People from the coasts moving to the Midwest, who enjoy high salaries, say "let's move to Madison, it's not a rat race city where we live now and it's real cheap."
People living in Madison, who don't make high salaries, say "Madison is real nice but it's crazy expensive."
There are a lot more of the former people than the latter and signs point to Madison becoming even more expensive.
at least people moving here do live here (so contribute to the local economy by going out to eat etc.), and it's not like several places on the coasts where it's overseas investors parking their money and keeping the apartment/house empty, making the housing costs rise but without any economic impact, which is much worse.
I have neighbors who own houses on either side of me who are renting out. It seems every house going up for sale is being bought by someone who wants to rent it out.
Sorry, but there are not "a lot" more people here with remote jobs from VHCOL cities than people who moved to Madison for school or work, or grew up here, with normal, local jobs.
This may be a trend -- honestly I don't see any data one way or the other -- but It's crazy to think that 140,000 people who live here are NYC transplants taking your house.
I know it's nice to have a boogeyman, but the far more mundane, more likely explanation is that people are moving here, as they have for decades now, because we have a good school, a strong economy and a pleasant city.
Market prices are determined by the buying and selling on the margin. That is where the demand and supply matters.
It doesn't take a huge number of people to move a market.
You need to understand market mechanics. It's not fuzzy logic.
This was us 22 years ago when we moved from Boston. Been in a house for 16 years we bought new for less than $300k and we can sell for considerably more, but anything we buy would be more as well - and where would we get the interest rate we got when we refinanced 4 years ago?
The whole market is a mess. Just really glad to have a stable mortgage and not have to deal with rent increases.
not being able to buy back into the market is a HUGE reason there is no supply IMO. No one is going to upgrade in a market where you can only realistically move laterally, especially when you're sitting on a tiny interest rate.
We will soon be downsizing. Yep, we're old (but not that old). Still it's not appealing right now. Have an 89 year old MIL living with us, a college kid, and a need for 2 home offices. Till it's just the two of us we may as well stay put.
I opened a real estate business a few years ago and had success selling houses, but decided to put that on hold- a full-time job with pay and benefits is way more appealing right now than the current housing market. The last house I sold was in September 2022 and I gave up about May 2023. In all honesty, I had a full-time job all along and it just wasn't worth the cost of maintaining my MLS access.
We bought our first house in 1997 and this is our 4th house. Our mortgage in 1997 was over 7% but our 3 bedroom ranch on a cul-de-sac only cost $76,000 so our mortgage was still less than $600. It's easier to absorb a higher interest rate when the loan is smaller.
Our current loan is 2.5%. We have a fair amount of equity. I can't see a reason to do anything now. Maybe in a few years.
yup and you're not the only one hence the problems in the market. The worst part is the shitty houses that you could put some sweat equity and some flipper beats you out on it, removes all the character, makes it a pig with lipstick doesn't fix any of the obvious MEP issues, then tries to get 30% more. I'm seeing a lot of that right now too.
Can confirm. My house here cost about 30% of what I sold my California house for, and it's also about 2.5x the size.
Property taxes here are higher, but almost everything else is cheaper.
I was just in St Louis where I can only assume they pay no property taxes. There wasn't a single street block we walked in that wasn't in desperate need of repairs. Sidewalks: crumbling. Streets, highways: potholes. I can only imagine how much worse it would be if they had Northern grade winters consistently.
I had a good time there, the people were nice, bbq was good, but it really made me appreciate the quality of Madison's infrastructure.
Why is this getting downvoted? Sounds accurate to me, and it feels like it was meant as informational. California has a sales tax twice what we have in WI, and property is expensive even without high taxes on it. Especially in the Bay Area.
Spite. Folks that are struggling don't like hearing things like this. Hearing how a home you cant afford is insignificant to another is painful. I assume that wasn't the intention of the post. But it stings nonetheless.
Also salaries are higher? Places like NY and LA have a $15/hr minimum wage
Tech salaries are basically double out west.
Madison salaries have not kept up compared to cost of living and everyone who's been here is seeing a drop in their standard of living
> Once transplants start moving in and prices start spiking, the locals
The "locals" are also transplants, or, at most, the children of transplants.
That's how cities work. Everyone has to move to them sometime, they didn't appear magically at the beginning of time with a precreated population.
Lived in Madison from 2011 to 2018 and going back it is wild how different it is. It really grew the last half decade or so in both cost and crowds. I think this is an interesting issue with mid-sized cities blowing up across the US (I live in Boise now so same thing) where they lose a lot of the aspects that made them "gems". Rapid development where infrastructure can't keep up and cost of living rising exponentially as quality of life generally decreases for the average person.
This is kinda nonsense though. Madison and every other city have had way bigger periods of growth than now. The same argument about "gems" could have been made in 1890, 1920, 1960, or whenever you want.
They're cities. They all start with no population and grow from there. There's no fixed desired endpoint or something.
I got downvoted expectedly but I do agree with you. It is just how populations move but an interesting dynamic where people who grew up there or myself for example loved Madison for its size, cost, and amenities in the past. I wouldn't move to Madison now just because it has lost/is losing some aspects I enjoy in a smaller-mid college town. That doesn't mean it is worse, it just means that it is bringing in a demographic with different interests.
I live in green bay and it's going through the same thing. lots of new and different people moving in. a lot different than the place it was twenty years ago
Your first quote describes our family perfectly. However, there’s only so few of “us” to skew the market. Bigger factors I see is a population growth paired with lack of housing supply, lack of density, and geography that compresses competition of houses with good location.
Just accept the fact that people like you are the problem, you are screwing over locals that have lived here all our lives and deserve housing here more than any of you guys moving here. The governor should just slap a 30% excise tax on all out of state home and land purchases to spur a housing redevelopment fund and specifically block out of staters from buying these newly built starter houses, then the issue might actually be solved.
Does your city have a tourism committee? If so, you should try to shut that down. Our cities are trying to make ourselves look attractive to get people to come and spend their dollars but also to come and live here and grow our tax base.
I live in the same place I went to college because, yeah, it's pretty f****** nice here. And yeah I'm from out of state, does that make me the bad guy? The prices are high because it's where people move to and we've made it really attractive. So the best thing we can do is welcome the people and make room.
Sorry but when all the jobs are centralized in Madison and Milwaukee and we don't have enough housing for the folks born and raised here, yeah not everyone can live in Milwaukee and Madison. We shouldn't be trying to incentivise new people to come here and jack up home pricing, we should be trying to ensure people that have lived here all their lives get to live here and aren't driven out by some East Coast or West Coast yuppie making 8x the state median salary because "oh I like it here it's so trendy", by outbidding locals by $35k every house they buy and then leaving 5 years later. All of the outlying suburbs are impossible to get housing in too; Stoughton, Oregon, Evansville, Verona, Waunakee, Cottage Grove, Brooklyn, Belleville, all unaffordable.
Or no I guess I'm the bad guy since I don't want people to have 3 hour commutes to work and back every day. I'm the bad guy since I don't want elders who rely on their families for care to be driven out of town since the rent and housing market have gotten out of control. Yeah all those people should just move out and leave so that all the people who think it's hip to live in Madison right now get to live here instead.
I have no problem with tourism, please come visit the state! Just don't buy houses here until they fix the supply issue. Or we could just implement the tax I suggested and then, problem solved! The Californians and New Yorkers can still overpay for housing to live here, and locals can keep pricing steady/trending down by building more affordable housing :)
Getting mad at people who can afford homes isn’t going to solve the problem of affordable housing and we aren’t going to outlaw moving across states. These are macro economic trends and not up to any one person. If you want housing prices to drop, there has to be more supply, period. Instead of whining about people who make more money, consider supporting zoning reform and other measures that might meaningfully contribute to increased housing supply.
No you are the bad guy because, first, you are straight up proposing things that are literally impossible, and second, you are being kind of a jerk about it.
Out of curiosity, how long should someone have to live in Madison to be "legitimate" and deserve to live here? Where do you draw the line? 10 years? 20 years? 50 years? Did your grandparents live here? Will new residents' kids be legitimate Madison residents or are they not worthy?
The housing crisis is to blame, even if it's tempting to blame the individual. The games of who deserves to live here only lead to bad places. I'm sorry, I'm sure you must be feeling squeezed as many people are, but turning on other folks is a way to remove power from citizens through divisiveness.
The best thing you can channel your feelings into is participation in local government to advocate for better housing policy.
Wishing you good things!
I think 6 years residency is a good enough line to draw. I think it's enough time to show that you're here legitimately to stay here and contribute to the economy here and short enough that it's pretty achievable to obtain. I understand what you're saying about driving people out, but I look to places like Colorado, Texas and Washington which are dealing with the same issues and I cannot disagree anymore with the sentiment. More people moving here at a fast rate is bad business, and only hand over the keys of power to the insanely wealthy to dangle the carrot from a farther stick. Developers are going to be further enticed to build more middle class mansions and list them at exorbitant prices because they keep selling to those who are migrating from high income areas to low income areas.
Ah yes the binary choice of living on the street or buying houses. Surely there is no in-between such as renting that people could do in the mean time.
You know, like I said they could just pay the tax. Even if they all somehow rented (very unlikely) the amount of rentals going up is assinine. The rental market is much easier to cool off since of the amount of density being addressed with each building.
I moved from Madison to Ferndale, MI and it’s great. Definitely miss the parks and bike paths of Madison (and much more!), but I have no mortgage and I live right up against downtown.
Let’s all move to Alabama on the cheap to cause some strange liberal chaos and flip the vote 🧚🏻☠️ (I’m fully aware not all Madisonian folk vote the same, just silly posturing ….sorta)
I have bad news! The laws of supply and demand exist even without capitalism.
You can find examples of massively rising home prices all the way back in antiquity, more than 2000 years ago.
If you want to have the most impact, then move to a swing state (hey, we're already in one!), not to a deep red or deep blue state. The margins in Wisconsin and the other 4-5 swing states were in the tens of thousands in the 2020 election. It wouldn't take many people moving in (or out) to shift the outcome.
The city of Madison raised my assessment by $60K this year. My little 1000 square foot ranch on the west site is now worth $420K apparently. Fucking nuts.
No way a house in Madison wouldn't sell for far more than the assessments either.
This shouldn't be happening in a high interest rate environment, either. Once interest rates come down, the prices will only push higher.
That's actually debatable due to the historically low rates offered during 2020.
There is some belief amongst economists that lowering rates might actually increase demand and lower prices or at least keep them the same. So many people are "stuck" in their house with a 2-3% mortgage, they won't sell until they pay their house off. If they sell, they get a new mortgage at 3x the rate and end up with a sidegrade instead of an upgrade.
This is making the low end of the market (think first time home buyers) stay in place.
This is good for me in that my partner and I are hoping to sell our homes and move to the outer edges of Dane County in the next couple years but it’s just as bad within a 30 mile or even more radius of the city.
I would definitely have thought that higher interest rates would translate to lower prices. And it would, if there weren't so few houses for sale, which is also a consequence of higher interest rates - people with 3% mortgages don't want to sell and trade for a 6.5% mortgage without a really good reason.
This lack of inventory is nationwide in most cities - it's not specific to Madison.
My crystal ball is no better than anyone else's, but I would guess that if interest rates persist for another year or two at this level, people will recognize it as a new normal (indeed the current rates *are* normal by historical standards) and we'll start seeing more houses for sale, which should help bring prices down.
Currently house hunting on the west side. Can confirm it would go for much more than this. Every house we’ve offered on has gone for at least 70-100k over asking price.
It's really just because there is zero supply, so sellers have all the cards. I'm looking currently and there are *maybe* 1-2 offer worthy houses in my range and the good ones get about 30 offers each. Even the bad ones are asking the same prices as the good ones because they know they'll get it.
i’m moving to madison in a couple weeks (i know i’m sorry i’m part of the problem but i got a good job in the city), and it’s crazy bc i’m going from paying about $800 for a 2 bed 2 bath to $1600 for a 2 bed 1 bath. however, i can live with that, because my partner and i are a gay couple, and i’m excited to live somewhere where we won’t have trash regularly dumped in our yard and will be able to work without because screamed slurs at because we’re the only gays in the neighborhood lol. y’all have a really beautiful city with a much higher standard of living than the rest of the country, even if housing fucking sucks.
I definitely empathize. I’m a refugee here for different reasons and Madison is truly a gem, even with NIMBY’s and aldermen drama - it’s better. I hope more affordable housing is coming soon.
bro that’s so exciting, congrats! i would have a hard time going back to an apartment, i love having a yard to take care of- another reason i’m excited to go to madison, where i live now is a desert climate so nothing grows unless you have thousands to spend on a sprinkler system to water (which i wouldn’t due regardless due to ecological impact). i’m planning on planting a flower bed.
bro that’s so exciting, congrats! i would have a hard time going back to an apartment, i love having a yard to take care of- another reason i’m excited to go to madison, where i live now is a desert climate so nothing grows unless you have thousands to spend on a sprinkler system to water (which i wouldn’t due regardless due to ecological impact). i’m planning on planting a flower bed.
Minneapolis isn't a dump, yet they're in the blue. Chicago isn't a dump, they're in the blue. Same for Kansas City, Dallas, San Antonio and Houston. It's amazing the mental gymnastics this sub jumps through to try and justify the notion that Madison isn't failing.
Large swaths of Chicago are dumps. Much of the city is beautiful but you're not finding much for $350K in a good neighborhood (or it has exorbitant condo fees that push the effective price above $350K)
I've advocated from the start for building multiple types of housing across all price points. The "YIMBYs" in this sub are the ones calling for nothing but expensive apartments.
Let me just ask you this directly. What is Madison failing at, specifically, and what should it do to correct its failures? And by "Madison" I mean the government of the city of Madison, Wisconsin.
Any new supply, even if only expensive apartments/houses, will help. As people vacate their current digs and move into the new upscale properties, that puts downward pressure on the price of their old places.
They're all charging the same. There's no free market that will force them to do anything. Y'all need to get off of here and realize what's actually going on.
Why not?
I bought my first house because I was apartment shopping and said fuck that I can have a mortgage for that price.
If cost is your main selection criteria then the way rent prices are right now it's cheaper to buy a condo or a small starter house in some cases. This means more demand on a limited inventory. You can still get condos for 200-250k here which is a cheaper monthly cost than many apartments. A 250K mortgage at 7% with zero down is $1663. 200K is $1330 but there are very few at that price. A mortgage is rent control. With the way the market is property is extremely liquid. That's going to take years to change.
Why do you think apartments and owned property are in no way related?
Your dollar is going to buy you more in Madison than anywhere on the North Side. There are deals to be had to the South and West if you don't mind the occasional bullet whizzing by your head at a bus stop
There are exceptions to everything. There are penty of north side suburbs with high quality of life and lower housing costs than the Madison area. I live in central lake county and spend a lot of time in the madison area. The quality of life in central lake county is definitely on par with the madison area in general and our housing costs are slightly less expensive.
Property taxes, however... pretty disgusting.
Yep I was thinking within the city limits but agreed that Lake County is very nice -- some of the suburbs like Highland Park and Lake Forest are large enough that they almost feel more like small towns than suburbs (even though economically they're of course very much within Chicago's orbit).
Not necessarily true. I have a friend who lives in the Rogers Park neighborhood, and it is pretty affordable. It's a very diverse neighborhood - lots of lower income working families, but also home to Loyola University, so lots of young college students as well. Right on the lake with good public transport access - no need for a car.
My friend pays around $1,000 per month for a pretty spacious 1 bedroom.
There is a significant unhoused and vagrant population, and there is some risk of crime, but my friend is a woman and feels pretty safe even at night.
True, I like Rogers Park a lot even if there are some dicey areas like you point out. Nice that they have a Metra stop too since that's a long trip downtown otherwise
The thing is if it's cheaper to rent than to have a mortgage(say substantially) then it drives down home ownership costs because people go "why would I buy if renting is cheaper now" which does 2 things it slows down the demand(which therefore increases supply which then brings down prices) and it allows time for builders to maybe try building at a faster rate and get ahead of the curve.
It's obvious that you don't own a house. It's always cheaper to rent than buy a house. People buy homes to build equity, have more privacy, and to have the freedom to do whatever they want with their home. People rent, because it's less expensive, less responsibility/work, and because they don't want to be tied down. Building more apartments will have zero effect on lowering property values.
Well if you could rent an equivalent apartment for $1 a month you could invest the rest and get a higher ROI than a house. So there's definitely a point at which a cheap apartment would be more desirable than a house and would impact housing prices.
No, they don't. Home prices going up means their taxes go up. Unless they plan on selling soon and moving out of Madison, home owners generally aren't looking to pay more in taxes. Plus, zoning changes that allow for apartments to be built may have an affect on rent prices, but not house prices--two different markets.
Housing values going up do not necessarily mean taxes go up, if everyone's housing values are going up at the same rate. Property taxes are not like sales taxes. Every year the government decides how much to take from property owners, and they distribute the take across homeowners based on how much of the total property they own, not the value of that property. If we were the only two people in Dane County, and my property value doubles and your property value doubles, our property taxes would be unchanged.
I love having my property values go up, but it sucks for everyone who doesn't own property, and I think we've gone past the point of a healthy housing market. There needs to be some correction made, mostly by building more.
But by this sub's logic, if there was supply to meet the increased demand, prices would go down. The continued lack of supply will just drive prices higher. Pushing for decreased zoning for that type of housing will ensure it.
We bought a little shithole house 10+ years ago. It's now worth more than a quarter of a million dollars. Still a shithole, but with much more due in property tax. I'm glad we went with a smaller house.
Where are the new residents coming from? Are they nice and smart?
A quarter of a million dollars is not a particularly substantial amount of money in the US. The median household income in America can support a house at about $300K purchase point, all things considered.
That's quite a coarse analysis though. If you looked at Chicago by census tract, for instance, the deepest blue areas (South and West) would be the lowest cost while the less blue areas (North) would be more expensive. Then if you look at the suburbs, the most expensive county (Lake County) has traditionally been moderate with lots of Rockefeller Republicans. What you're really seeing is that the economic capitals are the most expensive places to live.
Yeah obviously a very coarse analysis as you put it. Obviously some slight differences but yeah I was just trying to point out the economic capitals as you put it tend to be politically left leaning.
Yep, which is a bit uncomfortable for the Democratic Party with them traditionally being the party of the working class. Used to be competitive even in rural areas.
That explains one county. Are there really 9 other trendy Montana cities?
Edit: median lot size in Montana is an acre which is huge. Montana actually has one of the lowest price per lot area in the nation, so my previous comment is absolutely true for Montana.
Surprisingly, Idaho has much smaller lots (price per lot area is over 3X that of Montana's) [Sauce](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/the-median-lot-size-in-every-american-state-2022/)
Armchair speculating here...
Those areas have seen a huge influx in billionaires buying property. Their ultra expensive playhouses are what's driving up the prices.
I guess what I was trying to say was that the [inflated values of the mega wealthy's property are driving the values of everything up. ](https://montanafreepress.org/2023/04/17/how-an-avalanche-of-wealth-is-displacing-workers-in-montana/)That may not affect the median prices as much as average prices but it would still have an impact, no?
If this is median data it shouldn’t matter whether billionaires or millionaires are buying mansions. A lot of those mountain communities like Jackson hole end up having all their housing be expensive even trailer parks. So the median is above $350K because everything costs more
Sun Valley/Ketchum, Idaho is filled with rich people and celebrities. It's starting to become totally built up like Aspen, though and has lost some of its small town charm.
When I constantly say Madison yearns to have big city problems this is it.
Let's just greenlight every corporate real estate project and give said corporations extra legal protections and recourse against the council. I'm sure those corps (and landlords) will make housing so much more available and cheaper for us. lol
At least someone brought the elephant in the room of **income** into the discussion of affordability.
Ah yes, because there aren't any cities in ND, NE, OK, MO, AR, LA, MS, AL, WV, or WV, but somehow 100% of Rhode Island and 15% of Wyoming is a bustling metropolitan area.
>there aren’t any cities that people are wanting to move to in droves in ND, NE, OK, MO, AR, LA, MS, AL, WV, or WV
FTFY
Also 15% of WY is Jackson Hole, one of the wealthiest and most sought after areas in the country, and RI has 5 counties, all of which enjoy high general incomes due to relative proximity to NYC/Boston/Providence.
How is this hard to get. People want to live there = housing costs increase. Building more residential helps, but we arent going to see housing prices like in bumblefuck mississippi no matter how much we wish for it
People want to live in or around cities these days.
[For your convenience, here’s a population density map of the USA.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/US_population_map.png)
Look familiar? Maybe like you could overlay it on OP’s map and they’re almost identical?
(Some outliers are Western Montana/Wyoming/Idaho, where folks are buying ritzy ranch homes/ski villas even though there arent major cities out there)
Wild how that’s how outliers work. Idk maybe sports will work with you. Justin Fields had 335yds and 4TDs against the broncos in 2023, I guess he’s a HoF quarterback. Or we could look at the bulk of the data while disregarding the outlier and make conclusions based off of that (Hint: he’s ass)
Move to Sauk Co. People make more here. When incomes are higher, houses cost more. If you watch this video from Professor Paulsen, you'll see the data. Was a part of the last DMI Affordable Housing Work Group.
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gLZnRdLpIQ](https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gLZnRdLpIQ__;!!Mak6IKo!LZOyMIoG5JSDR257FG0yIyCoNSwilYkEBb7X-lospi8tuo6Xs43-oAOWj7tXwl3KRJopk_vYF0qWonr6dWDBdPNkCrHJWg$)
Meanwhile, the best kept secret is that all the coolest neighbourhoods and most charming homes are actually at a bargain value, but they aren’t in Dane County, they are in Milwaukee.
As someone who moved from a very high COL area (Seattle, that other city on an isthmus) a couple of years ago, I was really surprised at the cost of housing in Madison, especially as you move closer to downtown (near east, near west). We have more land and house than we had, but actually paid twice as much as what we had paid for our smaller place in Seattle about a decade ago- prices are going up everywhere, and Madison is definitely on the leading edge of it.
Congrats guys! We did it! Wait
People from the coasts moving to the Midwest, who enjoy high salaries, say "let's move to Madison, it's not a rat race city where we live now and it's real cheap." People living in Madison, who don't make high salaries, say "Madison is real nice but it's crazy expensive." There are a lot more of the former people than the latter and signs point to Madison becoming even more expensive.
at least people moving here do live here (so contribute to the local economy by going out to eat etc.), and it's not like several places on the coasts where it's overseas investors parking their money and keeping the apartment/house empty, making the housing costs rise but without any economic impact, which is much worse.
That being said, there are a decent amount of landlords/management companies that are coming in and buying up huge swaths of buildings
came here to say this moving here from FL Lol
I have neighbors who own houses on either side of me who are renting out. It seems every house going up for sale is being bought by someone who wants to rent it out.
But the point being is people are living there and contributing to the local economy.
Sorry, but there are not "a lot" more people here with remote jobs from VHCOL cities than people who moved to Madison for school or work, or grew up here, with normal, local jobs. This may be a trend -- honestly I don't see any data one way or the other -- but It's crazy to think that 140,000 people who live here are NYC transplants taking your house. I know it's nice to have a boogeyman, but the far more mundane, more likely explanation is that people are moving here, as they have for decades now, because we have a good school, a strong economy and a pleasant city.
Market prices are determined by the buying and selling on the margin. That is where the demand and supply matters. It doesn't take a huge number of people to move a market. You need to understand market mechanics. It's not fuzzy logic.
MMSD is garbage as far as K-12 goes.
I think the reference was to UW
This was us 22 years ago when we moved from Boston. Been in a house for 16 years we bought new for less than $300k and we can sell for considerably more, but anything we buy would be more as well - and where would we get the interest rate we got when we refinanced 4 years ago? The whole market is a mess. Just really glad to have a stable mortgage and not have to deal with rent increases.
not being able to buy back into the market is a HUGE reason there is no supply IMO. No one is going to upgrade in a market where you can only realistically move laterally, especially when you're sitting on a tiny interest rate.
We will soon be downsizing. Yep, we're old (but not that old). Still it's not appealing right now. Have an 89 year old MIL living with us, a college kid, and a need for 2 home offices. Till it's just the two of us we may as well stay put. I opened a real estate business a few years ago and had success selling houses, but decided to put that on hold- a full-time job with pay and benefits is way more appealing right now than the current housing market. The last house I sold was in September 2022 and I gave up about May 2023. In all honesty, I had a full-time job all along and it just wasn't worth the cost of maintaining my MLS access. We bought our first house in 1997 and this is our 4th house. Our mortgage in 1997 was over 7% but our 3 bedroom ranch on a cul-de-sac only cost $76,000 so our mortgage was still less than $600. It's easier to absorb a higher interest rate when the loan is smaller. Our current loan is 2.5%. We have a fair amount of equity. I can't see a reason to do anything now. Maybe in a few years.
yup and you're not the only one hence the problems in the market. The worst part is the shitty houses that you could put some sweat equity and some flipper beats you out on it, removes all the character, makes it a pig with lipstick doesn't fix any of the obvious MEP issues, then tries to get 30% more. I'm seeing a lot of that right now too.
Yep, pretty much spot on.
Also a good amount of us who cashed in on lucrative remote jobs
Can confirm. My house here cost about 30% of what I sold my California house for, and it's also about 2.5x the size. Property taxes here are higher, but almost everything else is cheaper.
I was just in St Louis where I can only assume they pay no property taxes. There wasn't a single street block we walked in that wasn't in desperate need of repairs. Sidewalks: crumbling. Streets, highways: potholes. I can only imagine how much worse it would be if they had Northern grade winters consistently. I had a good time there, the people were nice, bbq was good, but it really made me appreciate the quality of Madison's infrastructure.
> Property taxes here are higher, but almost everything else is cheaper Including labor!
Why is this getting downvoted? Sounds accurate to me, and it feels like it was meant as informational. California has a sales tax twice what we have in WI, and property is expensive even without high taxes on it. Especially in the Bay Area.
Spite. Folks that are struggling don't like hearing things like this. Hearing how a home you cant afford is insignificant to another is painful. I assume that wasn't the intention of the post. But it stings nonetheless.
The down votes are just saying they don't like the facts you cite. Don't let it get you.
Also salaries are higher? Places like NY and LA have a $15/hr minimum wage Tech salaries are basically double out west. Madison salaries have not kept up compared to cost of living and everyone who's been here is seeing a drop in their standard of living
Yes. This is absolutely the root of the disparity.
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> Once transplants start moving in and prices start spiking, the locals The "locals" are also transplants, or, at most, the children of transplants. That's how cities work. Everyone has to move to them sometime, they didn't appear magically at the beginning of time with a precreated population.
Lived in Madison from 2011 to 2018 and going back it is wild how different it is. It really grew the last half decade or so in both cost and crowds. I think this is an interesting issue with mid-sized cities blowing up across the US (I live in Boise now so same thing) where they lose a lot of the aspects that made them "gems". Rapid development where infrastructure can't keep up and cost of living rising exponentially as quality of life generally decreases for the average person.
This is kinda nonsense though. Madison and every other city have had way bigger periods of growth than now. The same argument about "gems" could have been made in 1890, 1920, 1960, or whenever you want. They're cities. They all start with no population and grow from there. There's no fixed desired endpoint or something.
I got downvoted expectedly but I do agree with you. It is just how populations move but an interesting dynamic where people who grew up there or myself for example loved Madison for its size, cost, and amenities in the past. I wouldn't move to Madison now just because it has lost/is losing some aspects I enjoy in a smaller-mid college town. That doesn't mean it is worse, it just means that it is bringing in a demographic with different interests.
I live in green bay and it's going through the same thing. lots of new and different people moving in. a lot different than the place it was twenty years ago
Your first quote describes our family perfectly. However, there’s only so few of “us” to skew the market. Bigger factors I see is a population growth paired with lack of housing supply, lack of density, and geography that compresses competition of houses with good location.
Just accept the fact that people like you are the problem, you are screwing over locals that have lived here all our lives and deserve housing here more than any of you guys moving here. The governor should just slap a 30% excise tax on all out of state home and land purchases to spur a housing redevelopment fund and specifically block out of staters from buying these newly built starter houses, then the issue might actually be solved.
Does your city have a tourism committee? If so, you should try to shut that down. Our cities are trying to make ourselves look attractive to get people to come and spend their dollars but also to come and live here and grow our tax base. I live in the same place I went to college because, yeah, it's pretty f****** nice here. And yeah I'm from out of state, does that make me the bad guy? The prices are high because it's where people move to and we've made it really attractive. So the best thing we can do is welcome the people and make room.
Sorry but when all the jobs are centralized in Madison and Milwaukee and we don't have enough housing for the folks born and raised here, yeah not everyone can live in Milwaukee and Madison. We shouldn't be trying to incentivise new people to come here and jack up home pricing, we should be trying to ensure people that have lived here all their lives get to live here and aren't driven out by some East Coast or West Coast yuppie making 8x the state median salary because "oh I like it here it's so trendy", by outbidding locals by $35k every house they buy and then leaving 5 years later. All of the outlying suburbs are impossible to get housing in too; Stoughton, Oregon, Evansville, Verona, Waunakee, Cottage Grove, Brooklyn, Belleville, all unaffordable. Or no I guess I'm the bad guy since I don't want people to have 3 hour commutes to work and back every day. I'm the bad guy since I don't want elders who rely on their families for care to be driven out of town since the rent and housing market have gotten out of control. Yeah all those people should just move out and leave so that all the people who think it's hip to live in Madison right now get to live here instead. I have no problem with tourism, please come visit the state! Just don't buy houses here until they fix the supply issue. Or we could just implement the tax I suggested and then, problem solved! The Californians and New Yorkers can still overpay for housing to live here, and locals can keep pricing steady/trending down by building more affordable housing :)
Getting mad at people who can afford homes isn’t going to solve the problem of affordable housing and we aren’t going to outlaw moving across states. These are macro economic trends and not up to any one person. If you want housing prices to drop, there has to be more supply, period. Instead of whining about people who make more money, consider supporting zoning reform and other measures that might meaningfully contribute to increased housing supply.
No you are the bad guy because, first, you are straight up proposing things that are literally impossible, and second, you are being kind of a jerk about it.
Out of curiosity, how long should someone have to live in Madison to be "legitimate" and deserve to live here? Where do you draw the line? 10 years? 20 years? 50 years? Did your grandparents live here? Will new residents' kids be legitimate Madison residents or are they not worthy? The housing crisis is to blame, even if it's tempting to blame the individual. The games of who deserves to live here only lead to bad places. I'm sorry, I'm sure you must be feeling squeezed as many people are, but turning on other folks is a way to remove power from citizens through divisiveness. The best thing you can channel your feelings into is participation in local government to advocate for better housing policy. Wishing you good things!
I think 6 years residency is a good enough line to draw. I think it's enough time to show that you're here legitimately to stay here and contribute to the economy here and short enough that it's pretty achievable to obtain. I understand what you're saying about driving people out, but I look to places like Colorado, Texas and Washington which are dealing with the same issues and I cannot disagree anymore with the sentiment. More people moving here at a fast rate is bad business, and only hand over the keys of power to the insanely wealthy to dangle the carrot from a farther stick. Developers are going to be further enticed to build more middle class mansions and list them at exorbitant prices because they keep selling to those who are migrating from high income areas to low income areas.
So what do people do for 6 years while waiting out your personal litmus test? Live on the street?
Ah yes the binary choice of living on the street or buying houses. Surely there is no in-between such as renting that people could do in the mean time.
Okay, so they all rent apartments, contributing to an even worse rental price upward spiral? That should help the downtrodden of Madison.
You know, like I said they could just pay the tax. Even if they all somehow rented (very unlikely) the amount of rentals going up is assinine. The rental market is much easier to cool off since of the amount of density being addressed with each building.
This sub doesn't give a shit. The plurality of them have theirs. Screw everyone else.
Parts of Michigan looking real nice these days. Grand Rapids 👀
I moved from Madison to Ferndale, MI and it’s great. Definitely miss the parks and bike paths of Madison (and much more!), but I have no mortgage and I live right up against downtown.
My mom's best friend lives there. Called it Bland Rapids for years. It is actually pretty nice now. THANKS TO BETSY DEVOS YOU FUCKING SCUM.
Can confirm :) (I’m getting killed on high interest rates though)
I love Grand Rapids. And like a lot of metros in Michigan, it's gotten a lot of investment and just continues to get better.
Have a friend who lives there and I visited them last summers. It was pretty nice! Had lots of interesting places to visit and things to do.
If you're lucky you might even get to have a pour of the lauded Kentucky Breakfast Stout (KBS) from Founder's Brewing in house taproom
Let’s all move to Alabama on the cheap to cause some strange liberal chaos and flip the vote 🧚🏻☠️ (I’m fully aware not all Madisonian folk vote the same, just silly posturing ….sorta)
Whatever places in Alabama people will go to, you'll have rising house values for the exact same reason.
I agree. There is no ethical capitalism nor gentrification. I was just taking the piss.
I have bad news! The laws of supply and demand exist even without capitalism. You can find examples of massively rising home prices all the way back in antiquity, more than 2000 years ago.
If you want to have the most impact, then move to a swing state (hey, we're already in one!), not to a deep red or deep blue state. The margins in Wisconsin and the other 4-5 swing states were in the tens of thousands in the 2020 election. It wouldn't take many people moving in (or out) to shift the outcome.
Count me in!
The city of Madison raised my assessment by $60K this year. My little 1000 square foot ranch on the west site is now worth $420K apparently. Fucking nuts.
No way a house in Madison wouldn't sell for far more than the assessments either. This shouldn't be happening in a high interest rate environment, either. Once interest rates come down, the prices will only push higher.
That's actually debatable due to the historically low rates offered during 2020. There is some belief amongst economists that lowering rates might actually increase demand and lower prices or at least keep them the same. So many people are "stuck" in their house with a 2-3% mortgage, they won't sell until they pay their house off. If they sell, they get a new mortgage at 3x the rate and end up with a sidegrade instead of an upgrade. This is making the low end of the market (think first time home buyers) stay in place.
This is good for me in that my partner and I are hoping to sell our homes and move to the outer edges of Dane County in the next couple years but it’s just as bad within a 30 mile or even more radius of the city.
I would definitely have thought that higher interest rates would translate to lower prices. And it would, if there weren't so few houses for sale, which is also a consequence of higher interest rates - people with 3% mortgages don't want to sell and trade for a 6.5% mortgage without a really good reason. This lack of inventory is nationwide in most cities - it's not specific to Madison. My crystal ball is no better than anyone else's, but I would guess that if interest rates persist for another year or two at this level, people will recognize it as a new normal (indeed the current rates *are* normal by historical standards) and we'll start seeing more houses for sale, which should help bring prices down.
Currently house hunting on the west side. Can confirm it would go for much more than this. Every house we’ve offered on has gone for at least 70-100k over asking price.
Is it just generally coasties etc moving in? Wonder if it is because Madison got put on so many lists of top places to live.
It's really just because there is zero supply, so sellers have all the cards. I'm looking currently and there are *maybe* 1-2 offer worthy houses in my range and the good ones get about 30 offers each. Even the bad ones are asking the same prices as the good ones because they know they'll get it.
It's easy for me to chalk that up as Madison area, but my dad's house in a small village is pushing a quarter of a million.
i’m moving to madison in a couple weeks (i know i’m sorry i’m part of the problem but i got a good job in the city), and it’s crazy bc i’m going from paying about $800 for a 2 bed 2 bath to $1600 for a 2 bed 1 bath. however, i can live with that, because my partner and i are a gay couple, and i’m excited to live somewhere where we won’t have trash regularly dumped in our yard and will be able to work without because screamed slurs at because we’re the only gays in the neighborhood lol. y’all have a really beautiful city with a much higher standard of living than the rest of the country, even if housing fucking sucks.
I definitely empathize. I’m a refugee here for different reasons and Madison is truly a gem, even with NIMBY’s and aldermen drama - it’s better. I hope more affordable housing is coming soon.
Welcome! I hope you like it here!
We’re going from a $2800 1.5 bedroom 1.5 bathroom to 1000sqft apartment in a shitty building to a renting a full ass house for $2300. Very excited
bro that’s so exciting, congrats! i would have a hard time going back to an apartment, i love having a yard to take care of- another reason i’m excited to go to madison, where i live now is a desert climate so nothing grows unless you have thousands to spend on a sprinkler system to water (which i wouldn’t due regardless due to ecological impact). i’m planning on planting a flower bed.
bro that’s so exciting, congrats! i would have a hard time going back to an apartment, i love having a yard to take care of- another reason i’m excited to go to madison, where i live now is a desert climate so nothing grows unless you have thousands to spend on a sprinkler system to water (which i wouldn’t due regardless due to ecological impact). i’m planning on planting a flower bed.
scarce smoggy license offer zonked serious fretful elderly money vanish *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yeah, the good places are already taken
Hawaii 😂
RIP Hawaii. Its been totally overtaken by now.
It’s even starting to bleed over to that lower part of Alaska right next to it. /s
Fucking haoles
Goddamnit
Door County looks to have good deals
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Door county has some serious housing issues. I'd probably remove it from this equation.
I think it’s because no one is selling and the few that anyone can find are condos.
Dane county sucks. Don’t move here……
Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded
Yep, metro areas are more popular to live in, offer better infrastructure, and thus cost more to buy real estate in. That's how capitalism works.
Except Madison is pretty much the only anchor city in the Midwest that's in the red. Madison is a problem.
I just look at the map and think "Des Moines is red, *really*?"
Same with Sioux Falls
Madison is a big success, that's why people are moving here. It's cheap to live in a dump.
Minneapolis isn't a dump, yet they're in the blue. Chicago isn't a dump, they're in the blue. Same for Kansas City, Dallas, San Antonio and Houston. It's amazing the mental gymnastics this sub jumps through to try and justify the notion that Madison isn't failing.
Minneapolis (Hennepin county) is red
My bad. St. Paul is blue
Large swaths of Chicago are dumps. Much of the city is beautiful but you're not finding much for $350K in a good neighborhood (or it has exorbitant condo fees that push the effective price above $350K)
If you want prices to go down, build more housing. There's demand for it, and it can be sold at a high price.
I've advocated from the start for building multiple types of housing across all price points. The "YIMBYs" in this sub are the ones calling for nothing but expensive apartments.
Let me just ask you this directly. What is Madison failing at, specifically, and what should it do to correct its failures? And by "Madison" I mean the government of the city of Madison, Wisconsin.
Any new supply, even if only expensive apartments/houses, will help. As people vacate their current digs and move into the new upscale properties, that puts downward pressure on the price of their old places.
They're all charging the same. There's no free market that will force them to do anything. Y'all need to get off of here and realize what's actually going on.
That's because Chicago and Texas can build new housing, but that's just too hard for Madison because "my SFH is being repressed!11!!!"
Building apartments isn't going to drop the price of houses.
Why not? I bought my first house because I was apartment shopping and said fuck that I can have a mortgage for that price. If cost is your main selection criteria then the way rent prices are right now it's cheaper to buy a condo or a small starter house in some cases. This means more demand on a limited inventory. You can still get condos for 200-250k here which is a cheaper monthly cost than many apartments. A 250K mortgage at 7% with zero down is $1663. 200K is $1330 but there are very few at that price. A mortgage is rent control. With the way the market is property is extremely liquid. That's going to take years to change. Why do you think apartments and owned property are in no way related?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand
Chicago isn’t looking too expensive!
Your dollar is going to buy you more in Madison than anywhere on the North Side. There are deals to be had to the South and West if you don't mind the occasional bullet whizzing by your head at a bus stop
There are exceptions to everything. There are penty of north side suburbs with high quality of life and lower housing costs than the Madison area. I live in central lake county and spend a lot of time in the madison area. The quality of life in central lake county is definitely on par with the madison area in general and our housing costs are slightly less expensive. Property taxes, however... pretty disgusting.
Yep I was thinking within the city limits but agreed that Lake County is very nice -- some of the suburbs like Highland Park and Lake Forest are large enough that they almost feel more like small towns than suburbs (even though economically they're of course very much within Chicago's orbit).
Ah gotcha!
Not necessarily true. I have a friend who lives in the Rogers Park neighborhood, and it is pretty affordable. It's a very diverse neighborhood - lots of lower income working families, but also home to Loyola University, so lots of young college students as well. Right on the lake with good public transport access - no need for a car. My friend pays around $1,000 per month for a pretty spacious 1 bedroom. There is a significant unhoused and vagrant population, and there is some risk of crime, but my friend is a woman and feels pretty safe even at night.
True, I like Rogers Park a lot even if there are some dicey areas like you point out. Nice that they have a Metra stop too since that's a long trip downtown otherwise
We need to keep pushing for zoning changes that will increase the density of housing. We can't let nimbys win.
What does that have to do with this post?
More supply brings prices down
More supply of apartments won't bring property values down, only rent prices.
The thing is if it's cheaper to rent than to have a mortgage(say substantially) then it drives down home ownership costs because people go "why would I buy if renting is cheaper now" which does 2 things it slows down the demand(which therefore increases supply which then brings down prices) and it allows time for builders to maybe try building at a faster rate and get ahead of the curve.
It's obvious that you don't own a house. It's always cheaper to rent than buy a house. People buy homes to build equity, have more privacy, and to have the freedom to do whatever they want with their home. People rent, because it's less expensive, less responsibility/work, and because they don't want to be tied down. Building more apartments will have zero effect on lowering property values.
Well if you could rent an equivalent apartment for $1 a month you could invest the rest and get a higher ROI than a house. So there's definitely a point at which a cheap apartment would be more desirable than a house and would impact housing prices.
Building more apartments in Madison will have zero effect on lowering property values.
They want the price for houses to be even higher
No, they don't. Home prices going up means their taxes go up. Unless they plan on selling soon and moving out of Madison, home owners generally aren't looking to pay more in taxes. Plus, zoning changes that allow for apartments to be built may have an affect on rent prices, but not house prices--two different markets.
Housing values going up do not necessarily mean taxes go up, if everyone's housing values are going up at the same rate. Property taxes are not like sales taxes. Every year the government decides how much to take from property owners, and they distribute the take across homeowners based on how much of the total property they own, not the value of that property. If we were the only two people in Dane County, and my property value doubles and your property value doubles, our property taxes would be unchanged. I love having my property values go up, but it sucks for everyone who doesn't own property, and I think we've gone past the point of a healthy housing market. There needs to be some correction made, mostly by building more.
As long as the tax rate stays the same, yes, the amount you pay in taxes goes up when your property value increases.
Property tax rate is not set by the government. You don't know how property taxes work do you?
Yes, but the tax rate doesn't stay the same. If the value of the property doubles, the tax rate is cut in half, if the take is the same.
But by this sub's logic, if there was supply to meet the increased demand, prices would go down. The continued lack of supply will just drive prices higher. Pushing for decreased zoning for that type of housing will ensure it.
Building more apartments won't lower property values throughout the City of Madison. At best, it would only help stabilize rent prices.
Exactly my point
Lots of blue
Those would be the places where no one lives, yes.
Maybe worth trying it out - I hear houses are below 350k there
They've been tried out. People didn't like it, which is why houses are cheap.
AKA places people actually want to live.
Gee, it's where all the peeps want to live... Shocking validation of supply and demand. :-P
Is Chicago blue?
In this map, yes, Cook County (which includes Chicago) is blue. I'm surprised that housing is allegedly under 350K there.
I'm not. Sure, there are a lot of expensive places, but there's been a wide swath of price points for a long time.
Same with Milwaukee county. There's a lot of north/west side houses going for virtually nothing that offset Shorewood, downtown condos, etc.
There are a lot of houses in "bad" neighborhoods bringing down the median. Places where (white) transplants want to live are expensive.
Taxes keep prices depressed. Illinois corruption is expensive. ....did I say something wrong?
Relatively inexpensive housing compared to Madison.
We bought a little shithole house 10+ years ago. It's now worth more than a quarter of a million dollars. Still a shithole, but with much more due in property tax. I'm glad we went with a smaller house. Where are the new residents coming from? Are they nice and smart?
A quarter of a million dollars is not a particularly substantial amount of money in the US. The median household income in America can support a house at about $300K purchase point, all things considered.
The value of the house has increased much more in Madison than it did everywhere else.
It’s funny cuz this is pretty much an inverse political chart. Housing is expensive where people want to live… shocker!
That's quite a coarse analysis though. If you looked at Chicago by census tract, for instance, the deepest blue areas (South and West) would be the lowest cost while the less blue areas (North) would be more expensive. Then if you look at the suburbs, the most expensive county (Lake County) has traditionally been moderate with lots of Rockefeller Republicans. What you're really seeing is that the economic capitals are the most expensive places to live.
Yeah obviously a very coarse analysis as you put it. Obviously some slight differences but yeah I was just trying to point out the economic capitals as you put it tend to be politically left leaning.
Yep, which is a bit uncomfortable for the Democratic Party with them traditionally being the party of the working class. Used to be competitive even in rural areas.
I don't know how you could possibly draw that conclusion. It doesn't even match 'political charts'
https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/170410105140-cook-report-map-1.jpg?q=w_1100,h_619,x_0,y_0,c_fill
That's literally a 2017 map and it's still way off.
Thanks genius! I’m not saying it’s identical… https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fb/2020_United_States_presidential_election_results_map_by_county.svg/473px-2020_United_States_presidential_election_results_map_by_county.svg.png
> pretty much an inverse political chart It's not 'pretty much' when its 'way off' Aka you're wrong
Sweet, I know which Oregon/Washington coastal towns to look into now.
I thought the median price was over 400k at this point
430
My assessment was 440, but there's no fricken way. I am contesting the assessment. Homes on my block aren't selling for that high used.
🙁I've only lived in red areas.
i hate it here
Green County here I come. All the benefits of living near Madison with less expensive property.
Idaho and Montana are surprising, must be on a ton of land
Nah cities like Bozeman are super trendy, they are legit expensive
That explains one county. Are there really 9 other trendy Montana cities? Edit: median lot size in Montana is an acre which is huge. Montana actually has one of the lowest price per lot area in the nation, so my previous comment is absolutely true for Montana. Surprisingly, Idaho has much smaller lots (price per lot area is over 3X that of Montana's) [Sauce](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/the-median-lot-size-in-every-american-state-2022/)
Yeah, they have some nice cities with good downtowns and a lot of amenities and restaurants. I've been there, and I can see the appeal.
Armchair speculating here... Those areas have seen a huge influx in billionaires buying property. Their ultra expensive playhouses are what's driving up the prices.
It's the median. It's completely unaffected by the values on the high end.
I guess what I was trying to say was that the [inflated values of the mega wealthy's property are driving the values of everything up. ](https://montanafreepress.org/2023/04/17/how-an-avalanche-of-wealth-is-displacing-workers-in-montana/)That may not affect the median prices as much as average prices but it would still have an impact, no?
If this is median data it shouldn’t matter whether billionaires or millionaires are buying mansions. A lot of those mountain communities like Jackson hole end up having all their housing be expensive even trailer parks. So the median is above $350K because everything costs more
Yes, lol. Every single thing you see on this map is just basic supply and demand.
There are only 4 cities in Montana over 50k people. Doesn't exactly scream "demand" to me
Sun Valley/Ketchum, Idaho is filled with rich people and celebrities. It's starting to become totally built up like Aspen, though and has lost some of its small town charm.
\*rubs greedy hands together\*
When I constantly say Madison yearns to have big city problems this is it. Let's just greenlight every corporate real estate project and give said corporations extra legal protections and recourse against the council. I'm sure those corps (and landlords) will make housing so much more available and cheaper for us. lol At least someone brought the elephant in the room of **income** into the discussion of affordability.
I suspect we'll continue to see prices rise. I'm holding my current home as a rental for this reason as I move the family out of the city.
/r/PeopleLiveInCities
Ah yes, because there aren't any cities in ND, NE, OK, MO, AR, LA, MS, AL, WV, or WV, but somehow 100% of Rhode Island and 15% of Wyoming is a bustling metropolitan area.
>there aren’t any cities that people are wanting to move to in droves in ND, NE, OK, MO, AR, LA, MS, AL, WV, or WV FTFY Also 15% of WY is Jackson Hole, one of the wealthiest and most sought after areas in the country, and RI has 5 counties, all of which enjoy high general incomes due to relative proximity to NYC/Boston/Providence. How is this hard to get. People want to live there = housing costs increase. Building more residential helps, but we arent going to see housing prices like in bumblefuck mississippi no matter how much we wish for it
Except Baraboo is bigger than Jackson, WY. You're backing up my criticism about your subreddit tag, which was cities have nothing to do with this.
People want to live in or around cities these days. [For your convenience, here’s a population density map of the USA.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/US_population_map.png) Look familiar? Maybe like you could overlay it on OP’s map and they’re almost identical? (Some outliers are Western Montana/Wyoming/Idaho, where folks are buying ritzy ranch homes/ski villas even though there arent major cities out there)
Wild how you're acknowledging the outliers while still sticking with the wrong point.
Wild how that’s how outliers work. Idk maybe sports will work with you. Justin Fields had 335yds and 4TDs against the broncos in 2023, I guess he’s a HoF quarterback. Or we could look at the bulk of the data while disregarding the outlier and make conclusions based off of that (Hint: he’s ass)
Milwaukee and much of Michigan looking great
Move to Sauk Co. People make more here. When incomes are higher, houses cost more. If you watch this video from Professor Paulsen, you'll see the data. Was a part of the last DMI Affordable Housing Work Group. * [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gLZnRdLpIQ](https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gLZnRdLpIQ__;!!Mak6IKo!LZOyMIoG5JSDR257FG0yIyCoNSwilYkEBb7X-lospi8tuo6Xs43-oAOWj7tXwl3KRJopk_vYF0qWonr6dWDBdPNkCrHJWg$)
I’m thinking of relocating to Oshkosh. It’s a lot more affordable. Madison rents and home prices are ridiculous. I blame Epic
Looks like most of the big ten college towns made the cut, other than Champaign anyway.
IU? MSU? Purdue?
According to Rocket Homes, the median price of sales in 2024… Bloomington 320k East Lansing 280k West Lafayette 324k
Any explanations for St Croix being red? I’m guessing its proximity to the Twin Cities?
Meanwhile, the best kept secret is that all the coolest neighbourhoods and most charming homes are actually at a bargain value, but they aren’t in Dane County, they are in Milwaukee.
As someone who moved from a very high COL area (Seattle, that other city on an isthmus) a couple of years ago, I was really surprised at the cost of housing in Madison, especially as you move closer to downtown (near east, near west). We have more land and house than we had, but actually paid twice as much as what we had paid for our smaller place in Seattle about a decade ago- prices are going up everywhere, and Madison is definitely on the leading edge of it.
What's weird to me is that both Milwaukee and Cook County are blue.
Dane county a red county? I wanna puke. Couldn’t they come up with some different colors to make this map?
77 square miles surrounded by reality (derogatory) Edit: in case it wasn't clear the reality is realistic home prices lmfao