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The 10 Most and Least Affordable Cities in the US [Saving Money]

Posted on February 20, 2009
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The National Association of Home Builders has released their Housing Opportunity Index covering the most and least affordable cities in the country. Here’s a quick rundown of the top 10 metropolitan areas with a population over 500,000.
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Ten Least Affordable Cities

1. New York-White Plains-Wayne, NY-NJ
2. San Francisco-San mateo-Redwood City, CA
3. Nassau-Suffolk, NY
4. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale, CA
5. Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall, FL
6. Santa Ana-Anaheim-Irvine, CA
7. El Paso, TX
8. Newark-Union, NJ-PA
9. Honolulu, HI
10. Seattle-Bellevue-Everett, WA

Ten Most Affordable Cities

1. Indianapolis-Carmel, IN
2. Warren-Troy-Farmington Hills, MI
3. Youngstown-Warren-Boardman, OH-PA
4. Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn, MI
5. Grand Rapids-Wyoming, MI
6. Syracuse, NY
7. Dayton, OH
8. Akron, OH
9. Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor, OH
10. Scranton-Wilkes-Barre, PA

If the big city isn’t your thing, you may be more interested in checking into the most and least affordable cities under 500,000:

Ten Least Affordable Cities with a Population Under 500,000

1. San Luis Obispo-Paso Robles, CA
2. Ocean City, NJ
3. Santa Cruz-Watsonville, CA
4. Napa, CA
5. Flagstaff, AZ
6. Medford, OR
7. Bend, OR
8. Mount Vernon-Anacortes, WA
9. St. George, UT
10. Laredo, TX

Ten Most Affordable Cities with a Population Under 500,000

1. Lansing-East Lansing, MI
2. Sandusky, OH
3. Lima, OH
4. Springfield, OH
5. Bay City, MI
6. Battle Creek, MI
7. Canton-Massillon, OH
8. Saginaw-Saginaw Township North, MI
9. Utica-Rome, NY
10. Binghamton, NY

For more fun stats brought to you by NAHB and Wells Fargo, be sure to head to the official Housing Opportunity Index page below. For a slightly different take, check out last year’s guide to the best US cities to live, work, and play. Let’s hear how the NAHB’s list matches up to your expectations (good god, Ohio!) in the comments.

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PropertyShark Dishes the Dirt on Your Future Home [Real Estate]

Posted on February 18, 2009
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PropertyShark is an astoundingly detailed real estate search engine. By aggregating public records, it provides an in-depth look at individual homes, and the real deal on your potential new neighborhood.

Enter an address into one of the markets currently covered by PropertyShark—it's unfortunately a little coast-centric at the moment, without much middle-of-the-country coverage. If PropertyShark can access the direct records of the property it will do so; if not, you get a summary of the surrounding area using a nearest-neighbor system. You can review a dizzying amount of information, like the current owners, most recent sale, sales history, assessments, and taxes. There are multiple maps that show how the building you searched for stacks up against the surrounding area, how tall surrounding buildings are, how frequently buildings have been sold, and much more. You can also review charts of the neighborhood with all kinds of breakdowns, such as percentage of households with families and age distributions.

PropertyShark is a handy tool for getting a feel for the neighborhood before investing the time and footwork into actually visiting it. It’s a free service, based on public records.






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Avoid these Five Common Credit Card Company Tricks [Money]

Posted on January 26, 2009
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Even if you’ve tried reading the fine print from your credit card company, it’s rarely obvious what it all means. Weblog Get Rich Slowly takes pity on us, breaking down five common tricks to watch for.

The post breaks down five promises, explaining the trap set up by each promise, then detailing you can avoid it. For example:

Promise #3: “0% APR on balance transfers for 12 months!”

The Trap: Two-fold. First off, it’s almost impossible these days to transfer a credit card balance without paying 3% of the balance upfront. Transfer $5000 and you’ll pay $150 before we even start talking about paying down the balance.

Second, almost all card companies take your payments and apply them first to balances with the lowest interest rate. Say you transfer $1000 to a card at 0%. The card’s interest rate on new purchases is 13.99%. This month you buy $500 worth of stuff with the card, then pay $500 when the bill comes. Do you still have a $1000 balance at 0%? No, you have a $500 balance at 0% and a $500 balance at $13.99%! Why? Because your $500 payment went toward the balance sitting at 0%, not toward the balance sitting at the 13.99%.

Your Plan: A couple of options. The easy thing to do would be to swear off credit for a bit — transfer the balance then don’t use the card until it is paid off. (You’d stilll get hit with the 3% fee, but it might be worth it if you had a high interest rate on your old card.)

If you have decent credit and a little more self control, you could get a new credit card that offers a 0% rate on purchases for 12 months, then use it while you pay off your old card’s balance. By doing so, you focus on paying off your high-interest debt while floating new purchases at 0%. If you follow my logic, this is very similar to transferring your balance at 0% but without the fee. Either way, recognize that the 0% rate doesn’t last forever and the bill eventually comes due.

Be sure to head to the post to school yourself on the other common tricks to be wary of. If you’ve ever been suckered into a similarly less-than-ideal credit situation, share your experience in the comments. Photo by Andres Rueda.






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Download Suze Orman’s 2009 Action Plan Free This Week Only [Personal Finance]

Posted on January 8, 2009
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Financial planning guru Suze Orman's latest book—Suze Orman’s 2009 Action Plan—is available as a free download from Oprah through January 15th.

The book—normally $10 if you get it through Amazon—covers everything from credit, savings, and spending to retirement, paying for college, and real estate. Here's the low-down from the Amazon product description:

If in late 2007 you were told that over the next twelve months housing would crater to 20% below it’s all-time peak, unemployment would rise from below 5% to nearly 8%, stocks would fall nearly 50%, and a gallon of gas would spike to more than $4 (and then drop below $2) you would probably have shrugged it off as just a whole lot of doomsday-scenario crankiness. But that’s exactly what we all had to live through and continue to grapple with in 2009.

My 2009 Action Plan is designed to make sure you are ready for the unexpected—this year and every year forward. I most certainly hope things get better for us all, but in the meantime I want to make sure you have a plan in place that will protect you no matter what “what ifs” lay ahead.

While you’re grabbing free ebooks on surviving the recession, be sure to check out Leo Babauta’s previously mentioned Thriving on Less.






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