live 20-30 miles from your job. In the DC area if you wanted a house that cheap, you would literally have to commute 70-80 miles and even then houses in the far outlaying exurbs were going up like crazy.

IMO this area has pretty fair prices for the most part.

[miamiblue]

I wouldn't say housing here is a bargain, I'd say it's a tad above average. And no, I didn't come from an economically depressed area, I came from Miami, one of the major markets that experienced a huge bubble and now crash. How you look at it is relative to where you are coming from.

I say this because anyone coming from an overpriced market has to keep in mind one thing: the market you are coming from is overpriced. Those prices are not normal! The salaries people earn there are plumped up to help support the inflated cost of living to some degree - not always enough, I know, but some. When residents who are middle-class feel that they cannot financially survive in an area, the area is overpriced. Every city needs socio-economic diversity to survive (who will clean the homes of the wealthy if those people cleaning their homes can't afford to live in an area?).

One way to see this is to look at the Federal locality pay scales for different areas. Higher cost of living areas get a certain percentage above the national base pay scale to account for the higher costs. These percentages vary from area to area, so you can see, generally, how much more expensive one area is against the other, and against the national average. The Triangle locality pay is 16.82%. It is only about 3 percentage points lower than Miami right now. It is 9.5 points below the NYC/Newark/Bridgeport locality. It is almost 2 points higher than Pittsburgh/New Castle. Compare to your locality here.

Granted, these numbers don't tell the whole story on housing because it considers other costs associated with a higher cost of living, but it is a general guage of what the government (at least) thinks people need to be paid in order to survive in certain areas. The housing costs do not always correlate in a linear fashion with these locality figures. And some employers don't even offer a locality differential at all.