Housing Affordability
There is an interesting chart at Housing Tracker that includes a ratio of housing cost divided by average income. It’s fun to look down from the top seeing the variation in that ratio until you reach Barnstable Town, MA that has a ratio of 5.6 Now, I don’t have any idea where Barnstable Town is, but it’s distinctly more expensive than the previous communities in that chart. O.K., maybe it’s a really nice area.
Check out some other cities:
Honolulu, HI 8.7
Los Angeles, CA 10.4
New York, NY 8.4
Oakland, CA 8.7
San Diego, CA 8.9
Ask a Realtor in any of those areas, I’m sure they’ll tell you it’s a great time to buy. Ask an investor, I’m sure they’ll tell you they are looking either for very specific properties, or are going out of area. The ONLY way I’d buy in those areas at this time was if the property was hugely discounted in price, or the income produced by the property would be enough to cover it’s debt.
Certainly looks bubbly to me.
July 23rd, 2007 at 6:49 pm
Barnstable County is on Cape Cod, next doorish to the Kennedy compound in Hyannis. Overpriced? Well, I don’t know. Everyone in MA seems to want to live on the Cape. I don’t know why, since you can’t make a left hand turn across any road until after tourist season. There will probably always be suckers for the Cape, but I imagine the summer rental market will slow down.
July 24th, 2007 at 9:26 pm
Anon,
Thanks for clarifying the Barnstable county location. I’d suppose pretty much everyone is aware of Cape Cod, and I can understand why the perceived values are high.
With that said, I’ve pretty much always lived in close proximity to Left Coast beach communities/resorts. Traffic sucks in the summer, you just adapt to driving in when traffic isn’t bad, and making sure to get out before the outflow traffic begins.
When real estate cycles change, the high-ticket areas aren’t impervious. You’ll never find values going so low that they’ll be in the same realm as outlying “cheaper” areas, but prices will certainly take a clipping.
Waterfront will always be a draw, close to waterfront is still a good draw but somewhat more affordable. If you have the time and patience to wait for opportunity, it will likely come knocking in the next few years.