When in Cincy I was making 37k a year (which was basically me being taken wild advantage of, but that's another story) and was paying around $900/month on housing. Before choosing to leave for NYC I talked with a couple firms, both offering between 54-58k. I am lucky in that I received some sizable scholarships and my parents were able to foot the entirety of the remaining tuition during my 7 years of college. $1,200/month would have been extremely easy for me to do at that point. And even easier if I didn't have a car which was combined around $450/month even for a car that was only $16k to begin with.

 

I know the cost of living is different (although not quite as much as some would lead you to believe) but here in NYC I pay $1,100/month for my apartment and make $64,100. I could easily afford a few hundred more a month in rent and still live comfortably while continuing to save and invest like I do. Most of my peers here and back in Cincinnati were making between 55-80k which put $1,200/month in a position of ease. And that's not even getting into duel income scenarios where that would be a drop in the bucket.

 

How are you only paying $1100 a month for an apt in NYC?  My bedroom in a dark, sunlight deprived two bedroom East Village walk up at E 3rd and 2nd Ave cost $1000/mo 15 years ago. You are getting a deal!

Easy, I live way the hell out into Brooklyn in an area that has essentially nothing trendy about it haha. I'm closer to the ocean than I am to Manhattan. That and it's a ground floor apartment with new, but cheap finishes.

 

I'm in the early stages of buying a place and everything I'm looking at would come in around $1,200-$1,500/month for mortgage, co-op dues, and insurance. So my days of living super affordably are going to change but considering what most people I know here are paying in rent I won't argue.

A lot of young people in Midwestern cities are conditioned to pay these four-digit rents by peers and the Supermax buildings they lived in off campus during their later years of college and/or grad school.

I think my rent in our 4 bed apartment my junior and senior year in college was $300/ea with plus utilities

This conversation is depressing the hell out of me. I pay far too much for my apartment in LA. I'm in a good neighborhood, and the apartment is nice and has off street parking which is huge in LA since parking is crazy here and parking enforcement is nuts and tickets are $80. Still, I barely can contribute to my savings account, much less invest, because my housing costs eat up so much of my income. $300 a month with utilities is unbelievable. I know some of those places around Clifton are pretty cheap, but that seems like a total steal even for that area.

I think the most I was ever paying when I lived in Clifton was $450 a month, with utilities on top of that, but I was splitting the bill on everything 7 ways so it wasn't bad. 7 guys in one house sounds crazy, but our house had 3 kitchens and two full bathrooms (well 3 but the landlord never fixed up the one in the basement so we never used it) so it wasn't bad at all. It basically functioned as three apartments that happened to not have any dividing walls between the units.

 

When I moved to Dayton I was paying about $550 for my one-bedroom in Grafton Hill. It wasn't the nicest, but I put up with it for a year before buying a house here. Years of living cheaply had helped me save up enough to put a full 20% down on a house, and while I'm currently a bit tight on what I'm able to put in my bank account each month as "emergency funds", I'm still able to put away about a quarter of my after-tax paycheck into investments and an IRA, and that's on top of the retirement fund that gets taken out of my paycheck automatically through work. I'm definitely lucky that I don't currently have a car payment and plan on driving my Civic until it dies, and that work is making the payments on my student loans for me for a while, so I'll have a lot less to pay back on those.

 

 

I just biked past the Baldwin building today and notice that they installed grids on the windows.  I don't think that they actually replaced the 1980s-era tinted replacement windows.  Anyway, it looks really good. 

They're completely new windows.  The old ones had no operable sashes and these do. 

I pass by that building a few times a week and never saw them replacing them.  It seems like all of them were installed in 2-3 days. 

This conversation is depressing the hell out of me. I pay far too much for my apartment in LA. I'm in a good neighborhood, and the apartment is nice and has off street parking which is huge in LA since parking is crazy here and parking enforcement is nuts and tickets are $80. Still, I barely can contribute to my savings account, much less invest, because my housing costs eat up so much of my income. $300 a month with utilities is unbelievable. I know some of those places around Clifton are pretty cheap, but that seems like a total steal even for that area.

 

I hear you.  We're on the verge of moving to DC as my wife is getting transferred to Silver Spring.  We're looking at two-bedroom apartments just to have a little space for hobbies, a home office for me, etc.  It seems anything in a decent walkable neighborhood in Maryland near the Metro is $2,000+/month for a 1,000sf apartment, plus utilities. 

 

For a few years in the mid-2000s I paid $750 for a very nice two-bedroom apartment in Hyde Park, and got a garage.  Hell, my house mortgage was only $1500/mo, and it was only that high because we paid it off in seven years.

 

Granted, some expenses go down (sell the cars, cancel the car insurance, avoid property taxes, etc.), but that $2k/month will be a painful check to write.

Everybody's always getting transferred to D.C. since its so hard to keep people there due to R/E prices. Wealthy foreign interests that have no price sensitivity fund their offspring's lifestyles in one of our most European cities. If we had more cities like D.C. the price pressure would be off but we kept sinking money into Houston and Atlanta for too long.

I pass by that building a few times a week and never saw them replacing them.  It seems like all of them were installed in 2-3 days.

 

You're mistaken. They replaced all of the windows gradually over the spring. The new windows are really impressive and make a huge difference to the aesthetics of the building, both inside and out.

 

Here's a photo from March, where you can see they had mostly finished replacing the western facade:

 

Here's a photo from the interior (also in March), showing the new windows are operable:

 

 

 

Everybody's always getting transferred to D.C. since its so hard to keep people there due to R/E prices. Wealthy foreign interests that have no price sensitivity fund their offspring's lifestyles in one of our most European cities. If we had more cities like D.C. the price pressure would be off but we kept sinking money into Houston and Atlanta for too long.

 

Yep. That's the big point of the "gentrification" discussion that most people miss. Prices are rising in walkable neighborhoods with cool things to do because we have so few of those. If we had been building more of those over the past 70 years instead of endless sprawl, this problem would be virtually nonexistent.

The solitary house with a driveway that opens directly onto Columbia Parkway is actually 2 houses...the upper house quite obviously used to be accessed from McMillan St. 

https://www.sibcycline.com/Listing/CIN/1535362/2106-2110-Columbia-Pkwy-Walnut-Hills-OH-45202

The solitary house with a driveway that opens directly onto Columbia Parkway is actually 2 houses...the upper house quite obviously used to be accessed from McMillan St. 

https://www.sibcycline.com/Listing/CIN/1535362/2106-2110-Columbia-Pkwy-Walnut-Hills-OH-45202

 

There is also a pair of houses at 1850-1852 Columbia Parkway.

You could not pay me to live in a house with driveway access from Columbia Parkway.

Not sure what the point of this article was:

http://www.wcpo.com/news/insider/decreasing-home-prices-dont-equate-to-faltering-communities?page=2

 

The precise boundaries of a "neighborhood" are often as arbitrary as using Jan 1 and Dec 31 to begin and end a "year".  Change the boundaries by 1-2 blocks in either direction and use a July 1 - June 30 fiscal year and you get completely different yet equally useless statistics. 

 

Two condo developments that seemed to have nothing to do with the WHRF have nearly sold out -- one on McMillan near the Union Institute and another on WM H Taft at Hackberry or thereabouts.  I was more surprised by the brisk sales of the McMillan project given its lousy surroundings.  But combined we are only talking about 15 or so condos. 

 

We're still nowhere close to having 25 new homes under construction on the neighborhood's 200+ empty lots plus 50-100 condo sales per year.  There are signs of life but it's simply a fact that Walnut Hills is not roaring back to life. 

You could not pay me to live in a house with driveway access from Columbia Parkway.

 

Only for those with an adrenaline addiction and a Tesla Model S P100D to hit that 2.3 second 60mph merge.

 

Not sure what the point of this article was:

http://www.wcpo.com/news/insider/decreasing-home-prices-dont-equate-to-faltering-communities?page=2

 

The precise boundaries of a "neighborhood" are often as arbitrary as using Jan 1 and Dec 31 to begin and end a "year".  Change the boundaries by 1-2 blocks in either direction and use a July 1 - June 30 fiscal year and you get completely different yet equally useless statistics. 

 

Two condo developments that seemed to have nothing to do with the WHRF have nearly sold out -- one on McMillan near the Union Institute and another on WM H Taft at Hackberry or thereabouts.  I was more surprised by the brisk sales of the McMillan project given its lousy surroundings.  But combined we are only talking about 15 or so condos. 

 

We're still nowhere close to having 25 new homes under construction on the neighborhood's 200+ empty lots plus 50-100 condo sales per year.  There are signs of life but it's simply a fact that Walnut Hills is not roaring back to life.

 

What condo development on McMillan are you talking about? I wasn't aware of any new condos near there. Walnut Hills is a very large neighborhood that encompasses a wide range of house prices, so looking at *average* house prices won't be very useful. Certain pockets of Walnut Hills are seeing an upswing, while others are stagnant or decreasing.

 

 

This one:

https://www.sibcycline.com/Listing/CIN/1541304/705-E-McMillan-St-2-Walnut-Hills-OH-45206

 

Pretty close to I-71, across from the Ace Hardware.  Looks like every unit is pending except for the one I linked to.

I drove by the Windsor School Development.  It looks like the school portion of the apartments is done, it looks nice.  It also seemed as if they were pouring concrete outback for I think the other apartment development they are doing on that land.  I will take time to actually drive by that part next time.

This one:

https://www.sibcycline.com/Listing/CIN/1541304/705-E-McMillan-St-2-Walnut-Hills-OH-45206

 

Pretty close to I-71, across from the Ace Hardware.  Looks like every unit is pending except for the one I linked to.

 

Ahh yeah. I thought you were talking about something on the west side of I-71.

 

The 600-800 blocks of E McMillan are starting to see some interesting new developments. There's the new Landlocked Social House at the corner of Dix. And I suspect in the next few years we'll see something open up at the corner of May St. I could see a beer garden being successful at one of the automotive shops on the south side of that intersection.

Joseph's Auto & their Columbia REI property division (of the whole Dennison Hotel thing) own one of the cool buildings on the East side of Gilbert near the Prouts Corner intersection. I wonder if they will participate in the rebirth or wait and hold till a Fortune 500 company wants this property too?

 

This one:

https://www.sibcycline.com/Listing/CIN/1541304/705-E-McMillan-St-2-Walnut-Hills-OH-45206

 

Pretty close to I-71, across from the Ace Hardware.  Looks like every unit is pending except for the one I linked to.

 

just as a tidbit those were apartments for a few years before they said them as condos. Also the guy who did those also did the Verona and the Cooper.

Joseph's Auto & their Columbia REI property division (of the whole Dennison Hotel thing) own one of the cool buildings on the East side of Gilbert near the Prouts Corner intersection. I wonder if they will participate in the rebirth or wait and hold till a Fortune 500 company wants this property too?

 

Where is Prouts Corner? Do you mean Peebles Corner?

Doh sorry got my P corners mixed up. Prouts is Glenway & Cleves Warsaw.

 

They own this building under the Josephs Oldsmobile name. https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1248853,-84.4908504,3a,89.7y,112.78h,93.96t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sUmWueBO04DNzehoIt1f0hQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

 

They own this building under the Josephs Oldsmobile name. https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1248853,-84.4908504,3a,89.7y,112.78h,93.96t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sUmWueBO04DNzehoIt1f0hQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

 

That's a cool building. A real shame that it's owned by the Josephs.

To be fair, Ron actually does a really good job when he fixes up buildings. The building Buona Tera is in in Mt. Lookout is one of his projects.

They own this building under the Josephs Oldsmobile name. https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1248853,-84.4908504,3a,89.7y,112.78h,93.96t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sUmWueBO04DNzehoIt1f0hQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

 

That's a cool building. A real shame that it's owned by the Josephs.

 

It's entirely possible it was a car dealership once upon a time.  The building to the right, which was Harry Hake's architecture firm on the 2nd floor, was also a car dealer on the first floor.  They used to be super tiny back in the day. 

Exactly what I was thinking, it looked like an old school urban auto dealership.  Looks somewhat like what you'd see in Motor Row in Chicago: https://www.google.com/search?q=motor+row+chicago&rlz=1C1GGRV_enUS750US750&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjXu47I-8zVAhVmjlQKHXszAXoQ_AUIDCgD&biw=1903&bih=551&safe=active&ssui=on#imgrc=x7jhpNg2rehSwM:

 

 

Slightly related in that it has the Baldwin Building but i just stumbled across this aerial that i had not seen anywhere else and wanted to pass along. http://library.cincymuseum.org/cgi-bin/starfetch.exe?LWEjwQT.D.nTQm1EY7CC@GTtog13qTLFas0Kj0QjJs82jzrw8qFITrL7BwAhKwW6jDjdacB2@i2RrFi8ui76zEWgd.4F.nLwDVlpnNLRkk4XllnCpWRIzl0Wapw4udEHD6vqAp5iU4frBkVDSOl6vW0L2Ptd8EVx/SC318-0269-w.jpg

 

 

 

^Took me a second to orient myself.  That little dirt road at center is where the Channel 12 studio and broadcast tower is now. 

 

 

Wow. Very cool photo. Any idea what year that was taken? Based on the Laurel Homes project visible in the distance, it must have been after 1938.

 

Looks like a race track of some kind is directly behind (west) the Baldwin building.

Here is a Google Maps 3D satellite view that is from that approximate perspective:

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1160347,-84.4916784,494a,35y,273.94h,61.93t/data=!3m1!1e3

Looks like there are streetcars along Reading and Dorchester. So pre 1951.

Everything between Liberty, Ezzard Charles, John, and Linn Streets have already been demolished and mostly built out (Laurel Homes). I would guess this photo was taken around 1938-1940

HUD ends contract with Alms Apartments:

 

http://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/hamilton-county/cincinnati/alms-families-forced-to-move-may-become-homeless-after-hud-ends-contract-with-apartment

The Alms building on Victory Parkway is losing its HUD contract, and residents are suing:

 

http://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/hamilton-county/cincinnati/alms-families-forced-to-move-may-become-homeless-after-hud-ends-contract-with-apartment

I'm sure the WHRF is just giddy. They were talking about turning that building into a hotel or market rate housing 4 years ago.

That's huge news.  I have been in that place many times and it is a disaster. 

Did anyone see the packet for the East Walnut Hills project at the old Wellmark facility?  Mostly pre-liminary but looks really good.  buildingcincy tweeted it out yesterday starting on page 25

 

http://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/planning/about-city-planning/city-planning-commission/sep-15-2017-packet/

HUD ends contract with Alms Apartments:

 

http://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/hamilton-county/cincinnati/alms-families-forced-to-move-may-become-homeless-after-hud-ends-contract-with-apartment

I'm sure the WHRF is just giddy. They were talking about turning that building into a hotel or market rate housing 4 years ago.

 

If this was in OTR, people would be screaming "gentrification!" right now, but since it's in Walnut Hills, no one is going to talk about this.

I'd much prefer a series of smaller buildings, but I'm not naive so I know that isn't going to happen in today's development world with sites like this.

 

Therefore the thing I'm most interested in is making sure the massing meets the sidewalk correctly and that uses are organized in a logical manner. And that appears to be happening here. I'd love an underground garage but the economics of that aren't realistic here so I'm glad to see they placed the garage where it'll least negatively affect its surroundings. Then they were smart and focused the commercial aspects to a single node which will work well. The pedestrian street (it bugs me they put street in quotes. It's not "street" it's just street even if it doesn't serve cars) is a nice touch to break up the megablock as well. I just hope it's inviting enough to make people comfortable to walk through.

 

Overall I think it looks like this will turn out well. As long as the architecture isn't horrendous I think it'll go a really long way towards connecting the two Walnut Hills business districts and will hopefully encourage infill to happen east along McMillan.

That's huge news.  I have been in that place many times and it is a disaster.

 

I got to sit in on a show back when WAIF was in the basement. Didnt see the upstairs, but in my hazy memory the area in the basement reminded me of a slightly cleaner, tiny version of the bad areas of the Kawloon Walled City. With less Triads of course. http://www.greggirard.com/content/gallery/girard_kowloon004.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City

$55 million East Walnut Hills project lands key approval

 

 

The planned redevelopment of the former Anthem campus in East Walnut Hills had landed a key approval.

 

Cincinnati City Planning Commission unanimously approved a zoning change for the 7.2-acre site on the southwest corner of William Howard Taft Road and Woodburn Avenue to planned development from office limited. The zoning change is a necessary step for the development team of Al Neyer, Vandercar Holdings LLC and the Fortus Group as they work to develop the site into a mixed-use project.

 

More below:

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2017/09/15/55-million-east-walnut-hills-projects-lands-key.html

HUD ends contract with Alms Apartments:

 

http://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/hamilton-county/cincinnati/alms-families-forced-to-move-may-become-homeless-after-hud-ends-contract-with-apartment

I'm sure the WHRF is just giddy. They were talking about turning that building into a hotel or market rate housing 4 years ago.

 

If this was in OTR, people would be screaming "gentrification!" right now, but since it's in Walnut Hills, no one is going to talk about this.

 

It's tough.  I think that article shows this building does not work well as subsidized housing.  It's concentrating poverty in vertical form.  However on the other hand there are not the raw numbers of subsidized housing units available that could serve the need if it is redeveloped.  And there are no HOPE VI style government programs with continuity that are working on it to my knowledge.  Perhaps a good plan could be to convert this to market rate after replacing the units with a Brackett Village or City West style development on some of Walnut Hills' empty tracts of land, but it would be expensive and no one is funding anything like that right now.

 

(Also people are indiscriminately screaming "gentrification!" absolutely everywhere right now, no matter what the situation)

I think there will be a lot of folks glad to see that nightmare ended.

 

I was inside a few years ago when the City was looking for someone to get paid to take it.

 

Pretty interesting.

 

The drug boyz had tunnels though many, many of the units where they had cut holes through the walls into other units. Like a long maze. I also saw remnants of what might have been small cooking fires on the floor in units. Of course, there were the usual horribles throughout. Garbage, feces, junk, condoms, needles, water and other liquid damage, roaches, massive stains which could have been any king of hazard. It was pretty hard to picture a renovation. I am sure they just partitioned off the really horrible parts since there was no practical way to renovate it piecemeal. I'd expect bulldozer renovation. But, there may be a greater fool to take a shot at it.

 

We had armed escorts. I still did not feel safe.

$55 million East Walnut Hills project lands key approval

 

 

The planned redevelopment of the former Anthem campus in East Walnut Hills had landed a key approval.

 

Cincinnati City Planning Commission unanimously approved a zoning change for the 7.2-acre site on the southwest corner of William Howard Taft Road and Woodburn Avenue to planned development from office limited. The zoning change is a necessary step for the development team of Al Neyer, Vandercar Holdings LLC and the Fortus Group as they work to develop the site into a mixed-use project.

 

More below:

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2017/09/15/55-million-east-walnut-hills-projects-lands-key.html

 

^this is going to be huge for Walnut Hills, surprised not more discussion on here on it.  The old Walnut Hills YMCA is under revitalization currently to I think 27 apartments.

 

Also, please see below as work is about to start on the Paramount Building on East McMillan.  I wonder when the second phase of the project on the south side of East McMillan will start

 

http://www.wlwt.com/article/historic-walnut-hills-building-to-begin-renovations/12255456

 

For those following the news today, you may wonder why residents of the Alms are clamoring for HUD to continue the subsidies and not shut down the Alms.  If you already know the answer, you can stop reading.

 

For the rest, the Alms is a "project based" HUD facility meaning that the subsidy applies to the units not to the person occupying them. In order for a person to get subsidized housing in ordinary Section 8 (not project based) one has to have a voucher. A voucher for Section 8 is like gold. You can't get one unless of special circumstances like disability, old age, emergency, etc. You can't even get on the waiting list for a voucher most of the time.

 

Enter the project based HUD subsidy. The manager of a project based facility can put anyone he wants in the building and get the subsidy as long as they meet the income and needs standards. In a project based facility one can get his cousin from Podunk Tennessee, give her a bus ticket and when she gets to the Alms, put her in there and HUD pays her rent. She can be employable, healthy, any age, etc. One can only imagine the corruption. Are those Alms residents really there? There are no bed checks.

 

Hence, the residents of the Alms do not have CMHA vouchers for the most part and if they get kicked out of there they can ask to go on CMHA's voucher waiting list, or (God forbid) they will have to get jobs and pay their own rent.