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Originally Posted by EastSideHBG
I am not sure what is hard to follow but expensive should = you get something for the money. In the past this place being a bargain is what caused people to shrug at the shortcomings. Now start being mentioned with DC, SF, etc., and will one still do the shrug? This can be a subjective thing but what makes a city/area interesting as it heats up and prices rise is kind of standing still here (or maybe more fairly, barely moving).
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Who cares about DC. A stacked townhome condo in Fairfax County VA is a million dollars. Nowhere around here is anything approaching that.
Let's instead talk about Nashville. The average home price in Williamson County TN (the equivalent of Chester County) is $925K. The average home price in the secondary suburban counties of Nashville are well north of $500k. Places where you'll mingle with trailer parks and white trash.
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My point?  Philly is the draw and why people move to inner ring 'burbs (mostly) and a main focal point of the area but I'll just go back to my earlier example: is Conshy a million dollar town? Further out, how about New Hope? I think that we are at the tipping point because yes they are decent enough but there is nothing super special there yet and I would even argue many of these places are still missing the "there", which I expect to see once prices hit a certain point.
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I guess this is where I'm confused. There are no inner ring burbs in any of these boom towns that are even remotely affordable. The in town suburban areas (the closest thing to an inner ring burb in Philadelphia) in Dallas and Nashville and even Houston literally make the prices on the Main Line look like child's play. A house across the street from my Ex's on Chickering Road in Nashville's Belle Meade neighborhood sold for $38 MILLION dollars last year. That's "inner ring" for Nashville. You still need a car but driving distance you're 10-15 minutes from downtown. The average home price in Belle Meade (which is no nicer than any part of the north side of Lancaster Avenue) is approaching $5MM. Nothing on the Main Line is approaching those price points. Maybe a single extravagant home here or there, but AVERAGE? No. In Brentwood, another in town-ish neighborhood where the houses are frankly builders grade McMansions from the 1990s (sorta akin to a Garnet Valley here), the average home price is $1.4MM.
I mean I just think you're on another planet with your expectations and your comparisons. There is no such thing as inner ring affordable in most sunbelt cities. If anything, they sell for even more of a premium there because there is no transit very little walkability so even more pressure to be anywhere remotely urban for a SFH or proper townhome.