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I rented 2Br in Ft Green for $1200 in 2000. Two years later, I moved, with friends, into a $2000 LES 3 br. New York has always been more expensive than most cities but it really went into hyper gentrification 10 to 15 years ago.
Especially the last 3 years.
Every time I check Bronx rents on Zillow, the price floor gets higher. I can only imagine how bad it is in trendy neighborhoods like Bushwick and Bed Stuy.
Every time I check Bronx rents on Zillow, the price floor gets higher. I can only imagine how bad it is in trendy neighborhoods like Bushwick and Bed Stuy.
Manhattan's overall population actually was estimated to have lost people from 2015 to 2016 as of the 1 year ACS. Of course this didn't make the news LOL. City is still growing - prices in other boroughs still rising (Manhattan is too though for the most part - luckily my building doesn't seem to care to raise prices much or at all).
Makes me wonder what the minimum payrate you'd need to afford to live in SF. I live in the Chicago suburbs and the prices have skyrocketed beyond affordability for my husband and me. We are trying to move somewhere more south so we can actually put less than 40% of our income towards our housing costs.
Chicago is also quite developer-friendly. There are low barriers to entry and a very active developer scene.
The past four years almost 29,000 housing units have gone up within the city, increasing each year. A huge majority of those are in the downtown area, and also on the near west, northwest and north sides of the city.
Prices haven't risen as much as they might because with the high demand there are dozens of new apartment highrises going up each year.
Makes me wonder what the minimum payrate you'd need to afford to live in SF. I live in the Chicago suburbs and the prices have skyrocketed beyond affordability for my husband and me. We are trying to move somewhere more south so we can actually put less than 40% of our income towards our housing costs.
The housing prices in Chicagoland have not yet returned/are equal to their prerecession highs. Individual circumstances change, yes, but Chicago is as affordable now as it was in 2007. That's a pro from a COL standpoint. Assuming you've been there for a while, what has changed? Any chance of increasing home prices (downtown) is halted by continued development. Again, great for COL, but a potential con if you consider housing an investment.
In SF, that's not the case. Folks who owned in SF dating back to the early 2000s and beyond have made a killing. Anyone who's moving to SF is either renting, or is significantly wealthier than your average San Franciscan. Median income levels there, which are ~$165k, don't tell the whole story. Those income levels include those who have been there for a decade or longer. I'd have to assume that the median family income of the incoming populous is $300k+. It has to be to afford a $1.5M 1500 sq/ft. townhouse.
SF/NYC/Boston are at the mercy of foreign investment. They've also allured a lot of employers in extremely high paying verticals - tech, biopharma, other midical/life sciences most notably. If you don't already own a home in those cities, it's getting impossible to do so.
The good news is, you can still make good money in Chicago and live comfortably despite the statement above. Even in the most expensive suburbs of Chicago - Glencoe, Hindsdale, Wilmette, Barrington- You can find nice homes for $700k. Top tier towns outside of SF? Expect to pay 200% more p/sq ft easy. I'd stay in Chicago if you enjoy the perks of a beautiful city while maintaining lower COL. You're not going to find that in any other city of it's caliber.
40X rule is the typical rule for rent. So in San Fran where the average rent for a one-bedroom is $3400, you really have to be making about $136,000 annually! While in Philly, a $56,000 income should be enough for your typical apartment. Obviously both cities have cheaper apartments than that, but since San Francisco is a very small city, there probably aren't many cheap apartments, while in Philadelphia there must be quite a few
The housing prices in Chicagoland have not yet returned/are equal to their prerecession highs. Individual circumstances change, yes, but Chicago is as affordable now as it was in 2007. That's a pro from a COL standpoint. Assuming you've been there for a while, what has changed? Any chance of increasing home prices (downtown) is halted by continued development. Again, great for COL, but a potential con if you consider housing an investment.
That completely depends on where in the city you are. Some areas have definitely recovered and the costs are a little above what they were pre recession. Other areas haven't done anything. Rent in a number of areas are at all time highs though. I remember in 2009 you could rent a fairly new 1 bedroom in a high rise in Lakeshore East downtown for $1495/mo. Today it's over $2000/mo. Even 5 years ago it would be rare to have an apartment cost you over $2700/mo and while today I think it's still not super common, there's a lot more high rise apartments with costs like that.
are the northeast cities the most inter-connected ground-transportation region in the world considering all travel options ?: peter-pan, grey-hound, chinatown busses, northeast direct, acela, bolt, megabus, ...
and they are adding additional service stops now that lockdowns are being lifted:
Boston, the Bay Area, DC, and Seattle have a much higher proportion of college educated white collar workforce. There is far more demand for blue chip suburbs with top schools and trendy urban housing.
Boston, the Bay Area, DC, and Seattle have a much higher proportion of college educated white collar workforce. There is far more demand for blue chip suburbs with top schools and trendy urban housing.
This is not at all accurate.
Both the Philadelphia and Chicago areas have advanced and large knowledge economies. This is widely-reported fact:
The differences in white-collar workforce and educational attainment at the metro level are not dramatically different between these latter two areas and the former grouping, although certainly there's an "edge" in the Bay Area, DC, Boston and Seattle in that regard.
The price disparity stems from four major factors: 1) population growth, 2) developable land/housing scarcity, 3) niche growth in the tech industry (which is much more segmented than the "white-collar" terminology you've used, which is a massive sector covering hundreds of types of jobs), and 4) deep-pocketed (often overseas-based) real estate entities buying up huge inventories of otherwise affordable housing.
Philadelphia and Chicago were simply slower growing metro areas over the past 20 years (although there are some clear signs that's shifting quickly post-pandemic, perhaps significantly so in Philadelphia's and Chicago's favor). Obviously that slower growth doesn't put the same upward pressure on housing prices as the faster-growing cities.
You're also looking at notably less DEVELOPABLE land scarcity in the Philadelphia and Chicago areas. The barrier to entry for housing developers, while not exactly easy on a national scale, is still notably lower in these two areas compared to NIMBY-hotbeds of the Bay Area and Boston (Seattle is likely more limited based on sheer geography, and the DC area has honestly become over-developed).
Point being, Chicago and Philly have plenty of existing and growing white collar demand, but their real estate dynamics are better able to absorb this demand than the other markets, because they face a number of other unique external forces pushing up prices.
Last edited by Duderino; 04-09-2022 at 09:28 AM..
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