Side note - I like california, but after having some interesting discussions with people, I'm playing around with trying to write a program that cross-checks a ton of factors to predict where an up-and-coming area is.
What do you guys think is the right combination of factors to predict this?
I would be VERY interested in this as a Californian looking to move somewhere up and coming. Have you read this book yet? https://www.amazon.com/Whos-Your-City-Creative-Important-ebook/dp/B008164JUW/ Some factors that seem to correlate are things like having a high gay population, number of creative jobs, etc.
Keep me apprised of your research; I'd love to help out if you need someone to do some analysis on data sets.
The results are in: Move to an inner city!
Okay, but seriously though, when sorting for the lowest home cost : household income ratio, from datasets from zillow and the us census and the IRS, the first-order results say to move to the downtown of cities if that downtown is falling apart.
For example, Richmond:
State Zip Pop Area Dens Approx Workers Approx Depnd Approx Unempl Worker Inc Household Inc Home 2016-06 Household Home Ratio
VA 23219 3781 1.534 2464.7 2190 370 1221 231956 245402 145100 0.59
Formatting on this forum sucks, but while the average worker income is very high, the unemployment rate estimate appears to be around 50%. Oops!
Here's some interesting information, though.
Let's look at 74114, Tulsa, OK.
State Zip Pop Area Dens Approx Workers Approx Depnd Approx Unempl Worker Inc Household Inc Home 2016-06 Household Home Ratio
OK 74114 15778 4.848 3254.5 10710 3630 1438 123305 162836 136700 0.83
Roughly 10k workers, 1500 unlisted (this is the unemployed / retired / whatever category - the data is still pretty rough), but it seems to list worker income average as $123k for that zip code.
However, the zip codes right next to it have average incomes that are ~4-6x less, so maybe it's not that Tulsa is such a great city, but more like there's just one zip code in Tulsa where all the rich people live. (Google says average income is $27k).
I suppose that means that if you can find good paying work in Tulsa, you should go live in 74114, and be very happy. If you can't, then fuck tulsa.
A much more "normal" place with a home-to-income ratio of 2.00 is 43613, Toledo.
State Zip Pop Area Dens Approx Workers Approx Depnd Approx Unempl Worker Inc Household Inc Home 2016-06 Household Home Ratio
OH 43613 31635 6.135 5156.4 19320 9350 2965 33778 41017 82100 2
Solid $40k household income, $80k homes, lots of kids.
It will take some time for me to figure out how to search better.
Note: I only downloaded the single family residence data from zillow... fuck condos!
If you're interested - I've attached the spreadsheet. It's in pretty early stages, pretty rough estimates for some stuff. Generated from a population density spreadsheet (census), income (IRS), and SFR prices (zillow).