Cost of Housing numbers for Pittsburgh don't add u
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7/5/2012
We have been living in the Pittsburgh area for 9 months trying to find a home that will allow us to commute downtown. In spite of the fact that Pittsburgh has great affordable housing on paper, ranking in top 50 affordable housing cities, great ratings with the HOI etc, and with a median home price supposedly around $100K, we have become very frustrated. The numbers and real life do NOT add up. We are looking at 4 BR homes somewhere in the Pittsburgh suburbs (we are watching multiple areas) less than 30 years old with reasonably good schools and it is very difficult to find anything less than 300K, and most reasonable options are under contract within a week or 2 of going on the market.
We're hoping for 5 bedrooms(forget it) and a little more space and searching up to $350K, we aren't expecting to find things as cheap as the "median" of course, but there is very little availability, most homes are rather old and many are in poor condition. At first I was thinking the excellent affordable housing numbers must be coming from comparing downtown urban areas, or some other part of town that we're not considering, but the more I research and shop for homes the more confused I am.
Now we're considering moving again, and as we compare statistics on the places we're finding job opportunities, I remain perplexed. Comparing homes for sale on any real estate website reveals the comparable expense of homes in the Pittsburgh area, yet every ranking and index designed to compare affordability erroneously claims that homes here are inexpensive. For example: We bought and sold our 3300 sqft home in San Antonio TX around $160K-170K (almost 5 years apart) but if I could find the same home here for $320K or less I would jump at it as an incredible deal, but nothing exists in that range (we'd be happy with 2400 sqft if we could find it). This site rates housing costs in Pittsburgh at "47", and San Antonio as "60", or around 30% more expensive, when in reality slightly nicer, newer (less than 20 or 30 years old) homes in San Antonio can be purchased for half as much as a comparable home here. Charlotte, NC is rated 102 for housing costs, but be we found dozens of extremely nice homes, large, upgraded homes in nice suburbs with top-rated schools in the $200s.
I can't figure out why the numbers for this area differ so much from the real-world experience, this is not the only site that rates Pittsburgh housing as more affordable that it is, I've seen the same problem everywhere I've looked, but it would be SO nice to find some sort of city-comparable housing numbers that actually reflect what we find for sale.
Julie | Oakdale, PA