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Comment by electricslpnsld | Hacker News Reader

> Housing is extremely affordable.

Is there data for this? I spent a good chunk of my life in a mid-sized college town in the south, and last I checked the average home values there are eclipsing $400K.

Just some data points, pulling median home values in some college towns across the US off the top of my head:

Davis, CA: $641,500

Charlottesville, VA: $412,700

Chapel Hill, NC: $449,980

State College, PA: $316,600

Williamsburg, VA: $303,400

Berkeley, CA: $1,281,900

Wellesley, MA: $1,267,600

Davidson, NC: $360,000

Ann Arbor, MI: $360,300

Some of these aren't too bad, but I don't think they fall into the category of extremely affordable. Professors and doctors and all the folks associated with Colleges and Universities make enough money to drive up home prices!

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Among all the middle sized cities you could choose, you included Berkeley? One of the most expensive cities in the whole US. Since Berkeley is a college town, most people (i.e. students) are ok living in very, very shitty conditions. When I lived in Berkeley as a student my rent was something like $700 plus utilities and I was sharing a tiny house with 5 other people and my room was a triple. Living comfortably (i.e. single with acceptable personal space) costs you >$1300. I'm living in Boston currently and my rent is $900 for a large single. Am I crazy to guess that Berkeley housing market is even more expensive than Boston? There are definitely better places to live in US than Berkeley, ime most people who live there are either students or engineers working in the Valley making 6 figures. So imho GP comment can still be right if you exclude edge cases.

Amusing, in Burlington VT the housing costs have risen to the point where professors can't afford to live in Burlington, it's all the student money that drives things up, this is due in a large part to the fact that most students only dorm 2 years of their degree and senior year housing isn't actually guaranteed by the university, it's a lottery of whatever units are left over after allocating the more junior years.

Boston actually has a similar issue with students inflating housing, but it's diffused over a much larger population so it's less directly impactful. I think a large part of this is that since, as a parent, you're mortgaging your house to send your child to university anyways a few extra thousand for a nice apartment for them isn't too bad.

About half (the expensive ones) of those listed are suburbs or exurbs of major cities, not really what the article is talking about, and they are all pretty large.

It’s probably fair to say that university towns see prices go up relative to their surrounding towns, but fundamentally almost any piece of real estate in rural Kansas is cheaper than coastal California.

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