Deprecated: mb_convert_encoding(): Handling HTML entities via mbstring is deprecated; use htmlspecialchars, htmlentities, or mb_encode_numericentity/mb_decode_numericentity instead in /var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/super-cool-ad-inserter/inc/scaip-shortcode-inserter.php on line 37
Is the “housing crisis” finally over?
Hey, I’m just a guy who likes to talk about Pittsburgh neighborhoods (and make dumb jokes), so I’m probably not going to have the answer. However, if you’re mystified as to why Americans are so sour about an economy that’s pretty obviously booming — well, it’s not really gas prices or the cost of eggs or any of the other red herrings and shiny objects thrown about in the media. It’s the inability to find housing in places people want to live, for a price that they can afford.
However, it’s possible we may have turned a corner. Just anecdotally speaking, from looking at hundreds of houses in Pittsburgh over the past year, there are a lot of price cuts happening all over the city in recent months. It’s no longer a surprise.
Zillow has some numbers to back this up; 29.3% of Pittsburgh listings had price drops, making it one of the 30 cities with the largest share of price cuts. Pittsburgh has a lot of company:
“Nationally, 26% of listings had a price cut as of August 31, 2024, up 2.5 percentage points from a year earlier. In some metros, the share of sellers lowering their sales price is even larger: Denver leads the nation with price cuts, with nearly 36% of listings undergoing a price adjustment.”
Of course, don’t expect things to change a lot, or very fast. There aren’t a lot of easy policy levers that you can pull to fix this (though the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates helps). Too many people are invested in the status quo, including most existing homeowners, who usually want housing prices to go up as fast as possible. The trick is getting people to not want that — to accept less value, if it means others have a chance share in the wealth of homeownership. (A joke is supposed to go here, but I think I’ll just despair quietly for a while).
For sale: 1266 Leaside Dr., Lincoln Place. $169,900.
If you’re not a fan of symmetry, well this L-shaped 1924 home might be right for you, and it just dropped $5,000 in the past month. Of course, it’s probably that shape because it might fall off a ravine if it leaned another way. It has a porch big enough for a mini-golf hole or two, and the confidence that comes with knowing that you can probably paint a house white and not have it turned nicotine-stained-teeth-yellow by a bunch of steel mills nowadays.
For rent: 9-11 Jones St., Etna. $1,049/month.
Should we feature the “most haunted-looking homes of Pittsburgh” for Halloween? Because if this place doesn’t have at least an entry-level poltergeist, I’ll be disappointed. I’m going to imagine sitting on the porch in a scary rubber mask, completely still, until some unsuspecting youths decide to risk it all to take my candy. What, that doesn’t sound like fun? I thought everyone was at least goth-curious nowadays.
For sale: 2601 S. 18th St., South Side Slopes. $149,000.
Usually, when you climb a steep hill in Pittsburgh, the houses get cheaper the further up you go. It’s not clear why, but when there are incredible views pretty much everywhere, there’s no point in paying a premium. This home in the South Side Slopes would cost quite a bit more at a lower elevation (and has been cut by $10,000 recently). The house is painted an unusual shade of brown, which I’ll charitably describe as fudge-like. There’s a nice porch, with hanging baskets of flowers above, and a fairly low chance of hearing any of the drunken revelry on a typical South Side Saturday night.
For rent: 1134 Illinois Ave., Dormont. $825-850/month.
There used to be a species of suburb, the “streetcar suburb” — like Dormont and Mt. Lebanon — that had a mix of everything you needed, and a diverse array of housing types, from large single-family homes to sturdy brick apartments like these. And then we were like “Haha, nobody wants that! Let’s build 10,000 isolated, identical suburbs without sidewalks, where you need a car to cross the street.” Well, Dormont is one of the few remaining streetcar suburbs that actually has a functioning streetcar (OK, well, the “T.”)
For sale: 425 Parklow St., Knoxville. $135,000.
It’s fun when the outside of a house doesn’t match the inside. The exterior kind of gives off, shall we say, a babushka-like vibe, while the inside is modern, minimalist, and brighter white than most doctors’ offices in town. There must be a market for this, though I’m not it (I’m clearly a maximalist, or a perhaps a babushka). But, when everything looks this clean and new, it’s easy to imagine the place that you want filling in the blank space. And at that price, you can spend the saved money on whatever else you’d rather spend it on (for me, books and records).
For rent: Terminal 21, 615 1st Ave., Downtown. $1,254/month.
I was at the Grandview Ave. overlook on Mt. Washington with a friend once (one of the exceptions to the aforementioned cheaper-with-altitude rule), and he remarked, “Wow, those are some ugly condos there.” He was pointing at the jail. I said, “Yeah, but everybody else has to pay your rent.” Sure, it’s a little odd to put a jail on such prime real estate, but waterfront condos weren’t really a thing when it was built, and the river was mostly an industrial sewer. Terminal 21 is the closest housing to the jail, unless you count the Duquesne dorms (which look even worse than the jail). I think these were once dorms for the late Art Institute and were a nondescript warehouse before that. The upshot is that you’ll find some of the more reasonable Downtown rents in this forlorn corner, though some units go up above $2,000.
This article appears in Oct 23-29, 2024.
