Seattle now ranked #3 most expensive major US city to buy a home

[eugene_b]

If I were to guess, they were comparing appreciation rate because otherwise I have no idea how it can rank above NYC. And I think they are saying that price wise it’s #7? (Which would be more or less believable).

[drshang]

Originally Posted by Cinema Cat

I don't know how you'd measure something like that. Certainly there are more expensive homes in Los Angeles and New York City. But perhaps those cities also have slummier areas. So maybe they did some averaging of price.

If you only counted the "desirable" homes and areas (still subjective), I don't think Seattle would rank #3. The nicest parts of L.A. are pricier than the nicest parts of Seattle.

Condo prices in Beverly Hills vs Capitol Hill are relatively comparable. Single family home prices in Beverly Hills are higher, however. It is really tricky to quantify "like" neighborhoods in the two cities, given their size and geographic difference. The housing mix is also different - condos are significantly smaller in Seattle compared to LA.

I do agree with this overall. LA has a large portion of "bad" neighborhoods that drive down the city average, whereas Seattle doesn't really have any neighborhoods that compare to a "bad" area in LA or the major east coast metros. That said, I would argue that desirable parts of LA are far more desirable than similar areas in Seattle. You have the wealthiest people on the planet buying these houses in LA, whereas in Seattle you are mostly attracting a local or regional buyer.

My intuition is that LA is still slightly more expensive than Seattle if you really try to compare apples to apples, which is obviously very subjective. But not by much. The best way IMO to approach it is to just filter out all the best areas of LA and all the worst ones, since "like kind" doesn't really exist in Seattle. I also think its important to not fall into the "basement trap" that causes houses here to appear artificially cheap compared to ones in CA that don't have basements. Basements definitely do NOT count 1:1 for sqft - a lot of the space is not that usable and if you look at the pricing patterns for non-basement houses in Seattle vs basement ones you definitely notice they don't get full credit in the price per sqft numbers.

[uniquetraveler]

Originally Posted by eugene_b

If I were to guess, they were comparing appreciation rate because otherwise I have no idea how it can rank above NYC. And I think they are saying that price wise it’s #7? (Which would be more or less believable).

When I read the article, it looks like they are talking about the actual median price of houses in the metro areas and not the appreciation rate.

Most expensive median home, by city (across all home types)
1 San Francisco $1.4 million
2 San Jose $1.1 million
3 Seattle $754k (was 10th in 2014)
4 Oakland $748k
5 Honolulu $676k
6 LA $675k
7 NY $672k
8 San Diego $623k
9 Anaheim $592k
10 Boston $588

[eugene_b]

If it is median price, there must be a lot of devil buried in details there. I didn’t seriously shop for a place in NYC but based on random ads I was seeing while commuting to work, I can buy a nice house in Seattle right now for the money that would get me an okay-ish studio there.

[Ultrarunner]

Originally Posted by uniquetraveler

When I read the article, it looks like they are talking about the actual median price of houses in the metro areas and not the appreciation rate.

Most expensive median home, by city (across all home types)
1 San Francisco $1.4 million
2 San Jose $1.1 million
3 Seattle $754k (was 10th in 2014)
4 Oakland $748k
5 Honolulu $676k
6 LA $675k
7 NY $672k
8 San Diego $623k
9 Anaheim $592k
10 Boston $588

Oakland being number 4 has shocked a lot of people... there was a time when much of the city was written off... just shows how things change.

Part of it is due to being in the shadow of SF but also the word is getting out... time will tell.

Lots of people still relocating to WA... if not Seattle proper.