Sometime in the far future, when some alien civilization is sifting through the irradiated rubble beneath a temple to a jealous red god named “Sheetz” to find clues as to what this lost civilization was like … well, let the record show that in September 2024, the Steelers were undefeated, the Pitt Panthers were undefeated, Sidney Crosby took a hometown discount to play again for the Pens, and the encroaching election was still more comedy than tragedy.
Which is to say, we’ve got to take the wins where we can find them, while we can. As any Pirates fan can tell you, you never know when 20 straight losing seasons are hiding just beyond the hills.
With that in mind, there’s a study by financial firm SmartAsset released this week — they decided to rank the top 40 markets in America based on where it’s easiest to pay off a home. If you’ve read this column more than once, you can probably guess the answer:
“Mortgages are easiest to pay off in Pittsburgh, PA. The median new homeowner in Pittsburgh has an income of $101,000, making it easiest to pay off the $1,377 monthly principal and interest. The mortgage works out to be 16.4% of the household’s gross income. This is based on a median property value of $265,000, with a 78.2 loan-to-value ratio and a 6.99% median interest rate.” At the bottom are all California metros: San Jose, San Francisco, L.A., San Diego.
(That income seems too high to me, but DINKs exist, and we do have a lot of older people who have had a longer time to accumulate raises.)
Here’s another data point — in a publication aimed at construction workers, there’s an estimate of how many hours a week a construction worker would need to work to afford a home. They found that the best place in the U.S. is Pittsburgh, which requires working 31 hours a week to afford a median-priced house (mortgage payment: $1,136). In San Jose/Silicon Valley, it would take 100 hours a week to buy a similar house.
Look, it’s hard to win votes from people by telling them, “It could always be worse.” But clearly, it can.
For sale: 3578 Brighton Rd., Brighton Heights. $299,900.
Someday Brighton Heights is going to let me down. But today is not that day. You can still get a well-made, historic (1910) brick home in Brighton Heights for less than $250K, and that’s not going to last forever. Big porches are the best, but sometimes a little porch is just right, and certainly better than no porch at all.
Don’t let anybody explain to you what kind of house you should want to live in; that’s nobody’s business but yours. I know a guy who just wants a garage to work on bikes, and some sort of living space above. You’d think that would be easy, since the average American home is designed around the car (not people). But it’s not! Our garage-centric homes come with a lot of extra rooms (and costs) and maybe you don’t need all that. This garage/living space is bare-bones, very old, and quite orange. For some, maybe that’s enough.
Yeah, this shade of green is maybe a bit beyond “key lime pie green” and into the realms of “ate Potato Patch Fries and went on all the spinning rides at Kennywood green.” But sub-$200K houses in quiet, thriving neighborhoods don’t exactly grow on trees around here these days. If you don’t require a garage, then it’s surprising how many good houses are out there, still.
For rent: 832 Evergreen Ave., Millvale. $895/month.
For rent less than $1,000 these days, you have to make some compromises. Like, I haven’t seen that shade of green carpet in maybe 20 years, and I’m afraid of having green-eyed apparitions haunt my dreams. But this is a lovely brick home that’s pretty close to the walkable part of Millvale, a neighborhood that features everything from great dive bars to record stores, to an actual French bakery.
For rent: 5406 Black St., Apt. 2, Garfield. $1,350/month.
How can there be no place to get lasagna in Garfield? Every time I pass this neighborhood, I remember the time I told my son that it was named after the cat (his favorite comic). Each time, there are fewer boarded-up storefronts on Penn Ave., and fewer empty homes. Unlike East Liberty and Lawrenceville, this has been a long, slow climb, which is a less-jarring amount of change than the skyrocketing rents in nearby East Liberty. This house is on a steep hill, but that’s something you get used to quick.
For rent: Baum Boulevard Flats, 5722-572 Baum Blvd., Shadyside. $1,199-$1,350.
This isn’t the cutesy, boutique-y part of Shadyside; Baum Boulevard is the honking cars/ambulance sirens section. But you can walk to the other part and get pretty much anything you need, and the rent isn’t bad. The Baum Boulevard Flats is also a weird hue of orange, so it’s easy for your friends and family to find.
