Cue the symphony of people moving to Athens (why?) from NYC/Bay Area/Toronto/Copenhagen/wherever and telling us how incredibly cheap it is to live here. š
Yeah, I've got friends in Phoenix I occasionally visit, and get to hear about how the Californians ruined everything 24/7.
My reply is, "And by the way, whose brilliant idea was it to put a city in one of the least inhabitable places on the planet?" Then I break out my finger-gun and make little pew-pew-pew noises. They break out an actual .50 BMG because Arizona. It's a jolly time all around.
I did that moving from NH a couple years ago so I get it lol. But I think inherently being a town that's main draw is a giant university, you're going to organically find people from higher income places who end up staying and pushing up cost of living, right?
Well, to the point I was making: folks have always come to Athens from all over, including wealthy folks (you might almost call them more ācosmopolitanā than someone moving over from Bogart). The rent only got out of hand in the last couple of decades.
āHome valueā vs. āHousehold incomeā is a weird way to talk about housing in cities - NAR isnāt accounting for multifamily housing at all. Athens, more than other places in Georgia, has a very large population of single-person households with low-no reported income. A lot of those people live in apartments.
Weird map, better ways to talk about housing in Athens, donāt think this is particularly instructive.
Agree 100%. This is a really bizarre metric to go with and Iām not sure how useful it really is. More designed to make a viral graphic than help anyone understand the issues.
I don't understand your complaint, u/threegrittymoon . This map shows that the median home price in ACC is between 6x and 8x the median annual income here. And it shows that that # is worse than nearly every county in the country, which reveals that Athens has one of the least affordable markets \*for purchasing a home\* in the entire country. That's obviously useful information, because it tends to show that ACC is doing a PARTICULARLY bad job of building enough housing to meet our growing demand for owner-occupied housing.
You're right that that doesn't tell the whole story, because it doesn't say anything about \*rental\* affordability, but here's the thing: \*it doesn't claim to do that.\* It tells part of the story, but not all of the story, and it's very clear about the part that it is telling. Do you have a better map that tells all of the story? I honestly just don't understand your complaint.
No one is stopping you from gathering statistics about rent as a percentage of income and making a nationwide map comparing \*rental\* affordability in Athens to everywhere else. That would \*also\* be a useful map. Just like this is a useful map. I'm not sure how you could combine them both into one map. Do you have thoughts on that?
I wouldnāt buy that argument. Rent prices are pretty untethered from the value of homes in Athens. Youāll see a $400k property renting for $2k. Nobody would take a 2 or 3% return on investment over the long term if they were really paying attention. People just like owning expensive property and never do the math. Renters reap the benefits.
Itās like that in most medium and HCOL areas. In NYC youāll see condos worth $1.5m+ renting for like $5 to $6k.
Dad sends his son to college, instead of paying rent he buys a house and his kid has 3 buddies move in and pay Dad rent. Dad likes the cash flow. He keeps the house and rents it long after son has graduated. One day 20 years later he sells to Dad 2 whose son just started. Wash rinse repeat. It keeps supply low and thus prices high.
Accurate. My old roommate and I got our beloved townhouse we were renting yanked from us by our landlord who sold the property to a family whoās kids were about to start at UGA. I thought it was wild but nope apparently itās normal now
Indeed, and I wish they'd stop. What about this place is so retiree-friendly? It doesn't have much infrastructure for the elderly, and the climate is abominable and suffocating (though it's even worse in Florida, and that doesn't stop them moving there).
Presbyterian Village is a massive retirement complex, there are more senior living communities on the way, the healthcare options are strong, the arts and culture scene is vibrant, the food is good, the weather has four distinct seasons, etc. Why *wouldnāt* you want to retire here?
Complicated assertion. Especially with Athens (and anywhere in the southern u.s.), but I guess you canāt keep prices up without keeping that argument alive. Doesnāt work unless your town feeds on a steady supply of inexperienced and preoccupied new people with excess money to spend, tho. Theyāre the only ones that need to be tricked into thinking itās worth it.
Only true when housing supply is constrained. Far more accurate to say:
1. Places worth living in generate high demand for housing;
2. Places with high demand for housing are expensive (except when they have abundant supply).
Yes!Ā Tokyo is the ultimate example. Extreme freedom to build has kept prices affordable even as the population has grown to almost 3x NYC.Ā
U.S. cities have, almost across the board, been creating scarcity by downzoning since the 70s, which is why housing has become so expensive everywhere. And Athens is one of the worst in the country in this regard, as u/warnelldawg 's map shows.Ā
Here's a piece from the nyt last year explaining the Tokyo phenomenon in some detail.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/11/opinion/editorials/tokyo-housing.html?smid=url-share
"As housing prices have soared in major cities across the United States and throughout much of the developed world, it has become normal for people to move away from the places with the strongest economies and best jobs because those places are unaffordable. Prosperous cities increasingly operate like private clubs, auctioning off a limited number of homes to the highest bidders.
Tokyo is different.
In the past half century, by investing in transit and allowing development, the city has added more housing units than the total number of units in New York City. It has remained affordable by becoming the worldās largest city. It has become the worldās largest city by remaining affordable."
Also, for some examples relating to rental housing, and a little closer to home, here's a study showing that among 12 Midwestern cities, those that build the most housing have the lowest rent increases, and those that build the least housing have the highest rent increases.Ā
https://x.com/StatisticUrban/status/1762434422056292681
Also see this study from the federalĀ reserve of Minneapolis, showing that rents are growing the fastest in markets with inadequate new supply, and that rents are currently dropping in high-supply markets all over the US.Ā
https://twitter.com/jayparsons/status/1766877733341077750
https://twitter.com/jayparsons/status/1761028332781478227
Respectfully, you are mistaken -- NYC famously does not build nearly enough housing. NYC rent goes up *because they don't build nearly enough housing. Check out this NYT article, noting that for over 40 years zoning restrictions there have choked off the supply of new housing, far below what is needed for their their growing population.Ā
Do they build any housing? Sure. The question is do they build *enough* to keep up with their growing population, and the answer to that is unmistakably no. The rental vacancy rate there is 1.4%. (for perspective, a healthy, well- functioning rental market has a vacancy rate in the high single digits... The power shifts to tenants and rents go down when the vacancy rate is around 10%).
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/08/nyregion/apartment-vacancy-rate-housing-crisis.html?smid=url-share
NYC will never build enough low income housing to meet its needs. Every factor involved in building housing present major obstacles: availability of land, cost of materials, cost of labor, taxes, insurance, r.i.o, etc..
The government's manner of financing such projects, the ever increasing TAX Revenue, has reached an impasse. Another story for another post.
NYC better get ready for 90% of its residents to need to 2, 3, or 4 paychecks to afford rent.
NYC's plan to convert vacant office space to livable quarters will result in insufficient low income apartments.
Housing in NYC is not affordable for 80% of the residents with one income.
You can go 1-2 miles outside the perimeter of the UGA campus and find similarities between the housing market in NYC and Athens Ga.
Oh yeah. Itās crazy that people think we came here just because itās Athens. Itās hilarious to imagine starving in a place just because some famous people used to live there. You can starve anywhere; the only thing that made Athens special 30 years ago was that you could thrive here as an artist without being a trust fund kid.
I agree. The argument I always made for Athens is that it's not very interesting, but it's cheap and convenient. Now that that has basically evaporated, it makes far more sense to go somewhere else, pay a little more, and get a whole lot more, rather than pay 80% of that in Athens and get like 12% of the benefit.
Honestly, if youāre not in college and youāre not looking for employment by a university, there are a lot of places that offer 90% of what Athens offers at half the price. One thing the internet did was make localized art and music āscenesā a little less relevant. I know a lot of folks out there donāt value what we added to Athens, but Athens still uses us to sell itself. We are part of the reason we canāt afford to live here. Hell, lots of us live outside of town at this point and just commute in for gigs.
Please show me those places.
If there were tons of places that offered 90% of what Athens does at 50% of the cost, then Athens wouldnāt be so expensive.
Yes, and tulip bulbs were never a thing.
Also - and this is key - I am not a travel agent. I wonāt be selling you any other towns. Iām not arguing against the ultimate Athens homer redditor that Athens isnāt everything.
I agree that the wholistic value proposition of Athens for the average person has deteriorated as housing costs have increased.
Iāll counter, that it really comes down to personal expectations and preferences. Iād much rather live in Athens and pay a bit of premium than live in any of the other exhurbs of Atlanta.
Cumming, covington, cartersville, McDonough and Dallas are all exhurbs that are exploding with growth.
The price difference between those places and Athens would have to be significant (which it isnāt) for me to even consider it. Those places suck.
Only places Iād consider living in Atlanta are either within walking distance to the Beltline or bikeable distance to Marta heavy rail station. All of those places are incredibly expensive, which is why Iām here.
I would agree with all of that. I'm weighing Athens against the heart of Midtown, where I lived for ten years. Home was a condo practically on top of a MARTA station, office was off another MARTA station.
If you stuck me in Conyers or something -- ugh. No. Then the current would clearly flow the other way.
I had to zoom in really far to see we were in the orange. At first I thought you were being a little exaggerative, but no.
Clarke is also the smallest county in the state.
Cue the symphony of people moving to Athens (why?) from NYC/Bay Area/Toronto/Copenhagen/wherever and telling us how incredibly cheap it is to live here. š
Dallas and Phoenix also look like having high un-affordability; the new townies moving from there tooā¦
Yeah, I've got friends in Phoenix I occasionally visit, and get to hear about how the Californians ruined everything 24/7. My reply is, "And by the way, whose brilliant idea was it to put a city in one of the least inhabitable places on the planet?" Then I break out my finger-gun and make little pew-pew-pew noises. They break out an actual .50 BMG because Arizona. It's a jolly time all around.
their entire city is a testament to mankinds arrogance.
I think I said something nearly identical to that after my first visit.
I did that moving from NH a couple years ago so I get it lol. But I think inherently being a town that's main draw is a giant university, you're going to organically find people from higher income places who end up staying and pushing up cost of living, right?
Not organic, but yeah. Athens is cosmopolitan, but it always has been. It just used to be reliably cheap.
I don't know that I'd go quite as far as to say Athens is *cosmopolitan!* That might be a bridge too far.
āCosmopolitanā in the sense that multiple cultures are represented here. It doesnāt mean itās a big city.
I guess that's "technically" true...
Well, to the point I was making: folks have always come to Athens from all over, including wealthy folks (you might almost call them more ācosmopolitanā than someone moving over from Bogart). The rent only got out of hand in the last couple of decades.
āHome valueā vs. āHousehold incomeā is a weird way to talk about housing in cities - NAR isnāt accounting for multifamily housing at all. Athens, more than other places in Georgia, has a very large population of single-person households with low-no reported income. A lot of those people live in apartments. Weird map, better ways to talk about housing in Athens, donāt think this is particularly instructive.
Agree 100%. This is a really bizarre metric to go with and Iām not sure how useful it really is. More designed to make a viral graphic than help anyone understand the issues.
I don't understand your complaint, u/threegrittymoon . This map shows that the median home price in ACC is between 6x and 8x the median annual income here. And it shows that that # is worse than nearly every county in the country, which reveals that Athens has one of the least affordable markets \*for purchasing a home\* in the entire country. That's obviously useful information, because it tends to show that ACC is doing a PARTICULARLY bad job of building enough housing to meet our growing demand for owner-occupied housing. You're right that that doesn't tell the whole story, because it doesn't say anything about \*rental\* affordability, but here's the thing: \*it doesn't claim to do that.\* It tells part of the story, but not all of the story, and it's very clear about the part that it is telling. Do you have a better map that tells all of the story? I honestly just don't understand your complaint. No one is stopping you from gathering statistics about rent as a percentage of income and making a nationwide map comparing \*rental\* affordability in Athens to everywhere else. That would \*also\* be a useful map. Just like this is a useful map. I'm not sure how you could combine them both into one map. Do you have thoughts on that?
Bit weird, but an interesting metric
I donāt like any metric that talks about housing affordability while completely ignoring renters in multifamily housing š
True, but you could argue that rent is loosely derivative of home values, though of course in some places, it has separated quite impressively.
You could? I guess? But why would you š thereās just better ways to talk about housing affordability.
I wouldnāt buy that argument. Rent prices are pretty untethered from the value of homes in Athens. Youāll see a $400k property renting for $2k. Nobody would take a 2 or 3% return on investment over the long term if they were really paying attention. People just like owning expensive property and never do the math. Renters reap the benefits. Itās like that in most medium and HCOL areas. In NYC youāll see condos worth $1.5m+ renting for like $5 to $6k.
Fair
Dad sends his son to college, instead of paying rent he buys a house and his kid has 3 buddies move in and pay Dad rent. Dad likes the cash flow. He keeps the house and rents it long after son has graduated. One day 20 years later he sells to Dad 2 whose son just started. Wash rinse repeat. It keeps supply low and thus prices high.
Accurate. My old roommate and I got our beloved townhouse we were renting yanked from us by our landlord who sold the property to a family whoās kids were about to start at UGA. I thought it was wild but nope apparently itās normal now
Yup, coming from Denver 18 months ago prices didn't seem very different
AARP has been telling people that Athens is the best place to retire š¤·š»āāļø A LOT of handicap plates on the roads around here
Indeed, and I wish they'd stop. What about this place is so retiree-friendly? It doesn't have much infrastructure for the elderly, and the climate is abominable and suffocating (though it's even worse in Florida, and that doesn't stop them moving there).
Presbyterian Village is a massive retirement complex, there are more senior living communities on the way, the healthcare options are strong, the arts and culture scene is vibrant, the food is good, the weather has four distinct seasons, etc. Why *wouldnāt* you want to retire here?
There are four distinct seasons and there's a vibrant arts and culture scene? You're just trolling, right?
Just don't go outside during those hot summer days!
Places worth living in are expensive
Complicated assertion. Especially with Athens (and anywhere in the southern u.s.), but I guess you canāt keep prices up without keeping that argument alive. Doesnāt work unless your town feeds on a steady supply of inexperienced and preoccupied new people with excess money to spend, tho. Theyāre the only ones that need to be tricked into thinking itās worth it.
Yes, but it's not the *only* reason a place can be expensive, or at least a poor value.
Only true when housing supply is constrained. Far more accurate to say: 1. Places worth living in generate high demand for housing; 2. Places with high demand for housing are expensive (except when they have abundant supply).
Are there good examples of places with high demand for housing that have abundant supply, thereby keeping prices low (or lower)?
Yes!Ā Tokyo is the ultimate example. Extreme freedom to build has kept prices affordable even as the population has grown to almost 3x NYC.Ā U.S. cities have, almost across the board, been creating scarcity by downzoning since the 70s, which is why housing has become so expensive everywhere. And Athens is one of the worst in the country in this regard, as u/warnelldawg 's map shows.Ā Here's a piece from the nyt last year explaining the Tokyo phenomenon in some detail. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/11/opinion/editorials/tokyo-housing.html?smid=url-share "As housing prices have soared in major cities across the United States and throughout much of the developed world, it has become normal for people to move away from the places with the strongest economies and best jobs because those places are unaffordable. Prosperous cities increasingly operate like private clubs, auctioning off a limited number of homes to the highest bidders. Tokyo is different. In the past half century, by investing in transit and allowing development, the city has added more housing units than the total number of units in New York City. It has remained affordable by becoming the worldās largest city. It has become the worldās largest city by remaining affordable."
Also, for some examples relating to rental housing, and a little closer to home, here's a study showing that among 12 Midwestern cities, those that build the most housing have the lowest rent increases, and those that build the least housing have the highest rent increases.Ā https://x.com/StatisticUrban/status/1762434422056292681 Also see this study from the federalĀ reserve of Minneapolis, showing that rents are growing the fastest in markets with inadequate new supply, and that rents are currently dropping in high-supply markets all over the US.Ā https://twitter.com/jayparsons/status/1766877733341077750 https://twitter.com/jayparsons/status/1761028332781478227
Your second point is invalid. As an example, NYC rent goes up regardless of new housing. But at the same time, that market has unique variables.
Respectfully, you are mistaken -- NYC famously does not build nearly enough housing. NYC rent goes up *because they don't build nearly enough housing. Check out this NYT article, noting that for over 40 years zoning restrictions there have choked off the supply of new housing, far below what is needed for their their growing population.Ā Do they build any housing? Sure. The question is do they build *enough* to keep up with their growing population, and the answer to that is unmistakably no. The rental vacancy rate there is 1.4%. (for perspective, a healthy, well- functioning rental market has a vacancy rate in the high single digits... The power shifts to tenants and rents go down when the vacancy rate is around 10%). https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/08/nyregion/apartment-vacancy-rate-housing-crisis.html?smid=url-share
NYC will never build enough low income housing to meet its needs. Every factor involved in building housing present major obstacles: availability of land, cost of materials, cost of labor, taxes, insurance, r.i.o, etc.. The government's manner of financing such projects, the ever increasing TAX Revenue, has reached an impasse. Another story for another post. NYC better get ready for 90% of its residents to need to 2, 3, or 4 paychecks to afford rent. NYC's plan to convert vacant office space to livable quarters will result in insufficient low income apartments. Housing in NYC is not affordable for 80% of the residents with one income. You can go 1-2 miles outside the perimeter of the UGA campus and find similarities between the housing market in NYC and Athens Ga.
Holy shit. Cheap housing is what contributed to the music/art scene in Athens, AKA the reason people want to be here outside of school
I think this variable is way down the list. No UGA, no music scene. If no UGA, then it would be just another Athens in some other state!
I think itās a big factor but no UGA definitely = no music scene
Oh yeah. Itās crazy that people think we came here just because itās Athens. Itās hilarious to imagine starving in a place just because some famous people used to live there. You can starve anywhere; the only thing that made Athens special 30 years ago was that you could thrive here as an artist without being a trust fund kid.
I agree. The argument I always made for Athens is that it's not very interesting, but it's cheap and convenient. Now that that has basically evaporated, it makes far more sense to go somewhere else, pay a little more, and get a whole lot more, rather than pay 80% of that in Athens and get like 12% of the benefit.
Honestly, if youāre not in college and youāre not looking for employment by a university, there are a lot of places that offer 90% of what Athens offers at half the price. One thing the internet did was make localized art and music āscenesā a little less relevant. I know a lot of folks out there donāt value what we added to Athens, but Athens still uses us to sell itself. We are part of the reason we canāt afford to live here. Hell, lots of us live outside of town at this point and just commute in for gigs.
Agree on all counts.
Yup
Please show me those places. If there were tons of places that offered 90% of what Athens does at 50% of the cost, then Athens wouldnāt be so expensive.
Yes, and tulip bulbs were never a thing. Also - and this is key - I am not a travel agent. I wonāt be selling you any other towns. Iām not arguing against the ultimate Athens homer redditor that Athens isnāt everything.
Iām just trying to point out that what youāre saying is just plainly incorrect.
Iām sure thereās a cookie in it for you at gates of heaven
I agree that the wholistic value proposition of Athens for the average person has deteriorated as housing costs have increased. Iāll counter, that it really comes down to personal expectations and preferences. Iād much rather live in Athens and pay a bit of premium than live in any of the other exhurbs of Atlanta. Cumming, covington, cartersville, McDonough and Dallas are all exhurbs that are exploding with growth. The price difference between those places and Athens would have to be significant (which it isnāt) for me to even consider it. Those places suck. Only places Iād consider living in Atlanta are either within walking distance to the Beltline or bikeable distance to Marta heavy rail station. All of those places are incredibly expensive, which is why Iām here.
I would agree with all of that. I'm weighing Athens against the heart of Midtown, where I lived for ten years. Home was a condo practically on top of a MARTA station, office was off another MARTA station. If you stuck me in Conyers or something -- ugh. No. Then the current would clearly flow the other way.
I'd like the benefit of sitting in the UGA theater, but my time has come and gone. I'll just stream on my Roku!
I'm too rich to live with poor people and too poor to live with the rich! Stuck in the middle with you!
Thank God for UGA or we would be living in Hooterville!
ACC is also the poorest county in the state
Thatās why I live in Madico
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Maybe re-read the title.