The “condo or home?” question has been causing debates and sometimes even fights for many generations. While some talk of the land and value one can get by going farther out, others will not give up their small nook in an exciting city for acres of land anywhere else.
When the location is the same, the logic of “more space will cost you more” is generally the standard — a larger house with a yard will logically cost more than a one-bedroom apartment.
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But according to numbers crunched by real estate platform Point2Homes, this tendency breaks in a number of U.S. cities. Houses sell for less than 75% of the listed condos in Detroit, 39% of listings in Ohio’s Akron and 36% of the listings in Cleveland.
You Can Buy Four Homes For The Price Of One Condo In This City
The reasons have to do with the fact that, in certain cities, single-family homes are generally older and more dilapidated than the condo towers built in the last decade.
Other cities where homes are generally cheaper than condos include Chicago, Pittsburgh and Jersey City.
“The biggest price difference is in Detroit, where a single-family home is $171,000 cheaper than a condo — although some houses here might need extra TLC,” write the report’s authors. “This cost difference means one could almost buy four detached homes for the median price of one condo.”
One city across the U.S. came out exactly tit for tat — in New York’s Rochester, the median price is $183,000 for both an apartment and a single-family home.
Meanwhile, Washington’s Belleville and Killeen in Texas are the cities where homes are significantly more expensive — the former, which is a high-end suburb popular among high-earning Amazon (AMZN) workers from Seattle, commands a median $1.525 million for a home.
A condo, meanwhile, will only set one back $535,000.
This Is How Long It Takes Buyers With A Typical Income To Upsize
Point2Homes further broke down how long it would take people with a typical income to upsize from a condo to a house. In Rhode Island’s Providence, the difference between $334,000 and $331,000 would only take someone earning the median $60,970 a month’s salary to achieve.
This is significantly less feasible in Honolulu, which has seen an influx of high-earning professionals come in during the pandemic. With an average price of $1,198,000, a median home is 164% more expensive than a condo and would take a household earning a median income more than 10 years to close.
“Back on the mainland, California sets itself apart with the most cities where matching the upsizing price difference would take quite some time,” write the report’s authors. “Perhaps surprisingly, it would be easier in Los Angeles and Long Beach than in Irvine and Glendale, both secondary cities within the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim metro.”
Cities where the gap is easiest to close include Kansas City as well as Virginia’s Norfolk and New York’s Buffalo — in the latter, the difference is between $198,000 for a house and $188,000 for a condo.
“Cities where the gap is easiest to close include Kansas City as well as Virginia’s Norfolk and New York’s Buffalo,” writes the report.
