<p>"My niece just bought a home in Atlanta for $85,000, she said. I almost spend that on rent and utilities in a year. To them, making $250,000 a year is wealthy. To us, its maybe the upper edge of middle-class.</p>
<p>“The average Manhattan apartment, at $3,973 a month, costs almost $2,800 more than the average rental nationwide. The average sale price of a home in Manhattan last year was $1.46 million, according to a recent Douglas Elliman report, while the average sale price for a new home in the United States was just under $230,000.”</p>
<p>Ugh. Having to live in NYC would be my worst nightmare. The expression “nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there” would epitomize my opinion. Then again, we have friends who have lived there since the 70s, raised kids on a not NYC hefty budget and love it and their worst nightmare would be living in our relatively rural area and would say if visiting us “nice to come and visit you but we wouldn’t want to live here.”</p>
<p>In my neighborhood the average sale price is $733,000. Across the street (a different zip code) it is $ 1.1 million.</p>
<p>A long time ago when my daughter was very young, we were watching an episode of HGTV’s “House Hunters.” There was a couple in Alabama looking at a house that was around $200,000. And my D asked me to explain to her what was wrong (broken) in the house that would cause it to be so cheap. :)</p>
<p>The NY MSA has over 19 million people. That obviously means most are not rich and don’t make anywhere near $250k, let alone more. Even on Manhattan, rents vary tremendously. I know it’s a long way from the far upper west side to downtown but it’s a long way from the commuter suburbs in or around Atlanta (or most places). </p>
<p>Consider some more numbers. There are about 2 million farms in total in the US. I don’t know the total farm population - which is an iffy number because there are so many questions to answer, like do you count migrants as farm population? But the total number of farms is less than the population of Brooklyn (over 2.5 million) or Queens (over 2.3 million) and about 400k more than Manhattan’s population. It seems pretty clear people are choosing to live in the NY area. The 2nd and 3rd, btw, are LA and Chicago, with 13 and 10 million. Big numbers. The NY MSA - which extends into other states - is almost as populous as FL or even NY, which means it is the 3rd largest “state”. LA would be the 5th largest “state”. (This, btw, is why the maps of how counties vote looks so funny: win the area around NY or LA and you’ve just won the equivalent of a bunch of states.)</p>
<p>If you look at the list of largest MSA’s, one lesson is that it’s divided fairly evenly between broadly lower cost and broadly higher cost areas. Of the top 10, 6 are in the high cost category. All are growing. The top 2 are low cost but the next 2 are high cost. The Atlanta MSA, btw, is 9th largest and is growing 5th fastest. Indeed, if you go down the list, you see a number of high cost areas growing faster than low cost areas. So people clearly choose to live in places for a number of reasons. </p>
<p>The notable exception is the Detroit MSA. I’m from there. It’s the only one in the top 25 - it’s #10 - that’s shrinking. I don’t know how to categorize it because it certainly isn’t high cost though it isn’t growing. Seriously, I could buy a very nice house for the cost of a small condo here and a mansion in the city for less. So cost isn’t helping Detroit, at least not yet, unless one considers the small scale revivals I follow - sometimes described as Detroit “hipsters”. </p>
<p>I’ve discussed living in NYC with my wife. She doesn’t like the lack of sunshine, meaning the way the buildings create shadow so much of the day. You can be on the street on a nice day and not feel the sun unless you specifically move into it. I understand that.</p>
<p>It is crazy to see differences like that. I write high value homeowners insurance all around the country and the differences I see in value are astounding. I am fascinated by watching the house hunter shows and seeing how little you can get for your money in most places compared to here… and rarely I also see places where you can get a lot more, Atlanta being one of them. When I posted on forums mentioning that we bought our beautiful home for 160k I had people telling me I should have waited to buy a house until I could have afforded one that wasn’t a dump. lol. Around here you can get a modest smaller home for 30k depending on how picky you are about the school district. We could have easily gotten a good-enough starter home for 50k.</p>
<p>At least, we could three months ago. Home prices appear to have jumped, what I am seeing on realtor.com and trulia right now is almost a 25% jump from what we were looking at when we were hunting in October. The numbers I am seeing reported are more like anywhere from 8-13% depending on what area you’re looking in in this general vicinity. It will be interesting to see how shifts in different local markets will close or widen the gaps between some regions.</p>
<p>VH, metro-Detroit area. I only know the handful of cities we were searching in in-depth, but the price jumps are really something-- and it is crazy how much variance there is even just between cities. If we hadn’t bought when we had we would have had to dramatically lower our expectations. We wanted a fairly modest home, but one that already had necessary updates and was large enough that we would not HAVE to upgrade when we start growing our family. We found that in a great location, but we wouldn’t if we were still shopping today.</p>
<p>One thing that is interesting is that income wise we are toward the bottom in our new neighborhood traditionally speaking, but it really doesn’t feel that way because housing prices were so low here for a time and there are a lot of people like us that snuck in. I think it will be interesting to see how demographics will compare in traditionally high cost areas with markets that are still sluggish to areas that are generally more moderately priced but now are starting to take off. A lot of strange things are going on here at the city level-- for a while we could find more options in one of the most affluent neighborhoods in the state than anywhere else just because the market there was really different from the surrounding areas for people in our price range.</p>
<p>MANY years ago…like when we had 2 children long ago…my husband had a client who lived in New York city…upper east side New York. Client and Mr. Ellebud did their business…legal… During a lunch the client said that they were “barely” surviving financially. Client had 3 children and made $750.000 per year plus bonuses. I remember thinking…what the …? </p>
<p>I found the average home prices in different areas of Chicago interesting. Looks like condos are affordable in the nicer areas of Chicago. These prices are almost a year old. Maybe the affordable condos are dumps.</p>
<p>Emsheevol07, did home prices in Ann Arbor take a large hit over the last several years?</p>
<p>Our NYC apartment’s size is 1/3 of our old home. But it is only H and I now, so not complaining. We love being back in NYC again. We lived here for 15 years before we moved out to the burbs. Once D2 went off to college, we couldn’t think of a reason to live in a big house by ourselves and commute 3 hours a day. </p>
<p>I walk to work everyday. H can go to museums and visit clients easily. D2 was home from college for 6 weeks. She was busy everyday even though she didn’t have her high school friends in town. We didn’t have to worry about how she was going to get to any where - gave her a metro card and she was good to go.</p>
<p>We know quite a few people of our age who have done the same thing as us - sold their large suburban home and moved back into NYC. One in particular is renting a 3 bedroom in soho for themselves, and a studio for their long time housekeeper few blocks away.</p>
<p>I love the idea of living in the big city but couldn’t do it full time. We would love to split time between our home and a more metropolitan area. There are a few years before littlest D goes off to college.</p>
<p>I need lots of green around me so city living is not for me. A couple of weeks. A month sure. But not a year. I love driving to Costco too much and putting all my jumbo groceries in a cart on my way to a huge parking lot that is free. Maybe oldfort’s flat is across Central Park so that would be ideal.</p>
<p>Dstark, the museums in SF is just a bart train away from you right?</p>
<p>^I am with you on that. I used to live in city and enjoyed everything it had to offer. Now that I am older, I need my peace and quiet. Cleaner air, green to look at and look after.</p>
<p>Yes. I agree there are pluses and minuses to living in a city. I like the slower pace, and peace and quiet too. The crime rate is lower. I like the cleaner air. </p>
<p>Krillies, I am in the north bay so no BART. I can take a ferry into the city or drive across the Golden Gate Bridge. I guess I could take a bus.</p>
<p>I live close to the city, but I don’t go there that much. I think I haven’t been in the city for a couple of months. </p>
<p>I think I would go to the museums in SF if I lived in the city but maybe that is just nonsense. :)</p>
<p>We’ve lived in northern NJ for over 30 yrs.
The RE taxes are high and we think about relocating and downsizing.
But we love our lively walkable little town and the midtown direct train station is walk-to-able so we can get into NYC in one hour. Good enough for us to see shows, shop, etc.</p>
<p>DS would KILL to be able to live in Manhattan. So far, he’s renting here in NJ. He takes the train in very often, sometimes several times/week.</p>
<p>DS has a friend who purchased a very nice home outside Detroit for a fraction of the price it would be here in NJ. Home ownership at 26 yr old is pretty cool.</p>
<p>It’s an old story. Remember Sherman McCoy (from Bonfire of the Vanities) ? He was barely squeaking by on $700k something. You think you are entitled to a certain lifestyle when you are making that kind of money. </p>
<p>Musicmom, I think we used to be your neighbor. Our NJ town was and still is a great place to live, but you need a lot of money to live there. Several of our old neighbors from NJ now live in the Charlotte area, as we do, while others have moved into Manhattan. It all depends on what you like and of course, what you can afford. </p>
<p>Having lived in that high cost area, I am very sympathetic to the notion that $250,000 annual income for a family of four is not necessarily “rich.”</p>
<p>I live in NYC in a less expensive neighborhood—although that’s changing. Newer buildings going up are more expensive than existing ones. </p>
<p>There are Costcos in the City and at least some of them have parking lots.</p>
<p>The City is a particularly good place to live during high school and college years. No driving. No worries about drinking and driving. Kids can go to a movie or shopping or to dinner with friends without mom and dad having to drive them there. If a party gets out of control, leave and hail a cab (or call a car service in the outer boroughs) or get a subway or bus. </p>
<p>A lot of the older “kids” who grew up in my neighborhood have returned as young marrieds. Several of them tasted suburbia and ended up hating it. In some cases, parents have handed off their apartments to their kids. It’s funny to see the babies of parents I knew when they were babies!</p>