Urban vs. Suburban Lifestyle

[grant1simons2]

egh...

I wish we had a large amount of data on this. Of course there are people in their late 30s moving out to the burbs, but I don't think it's as many as it used to be.

[winterfan]

Yeah, I didn't get why economic forces would leave one stuck in the city. The city is generally a lot more expensive. I could see moving to the burbs if space really was an issue (I'm picturing raising a kid or two in a tiny NYC apartment, not a SFH neighborhood in Austin, Denver, Portland, etc.).

[Didier]

One commenter at CityLab grouses that millennials “supposed love of cities was superficial in the first place,” driven by the desire “to be seen in the trendiest bars.” If fashion appeal is really all cities have to offer, there’s no reason a developer-concocted simulacrum transplanted to a former cornfield can’t satisfy the same need.

Lol.

The premise that people are "stuck" in the city sounds pretty fake to me, as if suburbs are categorically more expensive than the city. In many cases it's the opposite. A more credible explanation is that most people eventually want to have a family, and most of those people perceive the more spacious suburbs to be a better place to raise a family. Especially if the premise is that "city" refers to the downtown core.

[VacantLuxuries]

Why do people feel like kids need an entire field to run around in? At least in Minneapolis, most of the SFH lots are more than enough room to run around in, and there are amazing parks all over.

[winterfan]

There is probably truth to it. But the writer was way too busy with being patronizing to add anything new to the conversation.

Again, I'd love to see data on the millennials who are leaving urban centers to see where they end up, not just a blanket label of 'suburbs'. I have a hard time believing they spend time living in a city and then suddenly accept having to drive fifteen minutes to a shopping center (and possibly further for a job), but I could imagine them relocating from a rental property to a house in a suburb with a historic downtown or one that has taken steps to not be like Woodbury.

I would too. There is a difference between NYC/Philly/Boston suburbs and Maple Grove/Burnsville/Woodbury. I like the city, but I would live in a lot of east coast suburbs. They often have the amenities that I find appealing about Minneapolis (sidewalks, downtowns, historic buildings/houses, etc.).

[Nick]

Some #data from a post I did last year

[RailBaronYarr]

Did the recent forum changeover add hashtag capability?? Finally!

[xandrex]

We're all stuck here, guys... That's why we paid a premium for city living instead of suburban living.
Stuck spending $1500/mo on a 1 BR in the city, instead of $900 in the burbs.
Stuck buying $250-500K houses, instead of $150-300K houses in the burbs.
Don't you get it, we're stuck!

Anecdata here, but many of my suburban friends actually paid more to live out there than they would have in the city. They did frequently have more amenities (underground parking included, W/D in unit), but those seemed to be more standard. When I've looked for comparable-ish apartments myself, I've found unless you're looking for a pretty crappy apartment, you'll very like pay the same or more to be in the suburbs.

Now buying a house is a another issue and likely speaks to how the markets are different.

[amiller92]

Anecdata here, but many of my suburban friends actually paid more to live out there than they would have in the city. They did frequently have more amenities (underground parking included, W/D in unit), but those seemed to be more standard. When I've looked for comparable-ish apartments myself, I've found unless you're looking for a pretty crappy apartment, you'll very like pay the same or more to be in the suburbs.

Hm. Are there really places with rents as high as LPM, Edition, Soo Line, 4Marq, 222 Hennepin, etc? Or maybe "comparable" is hard to define.

ETA: Rents for units we'd consider (2B/2BA) at LPM or Edition are way more than our mortgage + insurance + property taxes.

[xandrex]

I wasn't really referring to stuff in the LPM/Edition/4Marq level. I, unfortunately, don't have the income to afford such places. Still, it's pretty telling that luxury units in the burbs (popular places like St. Louis Park, sure, but still the burbs) are priced pretty much the same as anything along the Greenway.

But I'm referring more to a typical one-bedroom unit that might cost around $800-1000 in Minneapolis. A few of my suburban friends have similar units, but they're paying more (and they were seeing rent increases of nearly $100 per month each year).

[Tiller]

That could just be due to constrained supply in the suburbs, as opposed to greater demand.

[WHS]

It's not actually very mysterious why millennials will probably move to the burbs as they get older and wealthier.

[xandrex]

That could just be due to constrained supply in the suburbs, as opposed to greater demand.

Well, yeah. But that doesn't matter. The fact is that prices really are pretty comparable, and sometimes higher, in the 'burbs.

[mattaudio]

The fact is that prices really are pretty comparable, and sometimes higher, in the 'burbs.

Has this been established? I haven't seen evidence supporting it or against it. But I am having a hard time believing people are paying $1500-2000/mo for 1 bedroom apartments in the suburbs, with parking fees on top of that.

[amiller92]

It's not actually very mysterious why millennials will probably move to the burbs as they get older and wealthier.

Funny thing is that I bet almost no one could state the crime rate in their neighborhood with any accuracy, much less alternate neighborhoods. (A cynic might suggest that popular perception of "low crime" actually means "white.")

They also probably don't grasp how much more important they are as parents to their child's academic achievement than "good schools" but there they probably at least have a sense of which schools have students that get good test results.

[acs]

Well to your first point, thanks to the internet you can pretty easily map and compare crime across the metro:

https://www.raidsonline.com/

go ahead and play around with it, but be warned the more and more violent crimes you include the less and less great Minneapolis and certain suburbs look.

[QuietBlue]

Hm. Are there really places with rents as high as LPM, Edition, Soo Line, 4Marq, 222 Hennepin, etc? Or maybe "comparable" is hard to define.

I don't think there is anything quite that high. Like you noted, finding comparable places to compare can be tricky.

But to provide some more data, a 1BR in one of the shiny new apartment buildings with tons of amenities in Eagan will run about $1200 -$1500 depending on the size, with some going up to $1700 (those are 1BRs with an office/den in addition to the living room). The most expensive units I've seen are 3BRs in the Flats at Cedar Grove, which top out at $2800.

So yeah, definitely not on the level of the most expensive places in Minneapolis, but more expensive than many.

[WHS]

Minneapolis and Saint Paul (particularly Minneapolis) have a bimodal distribution of housing affordability, with extremely disproportionate shares of housing affordable at very high and very low incomes, and fairly large shares of housing affordable at lower incomes. But there's a pretty big shortfall of moderate-income housing, affordable to families making about 50-80k a year.

It might seem like those families could avail themselves of the even cheaper housing, but by and large, it's either income-restricted or located in places that don't hold a lot of appeal for the middle class, due to the aforementioned crime and poor schools (or the perception of such, which in this context is effectively the same thing).

[cnelson]

You're only going to get those prices on newish construction, which there's a bit less of in the suburbs, but they do exist -

http://www.apartmentguide.com/apartment ... 100025749/
https://www.padmapper.com/listings/1468 ... a-MN-55435
https://www.padmapper.com/listings/1144 ... k-MN-55416
http://www.apartmentsearch.com/apartmen ... t-West-End
http://www.apartmentsearch.com/apartmen ... son-Center

[xandrex]

The fact is that prices really are pretty comparable, and sometimes higher, in the 'burbs.

Has this been established? I haven't seen evidence supporting it or against it. But I am having a hard time believing people are paying $1500-2000/mo for 1 bedroom apartments in the suburbs, with parking fees on top of that.

No, I wasn’t able to find any data with a reliable breakdown of the Twin Cities (and even if it could, is it fair to look at urban parts of St. Louis Park as “suburban” while lumping in Kenny with more urban parts of Minneapolis?). Instead, I’m relying on—admittedly potentially faulty—anecdata. When I was searching for an apartment last year (or when I helped others), I sometimes searched to see what I could afford if I looked further out. The result was…not much. Places were roughly in the same price range (and frequently higher). They overwhelmingly included parking spots, but most of the apartments in Minneapolis that I looked at included a parking spot.

I can also say that my friends who previously lived in Roseville and St. Louis Park (in apartments roughly comparable to my last one) in not particularly great locations not only had significantly higher rent than I had, but they also saw eye-popping increases annually.