Northwest of the notoriously pricey Big Apple, there are two cities among the most reasonably priced in the nation.
In this year’s “Demographia International Housing Affordability” report, the upstate cities of Rochester and Buffalo ranked among the 10 most affordable major metropolises in a study of 94 cities in eight different countries.
The 2024 report, produced jointly by the Chapman University Center for Demographics and Policy and The Frontier Centre for Public Policy, determined that Rochester was the second-best priced urban hub across the examined countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, China, Ireland, New Zealand and Singapore.
Each city was ranked based on a price-to-income ratio that divides the median house price by the median household income.
Rochester — which currently has an average listing price of $159,900— lost out on the crown to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which was named as the most affordable city in the study.
Buffalo, meanwhile, came in equal fifth place. The current listing price in that city is $215,000.
And while many Americans may feel housing prices are soaring out of control, nine of the 10 most affordable cities across the eight examined countries are actually located in the US.
In addition to three metropolises mentioned above, St. Louis, Cleveland, Detroit, Oklahoma City, Cincinnati and Louisville were among the most affordable when median house price and median household income were compared.
Notably, no cities in New York state made the report’s list of least affordable markets.
Of the 94 cities across the eight examined countries, New York City ranked 77th when it came to affordability.
Three California hubs (San Jose, Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego) were ranked even worse.
The most unaffordable housing market was Hong Kong, followed by Sydney, Australia.
Housing costs, study authors noted, have become the “primary cause of the present cost-of-living crisis” for most middle-income households.
“For decades, home prices generally rose at about the same rate as income, and homeownership became more widespread. But affordability is disappearing in high-income nations as housing costs now far outpace income growth,” they continued.
Significantly to blame are land use and urban containment policies such as greenbelts and growth boundaries that restrict housing supply and drive up land prices, making homeownership unattainable for many.
In more affordable areas like Buffalo and Rochester, there has been a better balance in residential market availability and population, leading to less of an affordability crisis than in places like San Francisco.
“The intensity of the housing affordability crisis suggests that we must reorient current policies on land use and focus on the most fundamental objective: what is good for people,” the report concludes.
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