

Here’s How Much Real Estate $1 Million Buys You in Every Major U.S. City - shravan
http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2014/03/17/real_estate_market_how_much_does_1_million_buy_you_in_every_major_u_s_city.html

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rayiner
This is dumb, because its in large part a measure of where city boundaries are
drawn, as demonstrated by the New York example. The equivalent of SF isn't
NYC, it's Manhattan. The city boundaries are just drawn such that NYC includes
Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, and SF excludes the corresponding places in
the Bay area (Oakland, etc). Looking at a city-wide average doesn't tell you
much.

DC also seems off, again because of the boundaries. The average excludes
places in Arlington and Maryland that are spatially and in terms of density
part of the city. The fact that Arlington is part of Virginia is a historical
accident (was part of DC, taken back during Civil War). It doesn't reflect any
real property of the city. Many places in Arlington are much quicker on the
Metro to downtown than many places in DC.

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bane
I remember when we bought our current house in 2007. It was the top of the
market and for fun we looked at what we could buy in different parts of the
country for the same money.

In NYC we found a listing for an empty lot. It was pretty bad looking. I think
you might have been able to fit two compact cars side by side on it.

SF wasn't much better, but at least had a dwelling of some kind on it.

Detroid was...well you could have bought a street full of condemned houses.

So we decided to look outside of cities and came across a listing in Arkansas.
At first we didn't understand it because it was just an aerial photo of some
greenery and some houses. Finally we realized, that _was_ the listing, it was
150 acres with 5 buildings, one of them was a 2700 sq ft home, there were two
guest homes and a 5 car garage and some other kind of large barn structure.
The listing assured the potential buyer that the property was zoned in such a
way it could be subdivided into lots "as small as 5 acres".

The only way they could get a photo of it all was from the air.

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camillomiller
If anyone's wondering, I did the math with Rome to add some international
perspective. It sits right between SF and Boston: 1915 sq. feet.

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shravan
No surprise that SF is the most expensive.

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Terretta
It's not, Manhattan is.

