A Funny Thing Has Happened: No One Wants To Leave the City

Twenty years ago, you couldn’t get people to live in America’s major cities. The American Dream had become that you got a decent job and then you bought the suburban house.

Not a City house.

A Suburban house.

There was an entire generation who believed that the city was big and bad and there was no reason to go there, except for an occasional sporting event.

But the housing boom has transformed our urban centers. Old loft buildings now have people living in them. Neighborhoods that were once considered slums have been gentrified. So-so neighborhoods now sport million dollar mansions.

I’m not going to comment on whether this is good or bad- I’m just saying these things have happened.

Take Chicago, for instance.

Prices have risen so fast over the past eight years that it is now nearly impossible to buy even just a regular Chicago bungalow for under $300,000 on the North Side of the city.

There isn’t that much to many of these bungalows. They were built between 1905-1940 as working class homes. Some are bigger than others however (the largest bungalows have five bedrooms) but they’re no “McMansion” as we know them today. Here are some pictures from The Ridge Historical Society:

Is $300,000 or $400,000 “affordable” for most new homeowners? Of course not.

Yet, that’s the price of admission to owning a single family home on the North Side.

On the South Side, in some areas, it’s cheaper. But not like it used to be. Even rowhomes in Historic Pullman on the far south side of the city are now priced at $150,000 and up.

Instead, a strange phenomena is occuring.

It’s now cheaper to buy a house in the suburban belt that winds its way around Chicago’s borders than in Chicago itself. I’m talking about the “close-in” suburbs such as Oak Park, Berwyn, Evanston, Riverside, Elmhurst etc.

You can get a bungalow in Oak Park for $310,000. Yep- you heard it here. It might not be in the greatest Oak Park location and not the most up to date- but you can still get one.

There are also quite a few foreclosures in these towns that now allow homebuyers to get something even cheaper.

What’s going on here?

These suburbs have better schools than the City. And in some cases, a better commute (try commuting from Avondale or Jefferson Park to the Loop versus Oak Park to the Loop sometime. It’s at least an hour shorter from Oak Park.)

Yes, young couples and families are choosing the city over the suburbs, schools be d*mned.

I heard this recently from several of my friends with small children. They have lived in the city since college. Buying a single family home is looming now that they have a toddler. But they keep saying, “but I’m a city person.”

They are looking for a townhouse in the city instead.

For $599,000.

You can get a pretty darn nice single family home in the close-in suburbs for that price.

It’s an interesting change and one, if it keeps going, could mean a gentrification of the city and the reverse happening in the suburbs.

Could US cities become like Paris? That’s where the wealthy live in the city center but the poor on the outskirts and the suburbs.

Christopher Leinberger wrote an excellent article on this for the Atlantic Monthly called, “The Next Slum?”

For 60 years, Americans have pushed steadily into the suburbs, transforming the landscape and (until recently) leaving cities behind. But today the pendulum is swinging back toward urban living, and there are many reasons to believe this swing will continue. As it does, many low-density suburbs and McMansion subdivisions, including some that are lovely and affluent today, may become what inner cities became in the 1960s and ’70s—slums characterized by poverty, crime, and decay.

Look around at what is happening in America’s cities. I’m sure you’ve said, “houses are going for $500,000 in Queens? That’s crazy” or “$700,000 for a house in the Bayview (in San Francisco), people are smoking crack.”

Or maybe they’re not.

The change is already happening. Look around you.