USA Today:
Ithaca, a small city in Upstate New York, seems like a bucolic refuge from financial woes. It avoided the housing bubble, and so far, it has been sheltered from much of the economic crisis.
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This report on communities and cities withstanding the negative economic pressures felt by major metro areas around the country left out Pittsburgh, PA. Housing continues to remain affordable. It is a great place to live. More mild temperatures than ever, and central to the East and Midwest. And home to the blog shown here:
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Most of Upstate New York from Albany west is like that. We didn't participate in the housing bubble, so we aren't in as bad of shape as the ones who discovered their $130,000 cookie-cutter house was worth nearly a million dollars and celebrated by getting a really big HELOC.
Like Long Island. Our cookie-cutter homes are still going for $300,000 median. I'm wondering when, or if our bubble, will burst, as it should -- and needs to. We are one area that does not need to have home prices propped up by the Feds. They need to drop. I have two of these cookie cutters in my neighborhood that have now been on the market for about a year and a half and they both started at $389,000 and they have dropped down to $369,000. The only one that sold in this neighborhood recently started at $369,000, stayed at that price for close to two years, dropped down to $269,000 in January and sold a month later for $250,000.
I suspect the low real estate prices are caused by very high property taxes in most of New York State. I was told a few years ago that a $500,000 home in Ithica came with a $15,000 annual property tax bill. Is this true? New York City is the exception, but it has a city income tax to make up for its relatively low property tax rate.
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| 05/ 5/09 09:08 AM