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Rent vs. Buy Visualization of Top 50 Cities

trulia.movity.com

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Re: Rent vs. Buy Visualization of Top 50 Cities

#11

Post by mryall »

keiferski wrote: post #5
mryall wrote: post #2

I was hoping to see how affordable it is to buy in different cities around the world. Unfortunately, this data covers 50 cities in just one country. It should really be the "Top 50 Cities in the US". The US-centric nature of websites like this is even more irritating when they don't state it up front.

Trulia's Q1 2011 Rent vs. Buy Index provides guidance to help you make a smart decision on whether it is better to rent or buy in each of America's 50 largest cities by population.

I meant on this site. People coming to it from a different direction might have more context or be less geographically distributed.

Re: Rent vs. Buy Visualization of Top 50 Cities

#12

Post by natrius »

mryall wrote: post #2

I was hoping to see how affordable it is to buy in different cities around the world. Unfortunately, this data covers 50 cities in just one country. It should really be the "Top 50 Cities in the US". The US-centric nature of websites like this is even more irritating when they don't state it up front.

This same page for the largest 50 cities in the world would be useless. Unless you're very rich or European, it's very likely that the only comparisons that matter are domestic.

Re: Rent vs. Buy Visualization of Top 50 Cities

#14

Post by mryall »

leelin wrote: post #8

Very very cool! I'm wondering why they chose 15 / 20 as the cutoff ratios though. I'm a licensed real estate agent in NYC and I've helped a number of clients make purchases where it was actually cheaper to buy than rent (usually a studio or 1BR, or outside Manhattan). It seems like you can finance a home purchase these days at 5% or less on 30-year fixed. Add in the mortgage interest tax deduction and you are really…

I hope people aren't buying at 30x rental. The current US interest rates are at historic lows, so unless you get a fixed-rate mortgage you're going to be struggling when the interest rate goes up again.

Re: Rent vs. Buy Visualization of Top 50 Cities

#15

Post by jpwagner »

ianferrel wrote: post #7

The concentration of high-population areas in California does some strange things to the map when the city circles are sized by population. The positions don't even seem to be constant. If you sort by something else, the circle move around, but they don't necessarily move back to the same place. I have nothing interesting to add about the content of this site; I was too befuddled by its presentation.

It looks like it does not attempt to preserve geographic location exactly.

It seems to load them in alphabetical order and fits the next one as best it can given the already plotted bubbles.

Re: Rent vs. Buy Visualization of Top 50 Cities

#16

Post by mryall »

natrius wrote: post #12
mryall wrote: post #2

I was hoping to see how affordable it is to buy in different cities around the world. Unfortunately, this data covers 50 cities in just one country. It should really be the "Top 50 Cities in the US". The US-centric nature of websites like this is even more irritating when they don't state it up front.

This same page for the largest 50 cities in the world would be useless. Unless you're very rich or European, it's very likely that the only comparisons that matter are domestic.

The top cities for buy/rent ratios are not necessarily the largest. And I know quite a few people who own properties in other countries who are neither rich nor European. One was an English IT contractor living in Australia who bought a small property in Auckland.

Your "domestic" is not the same as everyone else's.

Re: Rent vs. Buy Visualization of Top 50 Cities

#17

Post by shashashasha »

leelin wrote: post #8

Very very cool! I'm wondering why they chose 15 / 20 as the cutoff ratios though. I'm a licensed real estate agent in NYC and I've helped a number of clients make purchases where it was actually cheaper to buy than rent (usually a studio or 1BR, or outside Manhattan). It seems like you can finance a home purchase these days at 5% or less on 30-year fixed. Add in the mortgage interest tax deduction and you are really…

(usually a studio or 1BR, or outside Manhattan)

I think this is the main qualifier. As I understand it, the data is comparing prices to rent vs buy on similar 2 bedrooms.

Re: Rent vs. Buy Visualization of Top 50 Cities

#18

Post by showerst »

chanri wrote: post #9

The statistics on this infographic are misleading. It does not cost 200,000 to buy a house in San Diego or San Jose! Maybe the average for downtown San Jose and San Diego are close to 200k, but that is the poorest area of both cities and not what should be used to compare. The green bubble on the point for San Diego should be much much smaller in radius(like miniscule), otherwise you think the 200k number refers to t…

I believe that they're basing this data on stats collected by the census, so you have take the city as defined by the census bounds, which aren't necessarily similar to common conceptions of what area is 'in' a city.

Re: Rent vs. Buy Visualization of Top 50 Cities

#20

Post by shashashasha »

jpwagner wrote: post #15
ianferrel wrote: post #7

The concentration of high-population areas in California does some strange things to the map when the city circles are sized by population. The positions don't even seem to be constant. If you sort by something else, the circle move around, but they don't necessarily move back to the same place. I have nothing interesting to add about the content of this site; I was too befuddled by its presentation.

It looks like it does not attempt to preserve geographic location exactly. It seems to load them in alphabetical order and fits the next one as best it can given the already plotted bubbles.

(I made this)

Sorry if this is confusing! This visualization is a Dorling Cartogram, which sacrifices geographic location accuracy in order to not have overlapping points (the East Coast would be a tight unreadable bundle otherwise, as well as the Bay Area). The basemap is intentionally left as just an outline to provide some visual context.

A great example of this in action is the Olympic Medal count visualization by the NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/08/04/sports/olympic...

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