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Comment by tanjtanjtanj | Hacker News Reader

A $2650 mortgage in Bethlehem PA is a very, very big house. You can’t apply the average mortgage price to a place where you can get a 2000 sqft house for under $200K. Additionally Bethlehem PA is an above average area for PA when it comes to affluence.

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The median price per square foot in the US is $226[0]. The insanely economically depressed rust belt area where I was born has a median price over $150 per square foot (you do _not_ want to live there). I suspect your mental model of housing prices is anchored in the past when the world has moved on.

[0]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEDLISPRIPERSQUFEEUS

Okay, but we were not talking about the median house, we are talking about Bethlehem, PA. I got my data by going to Zillow and seeing that there are many 10s of houses near the 2K sqft mark that cost around $200k. You can do the same yourself.

Pennsylvania did not experience the same uplift in housing prices in 2020-2022 that much of the rest of the nation did as people are net leaving the state.

PA is actually one of the places least affected by inflation not just in the US but in the world.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEDLISPRIPERSQUFEE10900

The median home in the Bethlehem, PA core based statistical area costs $200 per square foot in October 2024. In October 2019, it cost $120 per square foot.

I'm sure you can find homes that list for half the cost per square foot just as well as someone could find homes that list for double the cost per square foot. That's why the median is useful – and it has increased 66% over the last five years.

Just fyi, I just used it for a location for a online calculator to grab tax for because PA is fairly middle of the road in taxes. If you want to do the math for Bethlehem PA specifically look up the average house sale price and the average income and take a look.

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