2024 International Housing Affordability report

[Crawford]

I'm pretty sure Winnetka, Glencoe and Kenilworth are the most expensive Chicagoland suburbs. Wilmette is up there too. Whatever encompasses the New Trier school district is particularly desirable.

Frequently it's also more of a lake-adjacent thing, regardless of community, with the fanciest homes closest to the lake, and then getting more modest as one heads west. But I'm pretty sure Lake Forest and Highland Park are psf cheaper and less desirable than the communities to the south. I don't think the schools are as good, and that's a pretty long commute. Also pretty sure Lake Forest is (or was) WASPy and Highland Park more Jewish.

[Steely Dan]

There's so many different ways to measure this, and they're all very well-off places to begin with, that a precise ranking will depend on how you weight things.

But from the perspective of a local who grew up on the Northshore (Wilmette), I'd roughly rank the 6 core lakefront northshore burbs in terms of "fancy-ness" as such:

1. Kenilworth
2. Winnetka
3. Glencoe
4. Lake Forest
5. Highland Park
6. Wilmette


Quibble away; I ain't dying on no hill for any of those picks....

[Shawn]

Guys . . . did no one catch this is a Wendell Cox report? I missed that at first.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by Shawn

Guys . . . did no one catch this is a Wendell Cox report? I missed that at first.

I noticed it was Demographia since the posted mentioned it when presenting, but I didn't see the relevance. While Cox has ideological reasons for a lot of what he does and that can cause him to choose less than useful methodology, if this really is what it purports to be which is the ratio of median incomes to median housing prices, then the data is what it is. I find with demographia, the issue isn't so much that the underlying data they present is wrong but rather which data they choose to selectively present and the conclusions they draw from it. But in this case the results aren't really surprising enough to raise many eye brows.

[creamcityleo79]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Weird. How is Milwaukee that expensive?

Something is funky with the NAR data. Grand Rapids is apples-apples much cheaper than Metro Detroit. Granted, maybe its the differing distribution of apples but I suspect something is off.

It really is that expensive. I've been following the Milwaukee RE market for close to 20 years now and it's INSANE how crazy it's gotten. I tried to look for a condo for my friend in the under $200k price range (which would have been SUPER easy just a few years ago) and I couldn't find even a handful of places in her price range in most of the metro area. I know some realtors there and homes are selling like crazy! There are bad areas of the city; but, they just keep adding amenities to the good areas and it's really reached a critical mass and spread across the metro. Housing is reflecting that now.

[pip]

Originally Posted by creamcityleo79

It really is that expensive. I've been following the Milwaukee RE market for close to 20 years now and it's INSANE how crazy it's gotten. I tried to look for a condo for my friend in the under $200k price range (which would have been SUPER easy just a few years ago) and I couldn't find even a handful of places in her price range in most of the metro area. I know some realtors there and homes are selling like crazy! There are bad areas of the city; but, they just keep adding amenities to the good areas and it's really reached a critical mass and spread across the metro. Housing is reflecting that now.

Wow! I used to live in Milwaukee and a I guess a few years ago used to look at condos for fun online on the East Side and Third Ward areas. It was easy back then to find cheap and nice condos. Need to check it out again.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

I noticed it was Demographia since the posted mentioned it when presenting, but I didn't see the relevance. While Cox has ideological reasons for a lot of what he does and that can cause him to choose less than useful methodology, if this really is what it purports to be which is the ratio of median incomes to median housing prices, then the data is what it is. I find with demographia, the issue isn't so much that the underlying data they present is wrong but rather which data they choose to selectively present and the conclusions they draw from it. But in this case the results aren't really surprising enough to raise many eye brows.

Yeah, I know Demographia can be controversial around here so I deliberately called it out. But their methodology seemed straightforward. My main criticism is that they just limited it to rich Anglophone places.

[raggedy13]

^I agree, the metric they use is pretty straightforward and as far as I can see accurately reflects existing affordability challenges in those most expensive cities. However, Demographia always seems to oversimplify the root cause: unaffordable cities have too much regulation/land restrictions while the affordable ones don't.

Originally Posted by iheartthed

10 least affordable markets (rank)

• Toronto, CAN (84)
• San Diego, USA (85)
• Adelaide, AUS (86 tie)
• San Francisco, USA (86 tie)
• Melbourne, AUS (88)
• Honolulu, USA (89)
• Los Angeles, USA (90)
• San Jose, USA (91)
• Vancouver, CAN (92)
• Sydney, AUS (93)
• Hong Kong, CHN (94)

The way the report presents it is slightly misleading, but Toronto technically fell out of the top 10 this year - it's 11th most expensive but still one of only 11 "impossibly unaffordable" cities so its a bit grouped with the top 10.

This video does a decent job summarizing the top 10 most expensive and how the top 10 have changed over last year, including adding some additional considerations behind the "why":
• Video Link

Their video from last year also includes the 10 least expensive (which haven't changed much) and a gets a bit more into the "why" as well.

[ssiguy]

To sum it all up, fast growing cities have more expensive housing and especially those that are magnets for international migrants/investors/money launderers. Yet another example of how population growth can have real negative consequences. Canada knows this more than anyone.

Our housing {except for Vancouver and less so Toronto} was relatively affordable in most of the country before 2021 and then Trudeau opened the floodgates to any immigrant able to fog a mirror. This has left us with a population growth rate of 3.2%, quite literally the fastest rate in the world outside of Sub-Saharan Africa, and hence prices have soared for both real estate, rentals while homelessness has exploded and hence we now have 25% of all Canadians living in poverty.

The moral of the story is that cities who wish they would see a population boom should be careful what they ask for.