I had two ideas for today’s column:
1. The best kind of home to buy in Pittsburgh when World War III pops off, or …
2. A new report from Realtor.com observes that “using a standard 20% down payment and May’s average mortgage rate of 6.82%, just three major metros allow median-income earners to purchase a median-priced home without exceeding 30% of their income: Pittsburgh, Detroit and St. Louis.”
One of those is so bleak that it’s hard to talk about, and the other is so bleak that it’s kind of funny. (You decide which is which.)
When you’re a site called Realtor.com (which presumably has an interest in the sale of houses) and you keep blurting out brutal truths like “The Coasts Are Out of Reach,” and “What Will Make America Affordable Again?” then you’re in a bad place.
If you’re curious, Pittsburgh’s May median list price is $249,900 (curiously, $100 short of my unofficial cutoff number for “Affordable-ish Housing”), median household income is $72,935, and the share of income going to housing is 27.4%. For reference, the May median list price in Los Angeles is $1,195,000, which requires “104.5% of the area’s median income, meaning the average household would be unable to cover annual housing costs, even with zero spending on anything else.”
Clearly, something has gone terribly wrong if buying a house is this ridiculously difficult for everyone else. I mean, sure, California’s got great weather and lots to do, but we have sun-kissed beaches (well, Sandcastle) and glamorous stars (does Sidney Crosby count?) at home.
For sale: 116 Walter St., Allentown, $175,000.
You probably wouldn’t want to fly in a plane built before 1900 because, well, it hadn’t exactly been invented yet. But a home built in 1900, using that era’s technology and craftsmanship, is probably still pretty livable, given basic amounts of care over time. This simple wood-frame home was built in 1900 exactly, up in the Hilltop neighborhood of Allentown, and still looks good. Sure, there’s no garage or central air, and the unfinished basement is a tad creepy. But this house will probably still be standing when Pittsburgh is nothing but AI chatbots warbling the “Pittsburgh Polka” to each other.
For rent: 518 Lockhart St., Deutschtown, $995/month.
Most neighborhoods have a personality of sorts, but somehow Deutschtown ended up with several. The are so many beautiful 19th-century brick rowhouses like this one, maintained or restored. Then, you’ll turn a corner and there’s another long-abandoned home that’s going to be hard to save. Even the main drag on East Ohio Street illustrates this duality — it’s either some of the best restaurants in Pittsburgh (Siempre Algo, Fig & Ash, EYV, Subba, soon-to-open Amboy), or completely abandoned wrecks, with little in between. Obviously, I think its benefits far outweigh its shortcomings, but your mileage may vary.
For sale: 2617 Spring Garden Ave., Spring Garden, $250,000.
Though Spring Garden seems to imply a certain sun-dappled, bucolic bliss that this grubby post-industrial neighborhood can’t really deliver, the prices are still reasonable. Plus, you’re not far from Downtown and the usual North Side attractions. This is actually an oddly-shaped two-unit affair, with a big three bedroom single-family home and a smaller two-bedroom unit adjacent.
For rent: Craig Manor, 325 N. Craig St., Oakland, $939-1,915/month.
Once upon a time, North Oakland was where artsy weirdos went in search of cheap rents (and drugs, to be honest). Now, it’s one of the most obvious examples of actual gentrification in Pittsburgh. Still, it’s also one of the few places where local opposition to dense housing (or building anything) has been muted, so it will likely continue to grow outward and upward. I truly wish places like Pittsburgh Filmmakers and Record Graveyard were still around, but if something has to replace it, I can console myself with delicious dim sum, Yemeni coffee, and Indian street food.
For sale: 2706 California Ave., Marshall-Shadeland, $73,000.
There was a time when sub-$100K houses were pretty common, and it wasn’t 100 years ago when this was built — it was more like 15 years ago. But now, when you see a price like that, you should assume it’s going to have some key pieces missing, like a roof or a wall. But sometimes a perfectly habitable house like this is right there; it’s just not pretty. It only lacks a few things of importance, like central air, and even features a few, like a giant cement garage carved into the hillside).
For rent: 1608 Lowrie St., Troy Hill, $1,100/month.
Troy Hill seems like a lovely neighborhood with lots of fascinating layers of history. Unfortunately, there are also layers of Insulbrick siding, rusty metal awnings, and other once-fashionable updates to early-1900s housing stock that don’t look so hot anymore. Well, this isn’t one of those — it’s a stout, red-painted brick rowhouse with black trim, and the price is nice.
This article appears in Jun 25 – Jul 1, 2025.
