Life in the Inflated Apple got you down?
According to a new study, the most affordable city in the country is barely a half day’s drive away — hours closer to home comforts than the current hotspots popular with fleeing New Yorkers.
Say hello — and maybe move to — Pittsburgh.
Currently boasting a median house price of $274,900, the mostly-former steel town remains comfortable with its blue collar roots, while also leaning into a uniquely quirky, artsy heritage — this is the birthplace of Andy Warhol and a training ground for a young Keith Haring, home of Fred “Mister” Rogers and the backdrop for the 1980s gauzy teen dream, “Flashdance.”
According to Pittsburgh Planner, a web site dedicated to helping prospective newcomers understand the city, some highlights of living in the home of Perry Como, Carnegie-Mellon University and the the chipped chopped ham sandwich include neighborhoods that are “walkable, dense, and dynamic,” resulting in a “big city that lives like a small town.”
The surprising nod to the country’s 25th largest consolidated metro area was published in the 2024 edition of the Demographia International Housing Affordability report.
Produced jointly by the Chapman University Center for Demographics and Policy and The Frontier Centre for Public Policy, the respected research paper assesses the accessibility to housing in 94 major metropolitan regions across eight wealthy countries — Australia, Canada, China, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, United Kingdom and the United States.
But while a visiting New Yorker might be astonished to see how far a couple of million dollars can take you housing-wise, Pittsburgh is far from immune from the housing affordability issues facing most other cities in the US, the report stated.
In fact, the study’s authors go so far as to classify Pittsburgh as “moderately unaffordable. “
The median listing home price is currently veering towards $300,000 at a rate of 4.9% year-over-year, according to Realtor.com.
The rise comes as the region, famous for pivoting from steel to education, healthcare and technology in the past, is in fact struggling to level up once again, according to Alan Berube, director of Brookings Metro at the Brookings Institution think tank.
Berube pointed out, by way of example, that the metro region ranks at rock bottom for overall job growth, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.
“The region’s top-flight research assets are not yet yielding top-flight job creation and inclusive growth,” he said. “The full promise of Pittsburgh’s next economy … remains unrealized.”
Meanwhile, at the opposite end of the list, Gotham ranked at a predictably pricey 77 out of a list of 94 cities, but still cheaper than other global heavyweights like London, Toronto and Sydney.
Five US cities cracked the top ten on the list of shame — San Jose, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and Honolulu.
The most unaffordable city in 2024, at number 94, was Hong Kong.
“The study has grave implications for the prospects of upward mobility. High housing prices, relative to incomes, are having a distinctly feudalizing impact on our home state of California, where the primary victims are young people, minorities, and immigrants, said Joel Kotkin, director of Chapman’s Center for Demographics and Policy.
