When was Manhattan or San Francisco last affordable?

[elmwood]

Was there ever a time when someone making a middle class-level income could afford to rent a nice apartment in Manhattan, or even buy a condo or co-op. I’m wondering the same thing about other pricey cities in the US too; for instance, when was the last time a middle-class family could buy a decent house, equivalent to what a middle-class family in someplace like Indianapolis or Houston could buy, in a good neighborhood in San Francisco, Boston or the DC area?

[dolphinboy]

It depends how you define affordable I suppose. In San Francisco there are parts of the city that by comparison some might consider “affordable”. You might not want to live in Hunter’s Point or Bayview but someone can buy housing there for much less than most other parts of the city.

Excluding those two particular neighborhoods, the Outer Mission, SOMA and Sunset districts, among others, provide some housing in the $600-800K range, which an upper middle-class, two-income family might be able to afford (at least before interest rates went up). The trick is usually getting the down payment together…

Since you can get much more for your money in the East or South Bay I think most true “middle-class” folks choose to live outside the city and commute.

[Trunk]

I can’t directly answer that, but for a more general take on it, you could check out this article.

It was in the NYT yesterday, and the gist of it is that in most parts of the country, people can buy a house today for a smaller portion of their income than they could 20 years ago.

First couple paragraphs. . .

@NYT

Despite a widespread sense that real estate has never been more expensive, families in the vast majority of the country can still buy a house for a smaller share of their income than they could have a generation ago.

A sharp fall in mortgage rates since the early 1980’s, a decline in mortgage fees and a rise in incomes have more than made up for rising house prices in almost every place outside of New York, Washington, Miami and along the coast in California.

He also says the following, but really to answer your question, you’re going to need to do some research on par with what they did for this article.

In high-profile places like New York and Los Angeles, home to many of the people who study and write about real estate, families buying their first home often must spend more than half of their income on mortgage payments, far more than they once did. But the places that have become less affordable over the last generation account for only a quarter of the country’s population.

[AHunter3]

It also depends on what you consider to be the defining characteristic for “nice apartment”. If you could be comfortable living in the vicinity of City College / 140 Street @ Amsterdam Ave in the Hamilton Heights section of Harlem, you can land a decently large two-br apartment for just uphill of $1000/mo.

With sufficient time devoted to Craig’s List and the freedom to wait until the perfect opportunity comes along, you can improve on both the neighborhood and the price.

[Crandolph]

Just a comment on the NYT article: that doesn’t hold water here at all, and I don’t live in one of the places listed as exceptions to the rule. Housing prices doubled, tripled and more in what used to be working class neighborhoods in the last 5-10 years, and just as I started earning a grown-up salary I can no longer afford a house where I grew up and wish to stay. :mad: A lot of that is speculation, some of it are suburbanites who fled coming back because they think urban living is cool again.

[elmwood]

@AHunter3

It also depends on what you consider to be the defining characteristic for “nice apartment”. If you could be comfortable living in the vicinity of City College / 140 Street @ Amsterdam Ave in the Hamilton Heights section of Harlem, you can land a decently large two-br apartment for just uphill of $1000/mo.

That might be now --and it sounds quite nice – but I’m wondering if there ever was a time when … oh, someone with a run-of-the-mill mid-level professional position, like a teacher with a decade of experience, a civil engineer, or a city bureaucrat, could have afforded a place in midtown Manhattan or a nice SF neighborhood. Where these areas always the domains of the rich, or were they ever just “normal?”

[crazyjoe]

@elmwood

That might be now --and it sounds quite nice – but I’m wondering if there ever was a time when … oh, someone with a run-of-the-mill mid-level professional position, like a teacher with a decade of experience, a civil engineer, or a city bureaucrat, could have afforded a place in midtown Manhattan or a nice SF neighborhood. Where these areas always the domains of the rich, or were they ever just “normal?”

Well, if you were one of the first people off the boat, you might have been able to get the whole island of Manhattan for a few dollars worth of costume jewelry. Or so I’ve heard.

[Harriet_the_Spry]

On the tangent about the NY Times article, it struck me that they made no mention of the increased number of 2-earner families. When they talk income, they seem to be talking household income. From this site http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0104673.html it looks like the % of women in the labor force increased about 8 percentage points from 1980 to 2004. Presumably, this was supplemented by increased earnings for women also as they worked more hours or moved into higher-paying occupations. So it seems a little disingenuous to say that housing is just as affordable, if more people now need 2 earners to pay for it.

[Maeglin]

@elmwood

That might be now --and it sounds quite nice – but I’m wondering if there ever was a time when … oh, someone with a run-of-the-mill mid-level professional position, like a teacher with a decade of experience, a civil engineer, or a city bureaucrat, could have afforded a place in midtown Manhattan or a nice SF neighborhood. Where these areas always the domains of the rich, or were they ever just “normal?”

In some areas of midtown, it was easy for mid-level professionals to afford to rent or buy. Park Avenue has been a preserve of the wealthy for a long time, but Hell’s Kitchen in the 40s and 50s and 10th Ave has become fashionable only in the last eight or ten years.

[jimmmy]

@elmwood

when was the last time a middle-class family could buy a decent house, equivalent to what a middle-class family in someplace like Indianapolis or Houston could buy, in a good neighborhood in San Francisco, Boston or the DC area?

DC Area - my friends and I discuss this all the time.
2 points:

A. “Nice middle class neighborhoods” are springing up all the time farther and farther away from the Beltway. What is considered the “DC Area” is expanding as well. A middle class nice neighborhood is still available to a “traditional 1950’s family” where only the Dad works a middle class job and the Mom stays home with the kids (or vice versa) – but you are going to need to live ~1hr away from DC itself. These are places that were farmland 5-10-15 years ago.[Many, many more jobs are in the DC suburbs now tho and not in DC proper - which is a change as well.]
B. Our Dad’s (usually not being sexist) on a GS-12-13 Government Salary ($40-50K range in 2006 dollars) could buy a single family home in NW Washington or Bethesda or nice NoVa and our Moms not work – and our much discussed answer to answer the OP in the spirit given this was definitely no longer true by the mid-90’s (there was a housing slump 89-91 in much of Greater DC so “except” around the edges here) but I would say 1987ish was the last time that it was true in what 1968-1985 was considered the traditional “nice” middle class areas of greater DC for a single middle class family home (see A. above).

C. If you define Middle Class now meaning both parents work full-time, which anecdotally seems to be more and more the case, many more areas are available.

[Rick]

@elmwood

That might be now --and it sounds quite nice – but I’m wondering if there ever was a time when … oh, someone with a run-of-the-mill mid-level professional position, like a teacher with a decade of experience, a civil engineer, or a city bureaucrat, could have afforded a place in midtown Manhattan or a nice SF neighborhood. Where these areas always the domains of the rich, or were they ever just “normal?”

I worked with a guy that in 1967 bought a house in the city of San Francisco. IIRC he paid about $20,000 for it. He and his wife were both new teachers at the time, and he had doubts of being able to pay for it. The house got a complete remodel after the '89 quake and is now worth somewhere north of $1,000,000. :eek:

[Kyla]

My ordinary, middle-class two income family lived in San Francisco until 1986. Our building was sold, and the new owner decided he wanted to live in our apartment. My parents spent a lot of time looking before deciding to leave the city for the suburbs (they made an offer on a house that was initially accepted, but ultimately the sellers decided not to sell after all), because one could get so much more room for the money. BUT I also know several other ordinary, middle-class two income families that moved and bought houses in the city around the same time and no one thought it too remarkable. Now, it would be - couple years ago I saw an appraisal (I work in mortgages) for a house just a couple blocks from where I grew up, valued at $850,000.

Of course, now my parents’ little suburban house is worth $700,000. It’s pretty difficult for someone anywhere in the Bay Area to buy a house. It’s just a little tougher in the city. There are lots of stories of people moving to the Central Valley and commuting four hours a day because there’s nothing affordable in the Bay Area.