If you’re looking to buy or sell your home, there’s no better place in the country to be than right her in Rochester! We’ve heard the doom and gloom over the past several months that home prices in most areas around the country remain weak. But not everywhere. Right here in the surrounding areas of Rochester, N.Y., houses are a great buy. According to Forbes.com, a relatively new 3,000-square-foot home on a nice quarter of an acre lot in a good school district will fetch between $300,000 and $400,000. “The real estate here is very inexpensive, it’s about the same as renting and it actually makes sense for families,” says Delores Conway, a real estate economics professor at the University of Rochester. “The houses are solid investments with good school systems that are fairly priced.”
In addition to great school system, real estate in Rochester is attractive is because Rochester is a college town–and homes in college towns tend to hold their value because the employment situation is more stable. The University of Rochester, will not be impacted by the financial troubles in the public sector, and is one of the biggest employers in New York State.
According to recent data put together by real estate website Zillow.com, Rochester is the best place to buy a home in the United States. One of the reasons Zillow.com rates Rochester so highly is that its foreclosure rate is a minuscule 0.24%.
In order to figure out the best places to purchase a home in the country, Zillow.com looked at four statistical measures in 125 metro areas as of the end of February. These factors included affordability, as measured by home price to income ratios; the unemployment picture (both the absolute figure and how it’s trending over time); the foreclosure situation; and year-over-year housing price trends.
What does this news mean for seniors? You shouldn’t have to wait to put your home on the market in order to move to a senior living community or to “rightsize” to a maintenance free lifestyle. Now is the time to take advantage of the steady market with its pool of employed, qualified buyers.