Quote:
Originally Posted by craigs
Just for shits and giggles, I spent some time fantasy house-hunting in Houston on Zillow. People who think Houston is expensive--even in nicer areas--are spoiled and insular. I don't think there's another city of its caliber that has such large and attractive houses for such a low price. Houses that go for about $350K there would, for the same size and quality, easily cost three or four times as much in the Bay Area and LA.
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Keep in mind that a lot of cheaper metros have a larger share of really undesirable geographies relative to more expensive metros. This accounts for much of the price difference.
So yeah, somewhere like Seattle is quite expensive, but there's almost nowhere that's a no-go zone. Somewhere like Houston is cheaper but half the metro is an extremely undesirable zone of floodplains, pollution and slummy shotgun-style homes.
I see this in Detroit all the time, where outsiders are like "Wow, there are $5,000 homes, Detroit is the steal of the century!". But those are former crackhouses in near-wastelands that need 100k in work for legal occupancy, and probably aren't worth 100k after the work is done (hence the abandonment; the market is working as expected).
Yeah, Detroit is relatively affordable, but desirable areas, with good schools aren't that cheap. My brother recently bought in a school district where SFHs basically start at 700k. And property taxes are very high. Not particularly affordable, unless you're coming from Coastal CA (and there are very few Californians in the Rust Belt).
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