Comment by galdosdi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by galdosdi | Hacker News Reader

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I'm surprised to hear this, I would never think to lump Pittsburgh in with big metros. Are you being picky or something? Do you have kids and thus school district is a major consideration? Do you have a specific neighborhood you want?

Really, Pittsburgh of all places? I know a quick search from someone from out of town is kind of shaky and there's a lot of local knowledge you have, but are houses like https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/4411-Gladstone-St-Pittsbu... at $170k or https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1404-Marlboro-Ave-Pittsbu... at $154k or https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/107-Lilac-Ave-Pittsburgh-... at $160k not good enough for you or something? Zillow shows hundreds and hundreds of decent looking houses under $200k within Pittsburgh city limits.

These are incredibly affordable even on a 5 figure household income. You are very lucky to live in a place with such a reasonable CoL. I've known people to move there from eastern PA for the sake of that.

If I'm missing something, I'd love to hear it, but I'm pretty sure what I'm gonna hear is that you're filtering out a lot of the affordable stuff due to some interesting self imposed restrictions.

Many rust belt cities are de facto segregated by class and race. I’m not familiar with Pittsburgh specifically but just glancing at those listings I suspect they may be in “the ghetto”.

I don't understand what this means. As in white people aren't allowed to live there? What's the problem with buying these houses?

As a white man living on a very black block in Philadelphia, it's extremely difficult for me to relate or sympathize. People move from here to Pittsburgh because of Pittsburgh's famously low housing costs.

Sucks to suck I guess.

PS: Regarding safety, I went back and looked at street view for all three properties. All three appeared to be surrounded by well-kept yards and houses, cars in decent condition, etc, which is a very good barometer for safety and basic neighborhood quality. These are nice suburban houses.

Just for clarification, I haven't marked off houses because I'm worried about "the ghetto". The third choice has come up in my searches a lot, it just requires quite a lot of work. West View is quite nice nowadays and plenty of areas in Pittsburgh are lively and safe, I'd say there's only a few exceptions.

None of those are in Pittsburgh proper. Sure their addresses say Pittsburgh, but they’re all outside of the city. As someone who’s also in tahn and has been watching the market, if you want off-street parking and more than one bathroom in a decent neighborhood in the city proper, you better have $450k all-cash within hours.

edit - okay I admit I got Greenfield and Green Tree mixed up, but my point stands for the other two. :)

That’s about the price range I’ve been looking but it’s been in the north hills - The third house you have listed there has come up many times.

It’s not so much being affordable (I’ve gotten approved for just under $300k on paper, but prefer to limit it to below $230k) it’s just the housing supply is bought up extremely quickly. Anything still on the market for a couple weeks is going to have a bad roof, water damage, no central air, etc.

Sounds like you're pretty close to getting to where you need to be then. Buy something with minor (not foundation issues or something) work needed then do it. Even better if none of the work is urgent, so you can spread it out.

For example, central air is obviously a luxury. I don't even have it, so it's hard to take that as a serious issue. You can get around to installing it some day.

And you probably already know to make sure to search first for houses posted today, to try to do that every day, to immediately call for an appointment the same day, and work with an agent who understands the need for urgency, and to put in an offer same day if you like it.

If you take it as seriously as a job hunt, in such a gentle market as Pittsburgh, you're bound to be happy as a clam pretty soon. I envy your position.

I'm scheduled to look at three tomorrow actually :)

I'm working with a realtor and the realtor's platform sends me emails immediately anything is posted within my search criteria and she is very very responsive.

Just to reiterate, it's not so much I don't find houses it's just they go so fast and seemingly quite a bit above asking. To that point the house I submitted an offer on in 24hr and was sold had 10 offers in that time. There's a lot of competition for the low supply.

Houses I'm looking at tomorrow: 1075 Warrendale Bayne, Wexford; 205 E Railroad St Mars; 221 Bernice St., Pittsburgh

Best of luck!

My offer was accepted on one :)

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