Columbus Housing is Affordable
Friday, February 15th, 2008Looking at Columbus among cities world wide… Columbus housing is affordable.
It’s a long survey, lots of it is redundant. It is a pdf (I hate pdf’s) but it was worth skimming. Columbus is among the affordable cities based on housing and income… in six western English speaking countries. The 4th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey by Wendell Cox and Hugh Pavlitech. Page 7. Page 27 and Page 34 show how affordable Columbus is. Many Ohio cities are on the list of the most affordable cites, Youngstown is the number two most affordable city in all those countries behind Thunder Bay in Canada. Toledo is on the affordable list, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Akron, Canton and Dayton are there…
I skimmed for something, anything about how and why Columbus is different than some of the other markets on the list of cities with affordable housing. If it’s there I can’t find it. Columbus is not a depressed market. Some of the markets on the affordable list are there because of a depressed economy… rust belt… manufacturing moved south or out of the country.
Not the case in Columbus. Geographically maybe. Economically? No.
Why is Columbus affordable? In part because of urban sprawl… because we can build out into the cornfields and have for years. Low cost land on the fringes is part of what has made Columbus affordable. Land has not been rationed in Central Ohio.
“That’s just not right!”
“Says who?”
It may not be politically correct. It is certainly not “green” to suggest there is anything positive about urban sprawl… and the price of gas is going up….
Thanks to former Ohioan and real estate blogger Jeff Royce in Fairfax VA for the heads up about the survey.
