A three-bedroom, 1,842 square-foot house in Youngstown, Ohio, is listed for sale at $219,000. Youngstown and neighboring Akron are the last metro areas considered affordable, where available homes are within reach for local homebuyers. (Courtesy Amy Watkins/Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Stouffer Realty)
At 43, Sharon Reese is a housing market refugee — forced to return to her Ohio hometown after 18 years in Las Vegas, despite a successful career training dancers for nightclub acts.
“If you don’t have between $600,000 and $800,000, you’re not buying a house out there,” Reese said. “Las Vegas has a lot of opportunity, and it was affordable in 2006, but it’s become unaffordable. We quit our jobs and moved across the country. We’re hoping this is the right decision for us.”
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Reese and her family are unpacking at her parents’ Youngstown home, a temporary stop until she and her husband, who was a casino worker in Las Vegas, can find jobs and a house of their own with their young daughter. Youngstown is one of the last two metro areas in the country where a household with nearly any income should be able to find a single-family home they can afford to buy, according to an analysis of April data by the National Association of Realtors.