[IrishIllini]

Originally Posted by marothisu

Yep. Actually yesterday the affordability came up in a conversation I had yesterday. My girlfriend's co-worker was saying "Yeah Chicago's cheaper but downtown is basically the same as Manhattan." He knows the truth now after I corrected him and showed the actual prices. I was showing other people there pictures of Chicago who had never been there and they were amazed. "It's so clean and wow it has beaches!?!?" Then I told them prices for downtown luxury high rises and it was a big "WTF? really, that cheap compared to here?"

People are pretty clueless about the city in general. On Dallas, maybe - but their housing is actually pretty cheap in the suburbs as far as actual buying goes, but that's another story. Chicago 100% needs better PR, and yes Rauner basically reduced the budget for stuff like Choose Chicago by a ton. The people who know about it know how good the city can be, but then there's a whole slew of people who literally think the only cities in America you can get good walkable areas with public transit is NYC and maybe SF.

As weird as this sounds, Chicago basically needs some non-douchey celeb who actually knows about the city in a lot of different aspects and to share that via social media and whatever. You either have one extreme or another when it ever comes to that.

I tend to agree. Housing in Dallas is no more affordable than Chicago these days. May soon be less affordable.