Very inexpensive housing stock, some of it very beautiful, old stuff. Only Rochester is cheaper. You better like snow, tho...

Yeah - the snow is the first thing that occurred to me also. I bike all through the winter here in Chicago. When I say "all winter" that typically means I take the el two or three days when it is just too messy from yesterday's snow. But how many days a year can one realistically bike in Buffalo?

But on the other hand it is only 93 miles from Toronto! A nice one day bike ride to a city where one can get veggie dogs from any downtown sidewalk hot dog vendor That is the mark of civilization in my book!

Ever been to Upstate NY?

Your "temperate climate" line above clearly suggests not! "10-15 feet of snow per year, and below freezing day and night for 3 months" would be a better description.

As for why Buffalo is so cheap - it's a frickin' post-industrial wasteland with no jobs, a HUGE drug problem (thanks to 3 border crossings with Canada), some of the highest property taxes in the country (thanks to being in NY state), and a completely FUBAR edumacation system.

Rochester, Buffalo and Syracuse all three, are in the top 10 for lowest real estate prices in the country. Why - because people can't wait to get the hell away from these crumbling post-industrial hell holes. Rochester right now is bleeding people - Kodak went from 80,000 to 15,000 employees in under a decade. That's a lot of empty houses to sell!

As for infrastructure being in place - pah! They've filled in all the subway tunnels, the street-car lines are long-since paved over. There's one train a day in each direction between Chicago and NYC, which stops in each of these 3 cities. The roads are completely sh!t (due to damage from the climate, freeze-thawing). It's impossible to grow anything other than apples. Heating costs make a greenhouse too expensive to run. Yeah there's the great lakes, but the water's warm enough to swim in for about 3 days a year (and they're all polluted to hell).

So, by all means creative hippie types, c'mon to Upstate NY and buy my house. I'd be glad to sell it to you. What a crock!

I lived in Buffalo til I moved away to college. My family all still lives there. Yeah, the snow can be a lot during the winter, but it's nothing that can't be dealt with; you shovel snow like you mow the yard. Just something you have to keep up with. I've lived in the intense southern heat, dodging tornadoes and hurricane-like storms, for the last 12 years, and I'd trade it for real seasons and snow in a heartbeat. It is for sure in my plans to move back north within the next few years and I just can't wait! Glad to read others are realizing the value that exists up there.

Buffalo gets more sunshine June through September than Boston, New York, Washington, Atlanta, & Orlando.

Most of the snow during the winter falls south of the City in ski country.

Buffalo has great boating opportunities on Lake Erie and the Niagara River and is a short drive from Niagara Falls & Toronto.

As a resident of the City's West Side, I can tell you that it is filled with tree lined streets, walkable neighborhoods, and Olmsted Parks.

Buffalo is a hidden treasure ready to be found.

I believe it is the first city in the US to have an urban wind farm. The turbines sit on the shore of Lake Erie.

Hah hah. Buffalo has lost half its population since the 1950s and IS STILL LOSING POPULATION. Not only is the city itself losing population, the whole area is still losing population. There are some good things happening there but it is in now way a reversal of the rust belt decline and it is not resurgent.

Hah hah. Buffalo has lost half its population since the 1950s and IS STILL LOSING POPULATION. Not only is the city itself losing population, the whole area is still losing population. There are some good things happening there but it is in now way a reversal of the rust belt decline and it is not resurgent.

Temperate? How about a frozen hell in winter?

If Buffalo can do enough to attract creative types, keep hammering away on adding public resources (an expansive electric bus system would be a good idea), working on growing the city one neighborhood at a time, they'll do fine. Obviously they have a lot of catching up to do to get the benefits that formerly distraught cities like Portland are seeing from progressive local government, and with such a long collapse there's a lot of digging out to do, but if they can match the pace of change in our most liberal cities they'll quickly build a lot of buzz.

The snow may mostly fall to the south of Buffalo, but what they do get is a lot more than anywhere in snowy Vermont. We're talking really serious winters, for real. No biking in wintertime.

But hey, how many places can you buy a house for less than the cost of rent these days? Also, lots of lovely victorians.

Lancaster, PA is doing much the same thing. We've got arts and culture downtown. And getting out of the city and into rolling countryside is a fifteen minute drive. There's also a thriving bike culture and easy access to tons of locally grown food.

Plus we only get one or two bad snowstorms a year.

@Virgil

Let's keep talking about all things buffalo doesn't have...
Earthquakes, Hurricanes, Tornadoes, Lyme Disease, Coastal Flooding, Droughts, 100 degree summer weather, endless traffic jams and wildfires.

If you don't like snow, don't move there, but that's your decision. That means there'll be better skiing for the rest of us!

I'll admit I left for college and didn't come back, but only cause my fiance had a job in NYC already (she went to school there). Until the day I die, I'll be looking for opportunities to move back, and since my parents still live there, I'll be looking forward to returning home real soon.

However, after trying to save up for a house here in Connecticut, I'd give my left nut to be able to buy a house in buffalo. My rent for a 2 bd apartment would buy me a 2000 sq ft house in the burbs (not that I'd go for that). It would also buy me a cool house in the City on Elmwood Ave, which is filled with all sorts of 'creative professionals' and new businesses catering to people moving back to the city.

To Virgil: Did you ever think that people don't want to buy your house because idiots like you are all over the internet, spreading vitriol about how awful a place it is to live?

Anyway, most of your information is wrong or misleading.

I live in Rochester, actually a small town outside of Rochester, and I bought a 3000sqft historic house which contains a 600sqft apartment I rent out. After collecting rent my mortgage/taxes/insurance payment is less than a studio apartment in NYC or San Fran. I laugh at people who are willing to pay so much money to NOT OWN ANYTHING.

My wife and I laugh at these so-called "planned communities" in southern stinkholes - stressing things like walkability, closeness to shopping and schools, and diversity. People are paying architects millions of dollars for bad ripoffs of my small town! Except that they don't have the historic character or quality schools... LOL

Shhh don't tell anyone - WNY is the best kept secret around.

Oh wait...

SNOW... THE SNOW IS HORRIBLE... DON'T COME HERE, YOU'LL REGRET IT FOREVER... DON'T EVEN VISIT... IT SNOWS IN AUGUST...

::rolleyes::

Buffalo is in a lot of places a great place (I live in buffalo) and we do have a lot of minimally invasive hydropower thanks to Niagara falls! We also have an emerging wind energy scene! Unfortunately we also have one of the countries largest coal power plants the Huntley:

I grew up outside of Buffalo. I've been in NC for 10 years. (When i lived there you made clear that you were from east amherst, snyder, orchard park , clarence..) The city is beautiful in that it was stable and booming in an era when Buffalo had it all..the canal, the first hydro-electric city!....The architecture and old Oaks and Maples, old train station, gridded streets! Seasons! bike friendly! And rotten crab apples make glorious compost piles! I miss smart, fast talking people that know how to drive, say what they mean, and get to work! I miss good italian, polish, irish FOOD! and real museums and old parks and homes that dont all look the same! I miss negative ions in the air! and a lake effect breeze!
But it is COLD (i walked to school when it was -17 one day) and it can and will snow anywhere from october 31-may 5th. Gas and electric bills exceed twice what they do down here even when it is 103. And the city may be beautiful but there are so many boarded up homes and drugs from canada. But none of that even matters; There are NO JOBS! i liken it to Billy Joel's "Allentown".every one is leaving; it is outdated- I know more people down here that grew up in lancaster, cheektowaga, amherst..than i do people who grew up here!
There are jobs here! and 200 more days of sunlight/yr.
every Christmas i cry for flurries, family, and food, but feburary-december i go for a bikeride whenever i want!

The one comment was that Buffalo has a HUGE drug problem "thanks to three border crossings with Canada." What a croc that is. If you have people living lives that are hopeless or without direction, it won't matter who lives "next door". The problem is not Canada, it's the extremes between those in your society who have and those that do not. At least up here in Canada, EVERYONE can get health care, no matter what our level of income or social status. Please take a look in the mirror before slamming another country!

The California cool police have made it very clear: Snow is evil and if you like snow, you are an evil person. It is against the law to like snow. California is the great paradise of god, dude. You have no right not to drool for the great California dream.

I live in Cleveland and the problem isn't completely on snow. It's dunderheaded civic decisions and plain 'ol greed.

Jobs in the city consist of 7 buck an hour fast food/retail gigs. Of course there's no heath insurance or days off to care for your sick kids. New legislation will make sure of it in November.

Cleveland Clinic my a$$. Wait in one their MASH unit sub-hospital emergency rooms if you get sick. The meters running when the doors open. Nothing like sitting in a room of prescription drug addicts.

The school systems in the area are abysmal.. They hand out tax-abatements like candy to old-fart developers, destroying the system's budget. Oh sure they're rebuilding schools, when they can bribe state officials in Columbus and make sure their "friends" manage the funds.

A one-party system of corrupt civic leaders take kickbacks and bribes to from a select few contractors. Some of whom literally live on multi-million dollar estates next door to the contractors. 200 FBI agents raided the county offices last month, and took picture of the residential work done on their mansions.

Tourist taxes are the worst in the nation. Who the hell wants to pay an extra fifty bucks at the airport to rent a car or sleep in a hotel in @#$%$ Cleveland?

Today they think a worthless $1bilion convention center and "medical mart" will bring business into the city AGAIN. Apparently the millions spend on urban shopping malls and sports stadiums didn't work.

In fact, a plane flew around during a baseball game last year with a banner saying "Let your County Commissioners decide! Don't sign the petition to vote on the Convention Center"!

@Harvey Millstone: I didn't mean the drugs are a problem because of Canada, I meant that the drugs are a problem because, like a lot of cities in upstate NY, it is right on a major highway running all the way down into NYC. Much of the drug problem in Rochester/Syracuse/Buffalo is due to the passing-trade, i.e. it's a convenient place to deal. Not wishing to P.O. the Canadians in any way, just stating that the Canadian border is an oft-overlooked route of traffic into this country.

@Andrew: "Minimally invasive hydroelectric power" Really? The flow through the turbines diverts more than 50% of the Niagara river. The falls run at a trickle compared to their real power, and the only reason they can't take ALL the water is the tourist trade would suffer. There's an active campaign to turn the falls back on at full power once a year, for everyone to see them in their full glory, but they're worried it might cause too much erosion. Hydroelectric has a long history of environmental devastation (3 gorges anyone?) and Niagara power is no different.

@Dan: So, you can buy a 3000sqft house and have money to spare for the same price as someone rents a 1 room apartment in a major city. Congratulations! Some might view that as a winning deal, but please don't claim that there are advantages such as "historic character" and "schools" that large cities don't have. I personally find row-upon-row of climate-ravaged wooden houses, half of them boarded up, to be not very appealing to look at, in comparison to a row of brick townhouses. While upstate NY schools are better than the national average, and Rochester suburban school districts (brighton, pittsford etc) are very very good, like most places the inner city school district is a mess.

Sure, for those who live in the suburbs of these upstate cities, life is still very good and very cheap, but the article wasn't about that. It's about living in the city, and embracing the bad parts (crime, crappy schools, urban decay) along with the good (walkable neighborhoods, sense of community, hope for the future). If you want to talk up the lifestyle of upstate NY, and specifically living in the inner-city of an upstate NY decaying town (as I do), then at least spin it from a perspective that is relevant. Anyone can live in the suburbs for cheap and claim they're on a good deal - the end of cheap oil will see you begging to get into a large metropolis.

Dweller has it about right, in comparing with Cleveland. A HUGE part of the problem is lack of metro government. Specifically here in Rochester, the fact that Monroe County (Maggie Brooks = devil incarnate) and the City Mayor (Bob Duffy = all American idiot) can't get on with each other, means we have rampant suburban development (Victor, Henrietta, Pittsford), coupled with the county enforcing its views on downtown, and a refusal by the suburbs to pay their fair share. Exactly the same problem is playing out across this whole country - the urban/suburban divide is getting bigger and bigger. We can only hope that things will turn around sometime soon, and the suburbanites will be held accountable for their unsustainable lifestyle choices.

The NY Mag article is about how, for some people, they can spend a lot less money to make an investment in fulfilling their urban dream in Buffalo than in NYC. The NY Mag article is not about how great Buffalo is, which is what you may think by reading all the negative comments here posted about Buffalo.

Even if the article was about how great Buffalo is, you have to really discredit the posters here that use inflamatory and truly non-discriptive words in their posts like frickin', FUBAR, pah!, Hah hah, frozen hell, etc. It is likely that these emotionally driven posters have either fallen on hard times and maybe can not find a job, find it hard to pay their rent or mortgage, or even may have lost their house. It is an unfortunately common human reaction to become bitter and emotional when your dreams have been broken.

And to state the obvious, this article is not trying to compare the two cities. I have lived 15 minutes outside of Buffalo for five years now. Prior to that, I lived in the NYC suburbs for 40 years. That being said, there is not much of a comparison between the cities. They are very different, and you can argue that NYC is perhaps the greatest city on planet Earth.

But the fact is, Buffalo does offer the opportunity to fufill the urban dream of many New York City dwellers, that they are not able to fufill in NY City primarily due to the high living costs there.

Major obsticles to fulfilling urban dreams in Buffalo are: (1) the public school system, (2) weather, and (3) bad government. Yes, the job market is bad, but a "pre-condition" stated in the article is that if you want to make your urban dream come true in Buffalo you would likely have to be a creative type, like a musician or artist, or someone else that has the "luxery" of being able to move away, like if your business was via the internet for example.

But these obsticles are overcome by many, and to some people, are not even an issue.

The school public school system is awful. But so is NYC's. And if you have no children, that is not an issue. Excellent private and parochial schools offer alternatives, just as they do in NYC.

The weather can be brutle in Buffalo. Yes, if you can not handle lots of snow and wind for 3 winter months, don't move to Buffalo. But everyone does not share your disdane for the glory of winter. I know people who live for the winter months here.

The government is bad, for sure. The previous county exec was allegedly so fond of graft and nepotism it set the county government back years. The current mayor (who is a real nice guy and BTW is a NYC export) has been accused of being inneffectual and has also been accused of abusing city resources and possibly illegally pulling strings to help out his 16 year old son that got into trouble by taking dad's car and driving drunk and causing damage. From the top to the bottom of government, there are few bright spots... few people that concentrate on what is best to improve the economy and life of the citizens.

Despite the ineptness of government, there are many signs of new, positive activity in Buffalo. Things are moving forward even though the government holds people back. Young professionals in their 20's are moving into the city in large numbers. I personally know of many. There are many beautiful vacant buildings being turned into living units that are selling and renting. I know a real estate developer in the NYC area that is currently converting a beautiful landmark building into living units. He is just one of many working on similar projects. There have been many new commercial development projects completed since I moved here, and the pace is quickening.

These are all facts. But, one subjective thing that I have to advertise about Buffalo is the people. In general, people are friendlier here. Throughout the years, although I love NYC, I found the people on the street there to be more withdrawn and less outwardly friendly. I think that is caused by certain necesseties to survive in such a sometimes difficult environment. But when I go out in Buffalo, like if I go out by myself to catch a band at a bar, I almost always have a nice conversation or exchange thoughts with nice people. That almost never happens to me in NYC.

If you think Buffalo sucks, this is not the place to say so. You are missing the point of the NY Mag article. If you have an urban dream, Buffalo may me the place to make it come to reality.

It's true that Buffalo does have some incredibly beautiful homes and certain areas like Allentown and along Elmwood provide great city living. Having been born and raised in So. Cal and movign there for college I can say that honestly the snow was not that bad. The City of Buffalo is extremly efficient at snow removal. I never missed one single day of school or work due to snow in 3+ years.

That said, I have never lived in such a racially divided disgusting place. I honestly did not know that that kind of blatant, mandated racism still existed. To have people shout racial slurs at a black woman walking down the street or refuse to serve you was eye opening and painful. So while it may be a great deal for some please understand that if you are a person of color, it does not apply to you.