My father in law was a teacher in East New York for 30 years, recently retired. He got out alive.
East New York is a very big section of Brooklyn, almost 2 square miles including an industrial park and several housing projects and 183,000 people (according to Wikipedia). There are some areas that are quite nice and some that are truly awful.
St. Louis is a patchwork of good and not good neighborhoods. Most of the professionals live in the suburbs like St. Charles. Downtown STL is very dead.
@BunsenBurner I’m more than aware of the markets in China and Russia. But the ones with money don’t swim in the same pool as the rest of their countrymen. The US RE market is the new Swiss bank acct for many of them!
And a lot of the high end real estate being bought in NY are through offshore companies, and the identities of the real owners are unknown. RE is the prefer method to launder money for criminals.
^^^
But then those types of buyers would be limited to condos or townhouses no? No way a co-op board is going to involve themselves in that sort of shenanigans. It could put the whole building at risk. And so many of the buildings in NYC are co-ops - that takes a lot of really good buildings out of the equation for them.
@katliamom, thanks for mentioning Denver. I know a couple of people who have moved to Denver. One from each coast. They like Denver.
It is a beautiful day here in the SF bay area though…and Steph Curry is about to play. 
This doesn’t sound good.
There is a huge amount of very high end high rise construction in Manhattan. It’s all condos.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/nyregion/stream-of-foreign-wealth-flows-to-time-warner-condos.html
St Louis?
We have longtime friends who have relocated many times for the husband’s work. They’ve found things to enjoy about each town/state EXCEPT for st Louis.
Really really hot summers. Tornadoes. No pizza worth eating.
They lasted a year.
@Chardo - I went to WUSTL back in the day and had an old friend from college visiting recently. He’s kept up more with St. Louis than I have and he was saying that it’s just a shame that the city leadership has not done more to help revitalize the city. Proper planning and incentives can do quite a bit! It’s a great old city with lots of wonderful old buildings and neighborhoods but it does tend to have an empty core like many rust belt cities do.
The central west end is lovely as is the area around Soulard farmer’s market. The Illinois side of the river is rough and many people live just west of town in Clayton, Webster Groves, etc. When I drove through with D3 on the way to her college she thought it was really cool. But we just stopped for frozen custard at Ted Drewes and went on our way.
Oh and the pizza … hahaha, me and the old friend are both from the NY/NJ area and we were completely appalled at the pizza. Apparently it’s St. Louis “style” to have thin, dry, pizza in an irregular rectangle. Ugh, when your style is bad please change it!
Skip the pizza, go for the BBQ.
@dstark , you may want to look at units here.
http://streeteasy.com/complex/southbridge_towers
It was built under Mitchell-Lama program, but was privatized last year. Maintenance is probably lowest in Manhattan. Prices are not bad and the entire South St. Seaport area (plus downtown) is being revitalized now.
@cbreeze, thanks for the link. Prices do look pretty good. Next time I go to Manhattan, I am going check out that complex.
I love streeteasy. You can look there and find what’s available in Manhatten at the price you want, in the location you want, # of bedrooms you want, etc.
It was a great way for D1 and I to “shop together” while she was looking last summer. She would give me the address of a place she was considering and I could look at it. I was able to feel more a part of it.
D1 works in finance. She lives with her BF, and he does not. She told me if she lost her job, she could still cover expenses for a few years. She figures she could find another job in that time. Plus, her BF would probably not have lost his job. Also, if the market remained even remotely the same, she could sell. She had an offer on 3 other places, and was out bid, before she got the one she bought. She probably got it because it was a bit of a fixer upper. Well, it is all fixed up!
Bay Area Renter’s Foundation, or BARF
More housing can be built in the southeast area of SF.
I don’t think there is a long term solution.
Too much demand.
SF is not Manhattan. New Yorkers are a little different than San Franciscans. The west coast is a little more relaxed. 
Maybe these micro sized places people talk about might work for awhile.
Vancouver has many high rise condos near downtown and out to Burnaby. If space is a premium, then the only way to build is up.
You have to build up. I agree.
In places people would want to live, there is very little affordable housing within 30 miles from the city. It is not just SF that has a problem.
The poverty level in SF for a family of 4 is $75,000 a year.
So… How does it work in Vancouver? How much are the units and what do you get for the money?
Have the highrises stopped the high real estate prices in Vancouver?
No idea on the prices in Vancouver. From last week’s NY Times article about the Chinese buying up Vancouver real estate, it appears that the trend is generally up all over. Here’s another interesting article about rich Chinese in Vancouver from the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/22/chinas-rich-kids-head-west