A few weeks ago MSN gave Sperling's Best Places a call and asked them to put together a ranking of most affordable places to live right now. The survey is officially called the 2008 MSN Real Estate Most-livable Bargain Markets list. Okay, kind of long but we'll take a look at it anyway. The criteria was as follows; concentrate on the 100 largest metro areas, find the most affordable ones by using the median income to median home price ratio, then take into account unemployment rate, commute times and the availability of decent entertainment and recreation.
Here are the top nine cities, each with a population over 500,000; Wichita, Kan., Omaha, Neb., Harrisburg-Carlisle, Pa., Madison, Wis., San Antonio, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Dallas-Fort Worth and Tulsa, Okla. It's a fine collection of urban areas that are offering residents reasonable housing and good job opportunities, two very important elements in today's trying economic environment.
A notable no-show on the list is Las Vegas. The above criteria would seem to give Sin City a chance at a decent placement in the ranking. The only area that had been a problem two-three years ago was the housing as prices galloped out of control on speculation and easy mortgage money. Now, however, those prices have dramatically retreated toward the pre-boom levels, making Southern Nevada properties again good value for a real estate buyer. There certainly has been enough national coverage of the market troubles here and the subsequent declining prices, so those who prepared the list should've known about it and include it in their calculations.
Well, there is always next year, I guess.
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